Nurse Reading a Book to an Old Woman
Such a wonderful collection, with some existent gems. My favourites are The Gray Woman and The Old Nurse's Story.
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Edited February 6, 2022Then What'due south It Well-nigh?
Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell is primarily known for her biography of her shut friend Charlotte Brontë likewise as her novels, the majority of which are female-led and feature examinations of industrialization and class inequality. She also wrote a number of ghost stories and stories in the Gothic tradition, and several of these are gathered in this collection.
What I Idea
Disappearances -no shade, Mrs. Gaskell, simply I accept admittedly no idea what this was supposed to be. Information technology'south but a haphazard collection of stories and snippets of stories about people going missing. Information technology's a cool enough premise simply there's no Victorian Dyatlov Pass in this drove – the stories are incredibly brief and non very interesting or juicy at all.
The Old Nurse's Story – I read this ane for concluding year'south Spookening as it was a part of The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women. It held up this year – old women with regrets and vicious secrets, icy moors, organs playing in the night and a haunted trivial girl. This collection has a recurring theme of abusive, violent men and the start one makes his appearance here in the grade of the ghosts' murderer, their proud and cruel father and grandfather.
The Squire's Story- a robber buys a house, gets married and and then inexplicably confesses to one of his robberies that ended in a murder. I think this 1 could have been really good if it had delved into the murderer's guilty psyche a la Nib Sykes in Oliver Twist, but as it was really executed that didn't happen at all so the story fell flat to me.
The Poor Clare – this story involves a witch's curse, lost love and a young woman'south ghostly doppleganger that everyone says is soooooooo evil merely really just seems to similar playing pranks and trying to have sex. I judge by Victorian standards is was pretty evil for an unmarried young adult female (or female person-presenting ghostly doppleganger) to desire that… I used to read basically nothing but Victorian literature merely I've been away from information technology for a while and this story'due south honey interest was a reminder of just how utterly boring, spineless and lifeless female characters can exist in Victorian lit. It was pretty unbearable.
The Doom of the Griffiths – here nosotros have a family expletive, a securely and annoyingly self-pitying main character, lots and lots of telling rather than showing and another child killed by a vengeful grandpa.
Lois the Witch – I read this book after The Year of the Witching and so I already had Puritans on the brain. Gaskell does a great job of depicting colonial New England'southward sexual repression, stringent piety and overwhelming emphasis on morality and purity. She also does an excellent chore of depicting the hypocrisy, paranoia and panic that lay at the center of witch hunting. As a final note, Gaskell made some interesting statements about the injustice of what British settlers did to ethnic people in the U.Southward…while too unfortunately calling the indigenous servant in this story a barbarous.
The Crooked Co-operative – a man with doting parents goes wrong and manipulates said doting parents out of all their money before robbing them and breaking their hearts. Did I mention that a lot of stories in this collection were really, really depressing?
Curious, If Truthful – this one features classic fairy tale characters hilariously reinterpreted. Information technology was really fun but also had the worst ending of the bunch because it was and then incredibly abrupt.
The Grey Woman – a immature woman trapped in an abusive union learns a deadly secret virtually her husband and runs for her life with her beloved nurse. Because of the novel I'thou writing I've been reading a lot about Victorian conceptualizations of marital abuse and it was really quite progressive of Gaskell to write a story where a man'southward emotional (rather than simply concrete) corruption was denounced and the adult female was portrayed every bit existence in the correct for abandoning him. In improver, it was somewhat rare for an driveling woman to get annihilation remotely resembling a happy ending in fiction instead of dying tragically, so the fact that she survives in this story and remarries a kind man was quite progressive likewise. Her terror endures, even so, and I wouldn't say that the ending of her story is truly happy. Gaskell does a smashing job of depicting her isolation, fearfulness, helplessness and desperation.
Dickens once called her his 'darling Scheherazade,' then of grade I had to bank check out Elizabeth Gaskell's "Gothic Tales." Overshadowed in today's literature classes past her contemporaries George Eliot and the Bronte sisters, Gaskell was a popular author in her time. This brilliant collection shows the reason. Reading the title, I was expecting, "I run across expressionless people" stuff layered with poetic nineteenth-century language. The first story, "The Old Nurse's Tale," does deal with that- a creepy little girl haunting the moors (Cathy Earnshaw, anyone?).
