Free Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

Unitarians debated the nature of Jesus, the notion of original sin, and—most importandy—the doctrine of atonement. That is, Jesus was considered a teacher and a moral example, rather than a divine entity. This was, as might be expected, controversial, with many believers denying that Unitarians were Christians, for their beliefs, including their emphasis on reason and freedom of thought, seemed to fly in the face of the primacy of faith (Uglow, pp. 5-7). This account of the faith to which Gaskell adhered (although necessarily abridged) might give us a biographical answer to the absence of organized religion in Wives and Daughters: The Church of England held no sway in Gaskell’s life, and so it would have little sway in her novel. However, religion might be located in another place in the novel. Rather than in the parish church, to which the narrative does not go, the impetus of religion is felt in the presentation of Molly’s character. The way in which Molly examines her actions and feelings as an individual in light of deeply felt moral principles might be understood as inspired by Unitarian principles and values; hence the absence of religion in the novel is perhaps better understood as an absence of the Established Church.
    Perhaps most niggling of all is the complaint that the novel is missing a conclusion, a complaint the reader will nevertheless feel when coming to the end of Wives and Daughters. Elizabeth Gaskell died before she was able to lend her pen to the ending, and while readers can have no doubt of the content of the ending, it is missed nonetheless. The novel ends thus on an odd and unintended note, but one that, owing to the author’s sudden death, takes on added significance. The novel’s last words belong to Mrs. Gibson:
    “You might have allowed me to beg for a new gown for you, Molly, when you knew how much I admired that figured silk at Brown’s the other day. And now, of course, I can’t be so selfish as to get it for myself, and you to have nothing.You should learn to understand the wishes of other people. Still, on the whole, you are a dear, sweet girl, and I only wish—well, I know what I wish; only dear papa does not like it to be talked about. And now cover me up close, and let me go to sleep, and dream about my dear Cynthia and my new shawl!” (pp. 643-644).
    The unintentional humor behind the ever-self-centered philosophy of Mrs. Gibson is heightened here, now that the reader knows that Molly will soon be securely kept from daily exposure to it. That which “dear papa” does not “talk about” is the future that Molly is then contemplating, and that the reader, denied the author’s vision, must necessarily contemplate as well. The urge to fill in the blanks, so to speak, is a general impulse of the reader, and one that Frederick Greenwood explicitly understood when he wrote his “Concluding Remarks: by the Editor of the Cornhill Magazine.” The impulse is one that its filmic adaptors felt as well. The BBC film, otherwise quite true to the narrative, concludes on a note that is extra-textual: Molly stands in breeches, and looks out over a sublime African vista with Roger Hamley at her side. Whether one wishes to applaud or scold the costume designer for the breeches and the director for the interpretation behind the final scene, the reader of Wives and Daughters will understand the impulse and, more to the point, celebrate the delights of a novel that wanted to be nothing more, and perhaps nothing less, than “an every-day story.”
     
    Amy M. King is Assistant Professor of English at St. John’s University in New York City and is the author of Bloom: The Botanical Vernacular in the English Novel (Oxford University Press, 2003) as well as articles on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British literature and culture. King received her doctorate in English and American Literature and Language from Harvard University in 1998. She also wrote the Introduction and Notes for the