Elizabeth Gaskell

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Elizabeth Gaskell, portrait by George Richmond (1851)

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (born September 29, 1810 in the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea , † November 12, 1865 in Holybourne , Hampshire ) was a British writer . Even today she is often only called “Mrs. Gaskell "called.

Life

Elizabeth Gaskell was a born Stevenson. Her mother, Eliza, was a niece of the pottery maker Josiah Wedgwood . Her father, William, was a civil servant and a Unitarian clergyman. Since Gaskell's mother died shortly after she was born, she spent much of her childhood with an aunt in Knutsford , Cheshire . The place Knutsford later became the model for the fictional "Cranford". Elizabeth Gaskell attended Avonbank School in Stratford-upon-Avon and then lived for two years with the pastor family of William Turner, a distant cousin, in Newcastle upon Tyne . Gaskell's stepmother was a sister of the Scottish painter William John Thomson , and Thompson portrayed Elizabeth Gaskell in 1832. In 1832 she married the Unitarian clergyman William Gaskell, who was a lecturer in English history and literature at Manchester New College . In their hometown Manchester Elizabeth Gaskell experienced the industrial revolution and the caused of their misery - the substance of several of her books. The Gaskells frequented liberal circles in Manchester and had views of social reform .

Elizabeth Gaskell died at the age of 55 and was buried in the Graveyard of the Unitarian Chapel in Knutsford , County Cheshire .

Literary creation and work

Elizabeth Gaskell, who also supported her husband in his social work, got to know the living conditions of the poor in Manchester and drastically experienced the dark side of urbanization and industrialization in early Victorian society. The literary processing of her impressions was reflected in her first publication Sketches Among the Poor in 1837 .

Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel Mary Barton, a Tale of Manchester Life (English Mary Barton: a story from Manchester , 1849-50) was published anonymously in 1848. It is one of the first English social novels in which the suffering of the proletariat is presented in melodramatic form against the backdrop of the Chartist uprising. Gaskell's realistic portrayal of the misery, unemployment and prostitution of the proletariat, which is ruthlessly exploited by the factory owners, was on the one hand rejected as a one-sided position, but on the other hand it was praised by critics like Thomas Carlyle . Through this novel Gaskell came in contact with Charles Dickens , in whose magazine Household Words she published in the episode. Here appeared Cranford (1851–53; Eng. Cranford , 1917), a loosely connected collection of anecdotes and stories about a small town. The stories, however, do not represent a nostalgic glorification of a rural idyll, as the small gynocentric town turns out to be a place of transience, in which the social changes, as they come to light through the male industrial society of Drumble, trigger panic.

The novel Ruth describes the tragic fate of a fallen woman and unmarried mother in a self-righteous, hypocritical social environment. Despite the melodrama and idealization, this novel was seen as a clear breach of a taboo after its publication and triggered outraged reactions.

Elizabeth Gaskell gained greater fame through the novel North and South (1855), another social novel , which, however, was less melodramatic than her first novel. Her later novels are much simpler in style and narrative and are reminiscent of the work of Jane Austen in their artistic discipline . Her last novel, Wives and Daughters , set in a doctor's household, was left unfinished because of her death.

Wives and Daughters , title page of the first edition from 1866

Elizabeth Gaskell was good friends with Charlotte Brontë , whom she first met in 1850. After Charlotte Brontë's death, she was commissioned by her father to write her biography. This was published in 1857 and is considered one of the most important English biographies of the 19th century. Patrick Brontë was however dissatisfied with the result. Gaskell was threatened with libel for reporting on Branwell Brontë's affair with the married Mrs. Robinson; Carus Wilson saw his school misrepresented and publicly attacked it. After a year, Gaskell published an adjusted version. In the original version, however, she had already left out many scandalous details, such as Charlotte's affection for her teacher Héger in Brussels .

In addition to her novels, Elizabeth Gaskell also wrote numerous short stories that appeared in various magazines and in book form under the titles Life in Manchester (1847), Lizzie Leigh and Other Tales (1855), Round the Sofa (1859) and in other collections. In 1863 her historical novel Sylvia's Lovers (German: Sylvia's Freier , 1864) was published, which describes the relationships between the title character Sylvia Robson, her cousin and later husband Philip Hepburn and the attractive harpooner Charley Kinraid against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars . The female fate described by Elizabeth Gaskell shows itself to be shaped from the beginning by the stories of men, in which female wishes or desires find no place.

After the short novel Cousin Phillis , which appeared in Cornhill Magazine from 1863-64 , Elizabeth Gaskell also published in Cornhill Magazine in 1866 her last novel Wives and Daughters (German women and daughters , 1867), which is regarded by numerous critics and recipients as her masterpiece and can be understood as an allusion to Turgenev's best-known work Fathers and Sons . The setting is again provincial England with its love stories on the one hand and its social and political conflicts and tensions on the other. In her last work, however, Gaskell presents a broader panorama than in her earlier works, again problematizes the different female roles and raises the question of the autonomy of women in relation to externally determined social identities.