Merely the tales are 'Gothic' in that they deal with the night side of human being nature more than the supernatural. Gaskell with her intense, cute prose, explores the themes of oppression, hatred, and full general human cruelty in this collection. At times, the reading gets a chip weighed downward with her liberal utilize of local dialects and, for the stories taking place in the 17th and 18th centuries, I kept getting a headache weeding through the 'thees' and 'thous.' But that's pocket-size compared to the impact these tales had on me- Summary of my favorites as follows:
Lois the Witch- this is the most disturbing and powerful of the stories- taking place in Salem during witch-hunt fourth dimension, the story follows the principal character as she'southward accused of withcraft in a boondocks that'south teeming with Puritan zealotism and sexual repression, the two things that give rise to the witchcraft hysteria. In a way, I was saddened to realize that this story still resonates today, equally every generation has its ain witch hunts.
The Poor Clare- This story does take a bit more than of a supernatural feel to it- a doppelganger shows up as a consequence of a curse (go to Wikipedia to await up the give-and-take). Interesting stuff. The story had to do more with the theme of sin and salvation, and extreme ascetism as a cure for bad deeds. I can't say I necessarily agree with that remedy, simply hey, Gaskell was a government minister'southward wife.
The Grayness Adult female- Taking identify effectually the French Revolution, the story follows Anna, the German language daughter of a miller, when she marries, as she calls him, "a beautiful and effeminate Frenchman." This i turns into a truly terrifying tale when nosotros discover out the Frenchman'due south secret and his danger to Anna. I recall this tale is one that peculiarly captures wedlock of earlier centuries every bit essential traps for women.
The Doom of the Griffiths- Can a curse peter down through the generations? I took this one as Gaskell's take on the story of Oedipus and various Greek tragedies.
If you can brave through the sometimes heavy-handed language, I recollect this collection of tales is one that must be on everyone's "Classic Lit" bookshelf.
Me gustó muchísimo 'Curioso, de ser cierto' y 'La mujer gris'.
'La burja Lois' también me resultó interesante, pero los demás no me han dado mucho más...
The Old Nurse's Story , about a beautiful ghost child intent on luring a warm-blooded child into the freezing nights on the moors; The Squire's Story , about a admirer with a nebulous past who moves into a grand house and marries a local belle but to reveal a sordid cloak-and-dagger; The Poor Clare well-nigh an old woman who casts a spell which results in a lovely immature woman being followed by her evil and seductive double; Lois the Witch , a terrifying and heartbreaking reprise of the Salem witch trials... out of ix stories in all, vii of them held me captive in this collection, which is quite an excellent average in whatsoever short story drove.
I've read some of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels and been highly impressed with her social commentary and vivid portrayals of form conflicts, but here we see an altogether unlike side of Gaskell's writing, which is the ane she felt more free to testify with an assumed name, under the embrace of anonymity. No longer constricted past propriety, she was able to show a world operating below that thin veneer that Victorian morals dictated and through the looking glass: curses which held their sway over many generations, women with witchy powers, or who were assumed to be witches because of their barely hidden sexuality, men who wreaked truthful evil and cruelty and decease by overreaching their powers in a paternalistic guild, and yet, as well and ever, a woman'due south love and nurturing as her strongest defence confronting many of those evils. Two sides then to Elizabeth Gaskell. 2 sides very much worth discovering. I predict at that place will exist more Eastward.G. in my reading future, and that I volition return to some of my favourites in this story collection too.
Better known now for her novels, such as Mary Barton and Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell became popular in her own fourth dimension for her ghost stories, aided by Charles Dickens, who published her work in his magazine Household Words. The stories in this collection date from 1851 to 1861.
