North and South is a report on the conflict between workers and factory owners in industrial Manchester, which is presented as a social problem that needs to be solved. While North and South is written in primary colors, so to speak, Wives and Daughters has many subtly different shades.
It is very different from North and South, which is the only other Gaskell novel I have read. It’s also interesting as a portrait of a vanished way of life. It’s very readable, with likable believable characters and a moderately intriguing plot. I read it as part of a reading group hosted by my friend Linda White. The main plot thread is the progress of step-sisters Molly Gibson and Cynthia Kirkpatrick from being daughters to being wives.
It was published in incomplete form in 1866 after Mrs. Lower-class women, of course, were “free” to make their own way as servants. Elizabeth Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters is a novel set in England in the late 1820s and early 1830s when the only role for middle-class and upper-class women was to be somebody’s wife or somebody’s daughter.
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