The Nature of Compassionate Orientalism in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Cranford

At first glance, Elizabeth Gaskell’s pastoral Cranford hardly seems to be a place where the ambiguities and contradictions of nineteenth-century British imperialism would reveal themselves. Spiritually—if not geographically—far removed from the centers of colonial trade such as London, Liverpool, and Manchester, Gaskell’s quaint “Amazon” village occupies a fictional space that stubbornly clings to a bygone era (1). No matter how cataclysmic the changes might be that rattle the outside world, Cranford’s eccentric spinsters with their “own individual small economies,” so it seems, would scarcely take any notice of them (40). On second glance, however, Cranford is a backwater under siege. Though never directly represented in Gaskell’s novel of manners, the outside world appears as an enormous field of force affecting every aspect of Cranfordian life. New modes of industrial production, mass transportation, global communication, and social organization exert pressures against which the aged townspeople must define themselves.

If Cranford, as Rae Rosenthal argues, is as much a testimonial to the fading feminine values of genuine kindness, mutual sharing, and community as it is an indictment against the patriarchic ideologies of nineteenth-century capitalism, we might take a closer look at how the Amazon community positions itself vis-à-vis British imperialism and Orientalism (74). After all, references to India, its charms, its people, and its goods abound in the novel. Just as the strong hand of modernization has connected Cranford to the railroad, which, in a highly symbolic manner, rolls over the motherly Captain Brown, so the long arm of imperialism has touched each and every household in the village.

Cranford’s absent men, the narrator relates on the first page, are “accounted for by being with [their] regiment[s], [their] chip[s], or closely engaged in business” (1). Though a deliberate exaggeration, Gaskell’s opening statement that “Cranford is in possession of the Amazons” highlights the growing evisceration of English village life (1). As the Whig historian G. M. Trevelyan explains, nineteenth-century enclosure, industrial urbanization, and colonial expansion, prompted a mass exodus of villagers, who sought their blessings in the big cities or farther away in the British colonies (454–55).

But the new national and imperial geographies also affected those who remained behind. Even in isolated Cranford, the elderly women sip tea out of “delicate china,” adorn themselves with “white ‘Paduasoys’” and “Muslim gowns,” dream of “sea-green turbans,” and rejoice in the fantastic tricks of “Signor Brunoni, Magician to the King of Delhi, the Rajah of Oude, and the Great Lama of Tibet” (8, 43, 158). Occasional stopovers by “Wombwell’s lions,” “languid … East Indians,” “Hindoo body-servants,” and “the Grand Turk” conjure up vague images of distant places and strange peoples among the villagers (81, 28, 87). Though ostensibly a domestic novel of manners, Gaskell’s Cranford leaves no doubt that the town, its inhabitants, and its traditions cannot be understood as somehow exterior to the Empire. Serialized from 1851 to 1853 in Charles Dickens’ Household Words, Gaskell’s Cranford, which originally appeared alongside Orientalist essays such as “Pearls from the East,” unmistakably partakes in the development of imperial discourses for domestic consumption (Recchio 51).

Jeffrey Cass has shown how by “domesticating the Oriental Other,” the women of Cranford succumb “to the norms of the marketplace that have subtly but persistently penetrated their everyday lives” (428). The women’s naïve embrace of exotic goods, tales, and entertainment, Cass explains, leads to a “cultural hybridization” which heralds the “inevitable disintegration of Cranford’s traditions” (428). Cass’s observation calls attention to the economic tensions modern imperialism has created within the society of matriarchs. For not only are the Cranford ladies naïve consumers of Oriental goods such as silk gowns and tea, but their very livelihoods also depend upon overseas commerce and market expansion. As Borislav Knezevic points out, “capital previously accumulated and converted into stock is the basis of the Cranford way of life” (410). Miss Pole’s misgivings concerning “Peruvian bonds,” the “Share Market,” and “joint stock banks” bespeak the uneasy awareness that Cranford is at the mercy of a global...