 Title page of the first edition, 1853 | |
| Author | Elizabeth Gaskell |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Social novel |
| Published | 1853 |
| Publisher | Chapman and Hall |
| Media type | Print (hardback & paperback) |
Ruth is a novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in three volumes in 1853.
Ruth is a young orphan girl working in a respectable sweatshop for the overworked Mrs Mason. She is selected to go to a ball to repair torn dresses. At the ball she meets the aristocratic Henry Bellingham, a rake figure who is instantly attracted to her. They meet again by chance and form a secret friendship; on an outing together they are spotted by Mrs Mason who, fearing for her shop's reputation, dismisses Ruth.
Alone in the world, Ruth is whisked away by Bellingham to London where it is implied she becomes a fallen woman . They go on holiday to Wales together and there on a country walk Ruth meets the disabled and kind Mr Benson. Bellingham falls sick with fever and the hotel calls for his mother who arrives and is disgusted by her son's having lived in sin with Ruth. Bellingham is persuaded by his mother to abandon Ruth in Wales, leaving her some money.
A distraught Ruth attempts suicide but is spotted by Mr Benson who helps comfort her. When he learns of her past and that she is alone he brings her back to his home town, where he is a Dissenting minister, to stay with him and his formidable but kind sister Faith. When they learn that Ruth is pregnant they decide to lie to the town and claim that she is a widow called Mrs Denbigh, to protect her from a society which would otherwise shun her.
Ruth has her baby, whom she names Leonard. She is transformed into a Madonna type figure, calm and innocent once more. The rich local businessman Mr Bradshaw admires Ruth and employs her as a governess for his children, including his eldest daughter Jemima who is in awe of the beautiful Ruth.
Ruth goes away with the Bradshaws to a seaside house while one of Mr Bradshaw's children is convalescing from a long illness. Mr Bradshaw brings Mr Donne, a man whom he is sponsoring to become their local MP, to the seaside to impress him. Ruth recognises Mr Donne as actually being Mr Bellingham and the two have a confrontation on the beach. Bellingham offers to marry Ruth as he claims he still loves her and for the sake of their child, Ruth rejects him saying she will not let Leonard come in contact with a man like him.
From local gossip Jemima discovers about Ruth's past, though she is still unaware that it was Mr Donne who is Leonard's father. Jemima is headstrong and already jealous that her suitor Mr Farquhar, her father's business partner, seems to admire Ruth over her. The truth is Mr Farquhar is put off by Jemima's erratic behaviour, caused by her father's good intentioned interference. Jemima however decides to keep quiet over Ruth's past as she realises that she comes from a more privileged background and the same could well have happened to her, had she been in Ruth's situation.
Mr Bradshaw discovers also from local gossip however that Ruth is a fallen woman and despite Jemima's passionate defence of Ruth she is thrown out of the house and sacked. Ruth goes home and has to reveal to Leonard that he is in fact illegitimate; he is devastated and ashamed by the news. Mr Bradshaw also goes to his old friend Mr Benson and argues with him as he allowed the lie to be told and for Ruth to enter not only his but also Mr Bradshaw's house.
Jemima and Mr Farquhar marry and have their own child and form a good friendship with Ruth and Leonard but they are still on the outskirts of society. Ruth goes among the poor to work as a nurse to the sick and gains a good reputation there, making Leonard proud of his mother once more and restoring their relationship. Mr Bradshaw's son is found to have been embezzling the company's funds and his father disowns him. However, when his son is later involved in an accident, Mr Bradshaw is distraught and realises that his morals had been perhaps too heavy-handed in the past. His son recovers and Mr Bradshaw starts to rethink his life.
Ruth has to give up her work as there is a catching fever in the environment. A local doctor offers to sponsor Leonard's studies at a good school and the Farquhars offer to go away on holiday with Ruth and Leonard. However before Ruth has made a decision she hears that Mr Donne is very sick; she confides in the doctor the truth about who Mr Donne really is, and goes to him. He is delirious with fever and does not recognise her but she nurses him back to health.
Ruth however falls sick and dies from the illness. At the funeral many of the poor that Ruth had looked after praise her, and the chapel is full of people that loved Ruth, despite her being a fallen woman. Mr Donne comes to Mr Benson's house and sees Ruth dead, he is momentarily sad and offers money to Mr Benson who realises who he must be and throws him out of the house.