Works

Novels

  • Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester. 1848 (German Mary Barton: Eine Geschichte aus Manchester. Translated from the third English edition. 1849–1850, Grimma, four volumes).
  • Cranford. 1853. (German Cranford. Translated from English by Hedwig Jahn. 1917, Leipzig).
  • Ruth. 1853 (German Ruth: a story. Translated from English by C. Büchele. 1853, Stuttgart.)
  • North and South . 1855. (German Margarethe. A novella. Payne, Leipzig / Dresden 1865).
  • The Gray Woman. 1861.
  • Sylvia's lovers. 1863 (German Sylvia's suitor. 1864, Leipzig, four volumes).
  • Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story. 1865 (German women and daughters. Translated from English by August Kretzschmar. 1867, Berlin).

stories

  • The Moorland Cottage. 1850.
  • Mr. Harrison's Confessions . 1851 (German Mr. Harrisons Confessions. Stories. Translated from English by Andrea Ott , with an afterword by Alice Reinhard-Stocker. 2010, Manesse Verlag, Munich, ISBN 978-3-7175-2258-4 ).
  • The Old Nurse's Story. 1852 (German The story of the old nanny. Translated from English and with an afterword by Heiko Postma. 2012, Hanover).
  • Lizzie Leigh. 1855.
  • My Lady Ludlow. 1859.
  • Round the sofa. 1859.
  • Lois the Witch. 1861 (German Lois, the witch. A picture ad American religious and family life of the 17th century. Translated from English by Julie Kahle-Häser. 1915, Kevelaer).
  • A Dark Night's Work. 1863 (German: Die de eine Nacht. 1865, Leipzig).
  • Crowley Castle. 1863 (German A Castle History. Translated from English by Hans Lebede. 1912, Berlin).
  • Cousin Phillis. 1864 (German Phillis. Translated from English by Julie Kahle-Häser. 1912, Kevelaer).

More fonts

  • The Life of Charlotte Bronte. 1857. (German The life of Charlotte Brontë. Translated from English by Irmgard and Peter Schmitt. Cadolzburg, 1995, ISBN 3-927-48291-9 ).
  • Six Weeks at Heppenheim. 1862. (German Six weeks in Heppenheim . Translated from English by Maria Diedrich. 1991, Heppenheim)

literature

  • Alison Chapman (Ed.): Elizabeth Gaskell. "North and South"; a reader's guide to essential criticism . Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke 1999, ISBN 1-84046-037-7 .

Film adaptations

  • 1971: Wives and Daughters
  • 1972: Cranford
  • 1975: North and South
  • 1999: Wives and Daughters (BBC)
  • 2004: North & South (BBC)
  • 2007: Cranford (BBC)
  • 2009: Return to Cranford ( Return to Cranford ) - Continuation of the BBC adaptation of 2007

Web links

Commons : Elizabeth Gaskell  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ knerger.de: The grave of Elizabeth Gaskell
  2. ↑ See Sabine Schälting: Gaskell, Elizabeth [Cleghorn]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 222f .
  3. ↑ See Sabine Schälting: Gaskell, Elizabeth [Cleghorn]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 223 .
  4. ↑ See Sabine Schälting: Gaskell, Elizabeth [Cleghorn]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 223 .
  5. ↑ Laurence Lerner: Introduction. In: Frank Glover Smith (Ed.): Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters. Penguin, Harmondsworth 1979, ISBN 0-14-043046-6 , p. 15. See also Sabine Schälting: Gaskell, Elizabeth [Cleghorn]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 223 .
  6. ↑ See Sabine Schälting: Gaskell, Elizabeth [Cleghorn]. In: Metzler Lexicon of English-Speaking Authors . 631 portraits - from the beginning to the present. Edited by Eberhard Kreutzer and Ansgar Nünning, Metzler, Stuttgart / Weimar 2002, ISBN 3-476-01746-X , 666 pages (special edition Stuttgart / Weimar 2006, ISBN 978-3-476-02125-0 ), p. 223f .
  7. ↑ Mary Barton: A Story from Manchester. in the German Digital Library
  8. ↑ Ruth: a story in the German digital library
  9. ↑ Sylvia's suitor. in the German Digital Library
  10. ↑ Wives and Daughters. in the German Digital Library
  11. ↑ The deed of one night. in the German Digital Library
personal data
SURNAME Gaskell, Elizabeth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British writer
DATE OF BIRTH September 29, 1810
PLACE OF BIRTH London borough of Kensington and Chelsea
DATE OF DEATH November 12, 1865
Place of death Holybourne , Hampshire