Elizabeth Gaskell’s Smaller Stories by Carolyn Lambert (review)

In Elizabeth Gaskell’s Smaller Stories, Carolyn Lambert addresses what she sees as a gap in scholarship on Elizabeth Gaskell, arguing that short fiction is an important aspect of the writer’s overall achievement and social critique. Lambert contextualizes the stories and novellas not only in the periodicals in which they first appeared, but also in Gaskell’s Unitarian faith, ultimately painting a picture of short fiction as a generically more flexible form that nevertheless promoted the same values of human sympathy and “toleration for difference” that can be seen in Gaskell’s novels (154). Though the topic is not nearly so untouched as Lambert describes it in the opening pages, her study does contain interesting analysis of many stories and valuable contextual material on specific points.

The first chapter is an extended discussion of the state of periodical publishing, and Lambert argues that short fiction provided more freedom for formal experimentation and ideological subversion, precisely because short fiction was often treated as lower-value filler to make out issues of periodicals. That meant that “[w]omen writers of short fiction were less constrained, less observed, their texts less commented on. They were therefore freer to create stories untrammeled by gendered expectations, or indeed by expectations of form and structure” (3). Gaskell used that freedom to “infiltrate the male-dominated world of the published author” but, in an age in which journals reflected consistent political and ideological positions, chose to publish in periodicals that matched her own Unitarian values (5). Lambert retells the frequently addressed story of Gaskell’s relationship with Charles Dickens, here using the metaphor of coverture; in a new twist, Lambert juxtaposes that story with Gaskell’s commitment to the Transcendentalist branch of Unitarian thought.

In later chapters, these Unitarian ideas develop, and Lambert examines specific works of fiction grouped thematically rather than chronologically. Chapter 2 discusses the Gothic as a subversive mode that allows Gaskell to comment on psychological disorders and violence against women. The analysis in this chapter and others relies on the Unitarian concept of associationist psychology, though this is not fully explained until chapter 4. The analysis covers many stories, most notably “The Grey Woman” (1861) and “The Poor Clare” (1856). Chapter 3 groups fairy tales and witchcraft in a somewhat forced pairing. Lambert’s discussion of Gaskell’s admiration of the French conteuses of the late seventeenth century provides an original reading of “Curious, if True” (1860) as an adaptation of “The White Cat” (1697) by Madame d’Aulnoy. Chapter 4, although titled “Narrating Sexuality,” is really more about father/son relationships and violence. Lengthy discussions of Cranford (1851–53) and “The Doom of the Griffiths” (1858) can only be logically seen as part of the same chapter if one emphasizes the psychological instability exhibited by sons in these stories. Aside from Peter Jenkyns’s cross-dressing, Lambert does not actually treat sexuality here in the broader sense one might expect from a scholarly work of the 2020s. She does see the lesson of Cranford as the “acceptance of diversity” in how masculinity is performed, but this is at best a very muted reference to gender identity, and the discussion of gender in this and other chapters is not theoretically rigorous (119). Chapter 5 groups a number of stories under the catch-all rubric of narrative experimentation, including frame stories, interpolated stories, and time jumps. The chapter packs in discussion of six primary texts, most notably My Lady Ludlow (1858) and the later framing tale that surrounds it, Round the Sofa (1859). The discussion of My Lady Ludlow finishes chapter 5 on the optimistic note that its ending shows a possible world “in which society is completely re-shaped and the impossible becomes possible,” national and social class boundaries being overcome (160). The brief conclusion in chapter 6 sustains this mood.

Throughout, Lambert aligns her readings of Gaskell’s shorter fiction with commonly accepted ideas about the author’s novels and rarely...