Like many short story collections, some of the stories are stronger than others. I wouldn't say any of them are particularly scary simply in the best of them there is certainly an unsettling air and a sense of the Gothic. Common features include mysterious disappearances, revenge in the class of curses inherited downwards through generations, family rifts, ghostly visitations, heroines in peril and gloomy estate houses or chateaux.
Stories I particularly enjoyed were:
'Lois the Witch' – in which the reader gets a bad feeling for the fortunes of the heroine, Lois, as presently as information technology becomes clear she's headed for 17th century Salem and that not everyone is pleased to meet her.
'The Old Nurse's Story' – in which a ghostly presence roams the freezing Northumberland moors
'The Poor Clare' – in which an evil double, the result of a woman's bitter expletive, haunts future generations
'The Grey Woman' – featuring a full-on Gothic chateau, complete with nighttime passages and sealed off wings, and a husband of dubious moral character
Gothic Tales is a volume on my Classics Social club list and my volume for the Classic Society'southward October Cartel which involved reading a book from your listing that classified as thrilling, a mystery, Gothic or a book or writer that SCARED you (because of its length, information technology'due south topic, it's reputation etc).
This is another bosom for my Gothic square read. I just ended up DNFing information technology at 22 percent. I really didn't desire to torture myself with continuing to read this.
The introduction was really long and I skipped over it. These were the stories that I finished and read.
"Disappearances" (3 stars)-It starts off listing random disappearances of men in the expanse. And I idea there would be a big pay off in the end. Instead information technology just came to an abrupt terminate.
"The One-time Nurse'due south Story (4 stars)-I idea it was interesting reading about how an old woman did what she could at a younger age to keep her young charge prophylactic from phantoms that haunted the grounds. The backstory to these phantoms was interesting and I still wonder though at the new lord of the house who didn't seem put out past the hauntings.
"The Poor Clare" (ane star)- I did not understand this one at all. I finally just gave up after re-reading information technology through twice.
I tried to get-go the next story and found myself yawning and decided to just finish reading. I am annoyed I paid $9.99 for this kindle version since this is rife with typos all over that accept "ibid = page XX" and whatever folio number was in in that location. The book also had footnotes all through information technology, and when you would click on one information technology did non take you back to where you left off in the book. Every single time I hit the back arrow I would get kicked out of the book. So my frustration with the typos, the footnotes littered on every sentence but made me finally decide to throw in the white towel of surrender.
A lot of stories that were alright with some highlights. I retrieve my problem lies not every bit much with this collection than with gothic tales and former horror stories in general. The writing is quite typical of other stories of this genre I've read before, it feels sometime and dreary, except for Dissappearences and Curious if true, which had some more sense of humour in it. The plots are more like urban legends than belivable stories with real people in it. There is a strong focus on creating temper, though, which Gaskell nailed and I always felt transported to another time and place.
These particular stories are well written and certainly had their moments. Lois the Witch was the one story that I establish to be really powerful and I felt with the protagonist all the fashion through. Other highlights were The Crooked Branch, which I had read before, and, surprisingly, Dissappearences.
Muchas frases inmejorables. Hay un pulso literario magnífico en estos relatos. Son elegantes, precisos, tan pulcros como macabros. Es como si ocurriera lo oscuro insondable, el mal, a plena luz del mediodía. El gótico en esa tensión es magnífico. ¿El mal dónde está? Afuera, menos mal que entonces no soy yo parte del mal. Pero afuera, ¿dónde exactamente? Por todas partes, en las cosas, en lugares, no hay límites claros. Pero eso no puede ser. Entonces no es cierto que esté solamente allá afuera. Del miedo al horror.
Mixed batch of stories equally almost always is the case with short story collections for me. I love Gaskell's writing mode but some of these stories aren't as strong every bit hoped. My favourites from the collection are probably Lois the Witch and The Old Nurse's Story - both of them rereads. All of the stories have the deliciously gothic atmosphere and some of the stories managed to be quite spooky for my liking. All in all, I enjoyed the drove just none of these shine like Gaskell'south novels. It would be an excellent place to commencement with Gaskell, though, if you don't want to commit to her longer works get-go.
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Source: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/182385.Gothic_Tales
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