Delightful! This is going on my favorites shelf.

Beautifully observed and gently funny, Cranford is less a novel than it is a series of vignettes, drawn from the lives of a small group of genteelly impoverished older women in a small town in mid-nineteenth century England. Gaskell is quite gentle with her characters, I think perhaps because she was aware of how limited a life she was creating for themwith all the social restrictions placed on unmarried women, with just enough social status to be unable to work to support themselves, but with not enough income to keep themselves independentand so while they have to face trials, Miss Matty and Co. have the strength and the resilience to face them.

Written as a series of vignettes about living in a small English town, Elizabeth Gaskell isn't bothered about any plot with Cranford (which was originally edited by Charles Dickens), she simply focuses on a small group of ladies and their adventures (or lack of), as they meander, yawn, and gossip their way through mid 19th century life. While it may not be the sort of book to keep you up half the night with clammy hands, it's pleasant and good old-fashioned nature is where it's power lies, which will have you reaching for the tea pot, rather than that bottle of wine.Harkening back to a relaxed and simpler time, before the mad stampede of boxing day sales, life crawled along like a snail on sedatives for the locals, they concern themselves less with who's sleeping with whom, or, does my bum look big in this? and just amuse themselves with their knitting of nice fluffy cardigans, charitable acts that were the norm, invitations for sunday tea and cake, polite card games that didn't result in drunkenness or violence, and trying on the lastest bonnet. A life that is unfathomable to the rapidly-shrinking world of today, which makes this all the more special for its portrayal of this historical era, a world far away from all the buzzing and ticking of modern day appliances.These are less like neatly organised narratives, and read more like the stories one would casually include in a letter to a friend. It isn't really a novel in the true sense, although characters like Miss matty or Miss Pole could quite easily have been plucked out of a number of other older British novels. Cranford, based on Knutsford, Cheshire, is a place where the gardens are full of flowers rather than weeds, and you can almost smell the scent of honey blossom blowing in the breeze.Put it this way, I would sooner be here than south central Los Angeles. Parts of Cranford are wonderfully funny, but it is also bathed in a poignant dream-like mood, that encapsulates the spirit of a by-gone era. From the landed gentry, professional men and the genteel widows, to the respectable poor and those on the brink of crime, the local hierarchy are vividly bought to life under the watchful eye of Gaskell, who writes with delight. There are a couple of main themes to touch on. Money worries, and the limitations and lack of options for women, especially unmarried women, at the time. Regardless of differing opinion, the fact of the matter is that single women over a certain age without family money or male companionship, found themselves in the awful situation of having very few socially acceptable options to provide an income upon which they could live. The ladies of Cranford are a resilient bunch, full of warmth and dignity, and have each other if the chips are down. The way that the women all banded together even though they were a mix of classes, purely because they all wanted to live the same way was so precious.I admit, I enjoyed this more than what I expected, and it was nice to return to a time when people didn't rely on gizmos and gadgets to function properly.

I love Gaskell's writing. And this book was no exception, even though i personally just never love short story collections, books that are made up of letters or anything that is not written in novel format from start to finish. Some of those stories about this quaint little village of Cranford were nice, some were also really boring -as it always happens with me and this type of book. I do think its a really nice classic if you want a every day life kind of view into the specific time, into a little town that was a good way away from anything resembling a big city. It defiantly gives that. I think i would have enjoyed this book a little more if it would have been actually told from a point of view of a person that lived in Cranford all the time, and would have given more details and talk about what happens every day instead of having the story be told from someone that is visiting specific people. Its a nice book, defiantly not one of my personal favourite Gaskell's but also not a bad book in itself at all. Just slightly boring or over the top gossip-y feeling at times.

I'll admit I'm no procurer of Victorian liteary novels, but I've always wanted to dabble in the works of Elizabeth Gaskell, the woman who had the honor of writing The Life of Charlotte Brontë. Cranford is said to be slightly humorous, with a unique take on the lives of women during that era. A bit humorous, partly due to the preposterousness of the attitudes surrounding small town etiquette, yes, but I wouldn't call it humorous in the general sense. And yet these characters are electrifying and their everyday stories absorbing, which made me curious about the backdrop of Gaskell's creativity, where she produced such stories, and it led me to this beautiful picture of her home:Gaskell House, Plymouth Grove, Manchester (cc Creative Commons Patyo1994)Cranford is a village of people who, at the risk of seeming pretentious, choose to ignore anything uncomfortable, anything that suggests lack. For example, the person who cannot afford a maid would hire someone temporarily when entertaining friends and pretend as if the maid is a permanent fixture, even though she is aware that everyone knows this is false. No one speaks of another's wants, so imagine the disdain when a newcomer, Captain Brown, arrives and cannot stop speaking simply and openly about his poverty. These small exchanges, highlighted by Gaskell's stylized prose, do add mirth to this ceremonial narrative.If we walked to or from a party, it was because the night was so fine, or the air so refreshing, not because sedan chairs were expensive. If we wore prints,instead of summer silks, it was because we preferred a washing material; and so on till we blinded ourselves to the vulgar fact that we were, all of us, people of very moderate means.Each chapter proceeds in a short story fashion, with a narrator who you never really get to properly meet, but one who has a grasp on the village's idiosyncrasies. The characters are mostly unmarried women who are older and more reflective, so the reader is given stories from those pivotal moments of their lives, thus one gets an idea of the cultural dynamic. The atmospheric vibe is pensive, as each new chapter is an evolution of Cranford, a tilt to the village's personality and character. The contemporary comparative narrative that comes to mind is Olive Kitteridge, although I'll admit that no one character is really as dominant and memorable as good ole Olive. And as I write this, I'm already considering how Gaskell's other novels, like Mary Barton or Ruth for example, would compare to this for me, since I do plan on sampling at least another one of her works.