Contingency and Vocation in Cranford

This essay argues that Cranford’s unique sketch-like form and focus on single women are related: as Elizabeth Gaskell transforms her sketch “Our Society at Cranford” into a novella, she creates a plot for the emerging heroine, Miss Matty, particularly in the installment which includes the Town and Country Bank failure and its repercussions. Gaskell uses the concept of “elegant economy” to redefine singleness as having its own plot—setting a precedent for other single heroines and expanding the scope of action for nineteenth-century single women outside of literature as well. Read as a deliberate refashioning of the plotless old maid into a purposeful single woman, Cranford can be understood as a response to the results of the 1851 Census and one of the inaugural fictions to grant plots to single women.