may I suggest....?
Posted by Caroline on November 28, 1997 at 14:28:25:
In response to Future reads: I need your views, written by Kate on November 27, 1997 at 10:37:10
...that sometime in the next year we read "Cranford" by Elizabeth Gaskell?
Reasons to read it:
1.Elizabeth Gaskell was the wife of a minister, a penfriend of Charlotte Bronte and this book is about growing up in the English Midlands in about 1817. As such it is historically and geographically "in between" Bronte and Jane Austen. It also has a bit of both in its style.
2. It is at times hilariously funny, very touching and paints a very clear and easy to understand picture of life in a small provincial town at that time.
3.It has a happy ending, just for Nora.
4. I know that there are a few people here who would like to discuss it.
5. As a "classic" it should be easy to find.(Sorry, I didn't check if Bookserve have it :-( )
Reasons not to read it:
1.It's not a big, passionate love story. Or even a quiet little love story. The heroine, if she may be called that, is an old lady in a situation not unlike Miss Bates's.
2.Elizabeth Gaskell wasn't Black. And I do think Amy has a point.
3. It isn't considered to be Gaskell's best work (well, I think it is, but then I'm not a professor of literature and I don't make my living writing criticisms of dead women's work.)
Just a thought.
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