The novel ends with Mr Bradshaw finding a weeping Leonard at his mother's grave, whom he leads home to Mr Benson, and reforming his friendship with Mr Benson realising that as a member of the society that ostracised Ruth, he is also responsible for her death.
The book is a social novel, dealing with Victorian views about sin and illegitimacy. It is a surprisingly compassionate portrayal of a 'fallen woman', a type of person normally outcast from respectable society. It examines the social stigma of illegitimacy. Ruth goes on to gain a respectable position in society as a governess, and the novel looks at whether the sinful can be reintegrated into society.
Ruth received a mixed critical reception. As a work that dealt frankly with seduction and illegitimacy, it inevitably attracted controversy: Gaskell reported that it was a "prohibited book" in her own household, that friends expressed "deep regret" at its publication, and that two acquaintances burnt their copies. [1] On the other hand, some reviewers complained that Gaskell painted Ruth as too passive a victim of Bellingham's advances, eluding the question of Ruth's own sexual feelings. Gaskell loaded the story down with so many extenuating circumstances that Ruth scarcely seemed a representative example of a "fallen woman." [2]
Ruth is one of several 19th-century British and American novels that cast a "fallen woman" with an illegitimate child in the role of heroine. It may be compared to Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel The Scarlet Letter (1850), published just a few years earlier, and in many respects it anticipates Thomas Hardy's novel Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891). Ruth, like Tess, is a working-class girl who is distinguished from her peers by both unusual sensitivity and sexual ignorance. But Gaskell's treatment of her heroine differs somewhat from Hardy's in that she emphasises Ruth's guilt, regret, and struggle to expiate her sin, while Hardy is less inclined to view Tess as a sinner. [3]
Jane Eyre is a novel by the English writer Charlotte Brontë. It was published under her pen name "Currer Bell" on 19 October 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London. The first American edition was published the following year by Harper & Brothers of New York. Jane Eyre is a Bildungsroman which follows the experiences of its eponymous heroine, including her growth to adulthood and her love for Mr Rochester, the brooding master of Thornfield Hall.
Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, often referred to as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Her novels offer a detailed portrait of the lives of many strata of Victorian society, including the very poor. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published in 1848. Gaskell's The Life of Charlotte Brontë, published in 1857, was the first biography of Charlotte Brontë. In this biography, she wrote only of the moral, sophisticated things in Brontë's life; the rest she omitted, deciding certain, more salacious aspects were better kept hidden. Among Gaskell's best known novels are Cranford (1851–1853), North and South (1854–1855), and Wives and Daughters (1864–1866), all of which were adapted for television by the BBC.
Cranford is an episodic novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell. It first appeared in installments in the magazine Household Words, then was published with minor revisions as a book with the title Cranford in 1853. The work slowly became popular and from the start of the 20th century it saw a number of dramatic treatments for the stage, the radio and TV.
Wives and Daughters, An Every-Day Story is a novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in the Cornhill Magazine as a serial from August 1864 to January 1866. It was partly written whilst Gaskell was staying with the salon hostess Mary Elizabeth Mohl at her home on the Rue de Bac in Paris. When Mrs Gaskell died suddenly in 1865, it was not quite complete, and the last section was written by Frederick Greenwood.
Shirley, A Tale is a social novel by the English novelist Charlotte Brontë, first published in 1849. It was Brontë's second published novel after Jane Eyre. The novel is set in Yorkshire in 1811–12, during the industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic Wars and the War of 1812. The novel is set against the backdrop of the Luddite uprisings in the Yorkshire textile industry.
Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life was the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of Manchester between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian working class.
Bastard Out of Carolina is a 1996 American drama film made by Showtime Networks, directed by Anjelica Huston. It is based on the 1992 novel by Dorothy Allison and adapted for the screen by Anne Meredith. Jena Malone stars in her debut as a poor, physically abused and sexually molested girl.
North and South is a social novel published in 1854–55 by English author Elizabeth Gaskell. With Wives and Daughters (1865) and Cranford (1853), it is one of her best-known novels and was adapted for television three times. At first, Gaskell wanted the novel to be titled after the heroine, Margaret Hale, but Charles Dickens, the editor of Household Words, the magazine in which the novel was serialised, insisted on North and South.
Manhandled is a 1949 American film noir crime film directed by Lewis R. Foster and starring Dorothy Lamour, Sterling Hayden and Dan Duryea. It is based on the 1945 novel The Man Who Stole a Dream by L. S. Goldsmith.
