Three for Friday
A little more of Elizabeth Gaskell and her contemporaries
Happy Friday! I hope the sun is shining wherever you are. Put your feet up and enjoy a saunter through the nineteenth century . . .
First, Virginia Woolf’s essay on George Eliot, which contains the famous quote
. . . Middlemarch, the magnificent book which with all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up people.
George Eliot by Virginia Woolf
A short story by Elizabeth Gaskell
Bessy felt a little impatient. Young people in strong health can hardly understand the fears that beset invalids. Bessy was a kind-hearted girl, but rather headstrong, and just now a little disappointed. She forgot that her mother had had to struggle hard with many cares ever since she had been left a widow, and that her illness now had made her nervous.
Or indeed any and all of the stories collected at this link.
There’s much more to Wordsworth than daffodils. His poem ‘The Thorn’ tells a similar story to Gaskell’s Ruth.
“But wherefore to the mountain-top
Can this unhappy Woman go,
Whatever star is in the skies,
Whatever wind may blow?”