The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 7 February 2001
by Elizabeth Gaskell
Ruth is a young naive girl when this novel opens. She is alone in a cruel world full of moral double standards and deceit. After her parents have died, an indifferent guardian places her into the apprenticeship of a seamstress in a bland English town. Ruth is beautiful and pure, a metaphor which is repeatedly stressed throughout the book. When she is finally seduced by a rakish young man, her world comes apart at its carefully sewn seams. Elizabeth Gaskell (a contemporary of, and correspondent with, Charles Dickens) crafted a moral tale of the Fallen Woman, full of despair, hope, sadness, peace, religious fervor, justice and injustice. Her writing is very ornate and painterly, evoking beautiful countryside and cozy houses. However, the mid-19th century was not a good time to be a young woman, alone and pregnant. The moral strictures come fast and furious. But Ruth is rescued from the Welsh countryside by a noble brother and sister from Eccleston, who connive to hide her sinful transgressions. Through them, Ruth is given the chance to redeem herself. But can such an explosive secret be kept forever? That her past is explosive is the key to the moral stance of this book. Gaskell depicts a world of strict religious and moral standards (though that is a question of class, too, which she doesn't really address). Ruth is at the mercy of a particularly male social structure. In her position, it is the woman's evil that is highlighted while the male, though equal in action, is guilty of mere youthful folly. There is much more to the story, with the ethical ambiguity of an aristocratic family, the guilty collaboration of a "dissenting" minister, and the darkness of typhoid. Gaskell's writing is beautiful and engaging. Though the unfairness is extreme, and Ruth's suffering unnaturally eternal, there is a powerful vivid light to the story. While other reviewers have criticized the book on the basis that Ruth Hilton is far too "good" to be true, this reader disagrees. Ruth isn't so much good as surpassingly meek. She allows herself to be at the utter mercy of the cruel world around her, and, yearning for acceptance, she gives herself over to the conventional ideals of good works. Ruth was painfully naive in her sinful transgression. In her redemption, she remains a part of the unjust world in which she lives, trying to be as good (and maybe as invisible) as she can.