Ruth (thoughts)

Sorry about the malfunction guys! I don’t know what happened with the post, or why it showed up empty in feed readers, but here it is.

Today, I’m discussing Ruth by Elizabeth Gaskell as part of the Classics Circuit. I just started reading Gaskell this summer, and this is my third book I’ve read by her; I’ve also read Cranford (which I loved) and North and South (which I had mixed feelings about, probably due to seeing the incredible BBC adaptation beforehand). Also, you should know that I listened to this on CD, since my library didn’t have a hard copy (and at over 432 pages, you can imagine there were quite a few CDs!). I love audiobooks, but one of the key differences is that there’s no skimming over bits, so I think Ruth felt preachier to me than it would have if I was reading a hard copy.

Ok, so Ruth is one of Gaskell’s ‘issue’ novels. Ruth is a young girl working as a seamstress in a kind of cottage factory, if that makes sense (the girls all live in, but there’s quite a few of them) after the death of her parents. Due to a series of coincidences, she meets a rich young gentleman Henry Billingham and falls in love. Eventually, she becomes an unwed single mother in a society that saw that as the apex of evil for a woman, and the bulk of the book is devoted to a portrait of Ruth as a devoted young mother (she’s only 15 or 16 when she has her son) whose live is changed by Christianity after a kind, untraditional minister and his sister take her in.

For me, this book was a series of ups and downs. The beginning was wonderful; Gaskell really brought Ruth and her surroundings to life. I could envision the small house she had lived in happily with her family before her troubles, I could see her mean employer at the seamstress place, and I could imagine Ruth’s shy excitement when Billingham took notice of her. But then, once Ruth had her son, Gaskell seems to put the story on pause to try to convince the reader that an unwed mother can be a good, Christian woman. I understand why Gaskell took up this cause, especially in Victorian times. And I understand her focus on Christianity; she was a minister’s wife, and in Victorian England one pretty much had to be a Christian to be considered morally upright. But as a twenty-first century agnostic reader, it felt tedious. As I mentioned earlier, if I’d been reading a hard copy I would have just skimmed these pages. But in audio form, I didn’t really have a choice. So there was a boring bit. But then it got good as Ruth began to rebuild her life, and became an individual once again rather than a political message. And then it got preachy again. And then good again. And the book cycled like that; there were moments when I really loved it and moments when I wondered if I would even finish it. And then there was the ending…it felt like a stereotype of Victorian sentimentality, but Gaskell is such a good writer that it brought me to tears even while I was rolling my eyes. I’m not sure whether to give props to her or not for that achievement! ;)

I really, really wish that I had passages to share with you, so that you could get a taste of the dichotomy between the two writing styles; it’s almost as if Gaskell flips a switch as she starts a new section. For me, in the end the good outweighed the bad, and I’m glad that I read the book. I think Gaskell is at her best when she’s painting scenes of village life and villagers; since most of the book is about Ruth’s life in just such a village, I enjoyed getting to know the other characters (particularly one family, which plays a large role in the novel) and finding out their fates. And while the sermons were a bit tedious, I can’t help but admire Gaskell for not only strenuously disagreeing with the prevailing attitudes of her day, but speaking out against them in the strongest language she could! But I wouldn’t recommend this as the place to start getting to know Gaskell, and I’m hoping that her other books prove stronger than this one. Whenever a novel’s characters are less important than a novel’s political message, inevitably the book will suffer. And in the case of Ruth, that definitely happened.

Thanks to Ms. Gaskell for visiting my blog today! If you’re curious to know more about how classic authors go on tour, if you’d like to join the February tour (which is a theme one: the Harlem Renaissance), be sure to visit the Classics Circuit website. Also, see more of Ms. Gaskell’s blog stops via her tour schedule!