North & South is a British television historical drama programme, produced by the BBC and originally broadcast in four episodes on BBC One in November and December 2004. It follows the story of Margaret Hale, a young woman from southern England who has to move to the North after her father decides to leave the clergy. The family struggles to adjust itself to the industrial town's customs, especially after meeting the Thorntons, a proud family of cotton mill owners who at first seem to despise their social inferiors. The story explores the issues of class and gender, as Margaret's sympathy for the town mill workers clashes with her growing attraction to John Thornton.
The Beauty of Bath is a musical comedy with a book by Seymour Hicks and Cosmo Hamilton, lyrics by C. H. Taylor and music by Herbert Haines; additional songs were provided by Jerome Kern, F. Clifford Harris (lyrics) and P. G. Wodehouse (lyrics). Based loosely on the play David Garrick, the story concerns a young woman from a noble family, who falls in love with an actor. She then meets a sailor who appears identical to the actor and mistakes him for the latter. Her father objects to a marriage with the actor, but when it turns out that she really loves the sailor, all objections fall away.
Charity is a drama in four acts by W. S. Gilbert that explores the issue of a woman who had lived with a man as his wife without ever having married. The play analyses and critiques the double standard in the Victorian era concerning the treatment of men and women who had sex outside of marriage, anticipating the "problem plays" of Shaw and Ibsen. It opened on 3 January 1874 at the Haymarket Theatre in London, where Gilbert had previously presented his 'fairy comedies' The Palace of Truth, Pygmalion and Galatea, and The Wicked World. Charity ran for about 61 performances, closing on 14 March 1874, and received tours and revivals thereafter.
Margaret Hale is the heroine of Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 novel North and South. Initially, Gaskell wanted the title of the novel to be Margaret Hale, but Charles Dickens, the editor of Household Words, the magazine in which the novel was serialized, insisted on North and South.
Mr. Harrison’s Confessions is an 1851 extended story by Elizabeth Gaskell about a doctor in a small English country town, benefitting from familiarity with the work of a general practitioner in Gaskell's own family. Episodes from the story and other works were adapted into the 2007 television series based on her novel Cranford.
This is a list of fictional stories in which illegitimacy features as an important plot element. Passing mentions are omitted from this article. Many of these stories explore the social pain and exclusion felt by illegitimate "natural children".
Lost in Austen is a four-part 2008 British television series for the ITV network, written by Guy Andrews as a fantasy adaptation of the 1813 novel Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Amanda, a young woman living in modern London, enters the plot of the novel through a portal in her bathroom, to join the Bennet family and affect events, generally disastrously.
Blue Stockings is the first full-length play by Jessica Swale. It is set at Girton College, Cambridge in 1896. Its title refers to bluestockings, a derogatory term for female intellectuals. The action involves four very talented female undergraduates and the campaign to be allowed like their male colleagues to receive a formal degree qualification at the end of their studies. The play touches on some of the issues surrounding the feminist ideals of the late nineteenth-century New Woman including female bicycle-riding, equal education rights, sexual autonomy, and political enfranchisement.
Chains, written by Laurie Halse Anderson, is the first novel in the Seeds of America trilogy, a series of historical fiction novels, and was first published in the United States on October 21, 2008. The trilogy follows the story of thirteen-year-old Isabel, an African-American slave fighting for her and her younger sister's freedom during the American Revolutionary War. Chains takes place mainly in New York City in 1776 into 1777, at a time when slavery was legal and common in the colonies. The book is followed by sequels Forge (2010) and Ashes (2016). This book is also the subject of Academic Pentathlon's 2022-2023 Literature curriculum as one of the main works.
The Poor Clare is a short story by English Victorian writer Elizabeth Gaskell. First serialised in three installments in 1856 Charles Dickens' popular magazine Household Words, The Poor Clare is a gothic ghost story about a young woman unwittingly cursed by her own grandmother.
Kirsty Clements is a fictional character from the BBC medical drama Casualty, played by Lucy Gaskell. She first appeared in the twenty-fourth series episode "Russian Endings", broadcast on 15 May 2010. Kirsty is a staff nurse in Holby City Hospital's emergency department (ED). Gaskell was invited to audition by show producers and was successful. She shadowed ED nurses at a local hospital as preparation for the role. Kirsty is characterised as a strong, independent and feisty nurse, who does the best for her patients. She develops close friendships with her colleagues, notably Adam Trueman, although Kirsty's brash personality also makes her clash with others.
Ruth public domain audiobook at LibriVox | Novels |
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