Elizabeth Gaskell

by Kate Flint

This original study of Elizabeth Gaskell places the woman and her writings within their full Victorian context. Recent critical appraisal has focused both on her role as a novelist of industrial England, and on her awareness of the position of women and the problems of the woman writer in that society. Kate Flint's perceptive book shows that for Elizabeth Gaskell the condition of women was inseparable from the broader issues of social change. Books such as Mary Barton, Cranford, North and South and Wives and Daughters continually analyse and interrogate questions of power, authority and the expression and transmission of human values, and challenge many widely-held pre-conceptions of the age. Dr Flint shows how recent feminist criticism and theories of narrative work together to illuminate the radical and experimental nature of Mrs Gaskell's fiction.

85 pages, Paperback

First published January 15, 1995

About the author

Kate Flint is Provost Professor of Art History and English at the University of Southern California. With an M.A. from the Courtauld Institute and a B.A. and D.Phil. from Oxford University, she previously taught at Rutgers, Oxford, and Bristol universities. Her areas of specialization include Victorian and early twentieth-century cultural, literary, and visual history. She’ author of Flash! Photography, Writing and Surprising Illumination (2017); The Transatlantic Indian 1776-1930 (2008); The Victorians and The Visual Imagination (2000) and The Woman Reader, 1837-1914 (1993). These last two books both won the British Academy’ Rose Mary Crawshay prize. She has previously held an ACLS Fellowship, and Fellowships at the National Humanities Center and the Huntington Library. She’ currently President of the North American Victorian Studies Association.

Reviews

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

A brief introduction to Gaskell with outlines of the critical debates