Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell

After reading North and South, I decided I'd like to read more of Elizabeth Gaskell's works.  I found Cranford at a church sale in early June, right after I finished reading Emma.  And while it wasn't the most riveting book, it presented a lot of interesting themes and sweet old lady characters.

Cranford was originally published as a series of eight sketches in the weekly journal Household Words (which was edited by a certain Mr. Dickens).  The sketches were later integrated into book form, but together comprise a series of amusing stories rather than a coherent plot.  Through the narration of Mary Smith, a frequent visitor to Cranford, we meet the Miss Jenkynses, Miss Pole, Mrs. Jamieson, and many other inhabitants of the female-dominated town.  While the stories are set primarily in the 1830s and 40s, Cranford’s inhabitants seem to be stuck in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries.  Their old-fashioned customs, representative of old aristocratic England, conflict with the increasingly global and industrial world.  All in all, the satire is pretty funny – I caught myself laughing many a time – but in a character-driven way rather than a plot-driven way.