Wives and Daughters (1865)

2021 review: No change to my previous opinion.

2013 review:
This review is specifically for the audiobook - see the Kindle edition for my comments on Gaskell's novel.

Nadia May does a marvelous job narrating this Victorian novel & with one exception, I loved the voices she used for the various characters. The one exception was Lady Cumnor, whose voice had a slight speech impediment (sort of like Elmer Fudd) - May did it excellently but I just couldn't get Elmer Fudd out of my head every time Lady Cumnor appeared! ( )

Could be spoilers.

I was disappointed. The lack of the ending was frustrating, but that's a different matter. The book is weirdly repetitious & I wondered if it would have been re-edited between serialization and final publication. The oddest thing was the recurring reference to Hamlet's line about time being out of joint. While maybe the characters sat around and read Shakespeare but it wasn't really talked about. And the tedium of the stupid sort-of-evil stepmother and the father who didn't take action on behalf of his daughter. On and on and on. I remember really liking North and South, but I don't think I will read any more books by Gaskell.

This would get five stars if it were complete. As it is, to read almost 700 pages and miss out on the climax is worth losing at least a star. If only it had an ending like [b:North and South|156538|North and South|Elizabeth Gaskell|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1349633381l/156538._SY75_.jpg|1016482]! ( )

Molly Gibson has been raised by her widowed father, the town doctor. As she approaches the end of her teens, he feels he needs to remarry to have a woman around to help his daughter navigate this coming of age. Enter Mrs Kirkpatrick, aka “Clare”, the governess at The Towers. She has a daughter, Cynthia, of about the same age as Molly. The two of them bond as they navigate their new situation and gain maturity.

I ended up really enjoying this. It was a pleasure to read a classic novel centred on women, and in this one particularly the cast of characters came to life. I adored Molly for her bookishness and her desire to do right and act on moral principles, rather than what society deemed proper. Mrs Gibson as she became was incredibly annoying but well drawn in that annoyingness. And as the concluding remarks to my edition stated, the portrayal of Osborne and Roger Hamley was very well done indeed. They were brothers highly different in temperament, but still believable as brothers.

I was reading this on Serial Reader (which sends daily “issues” of public-domain books) and ended up binge-reading the last 15 issues so that I could find out what happened at the end. And then I found out that Gaskell had died before she could finish the book! Nooooooo! The concluding remarks in my edition gave a brief summary of where she’d intended to go with the story, so that was pretty good, but what a shame that she died before she could just finish that off!

This book is highly recommended if you want to read a classic with female protagonists. I really felt like this story was about *people*, not just those of a particular gender. I may have to re-read this someday, but in the meantime I’m definitely going through more of Gaskell’s work. ( )

Your standard Victorian romance novel: often-overlooked very-virtuous beautiful girl eventually lands the equally-virtuous husband of her dreams. The characterizations are beautiful; Hyacinth is possibly the best depiction of a narcissistic mother I've ever seen anywhere.

Like all Victorian romance novels, it is holy-cow loooooooooooooooooong. Much skimming was involved. But quite lovely. ( )