Much as I like Cranford...
Posted by Helen on November 30, 1997 at 16:45:25:
In response to may I suggest....?, written by Caroline on November 28, 1997 at 14:28:25
... If we're looking for Gaskell's most Austenish novel, I recommend Wives and Daughters, which is the most "like Austen without being merely a pastiche" book I've read... or alternatively North and South (Jane Austen heroine meets the industrial revolution...)
Both of these do feature big romances (one of my friends has a serious crush on John Thornton)
] 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.
There is a very, very delicate quiet little love story somewhere in it, though... it would bring a tear to your eye...
] 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.)
Lucky you, to have such freedom of judgement! ;-)
yours constrained by the academic juggernaut,
Helen
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