Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell née Stevenson (1810-1865), often referred to simply as Mrs. Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. She is perhaps best known for her biography of Charlotte Brontë.

"This book re-examines the Victorian spiritual crisis from the perspective of the period's women writers, exploring the spiritual dimension in their lives and narratives. The introduction considers the relationship between sacred and secular canons and the limited access women have had to both. In the following chapters, case studies of the lives and selected texts of Florence Nightingale, Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, and George Eliot provide an in-depth analysis of the relationship between female spiritual crises and diverse narrative strategies that reappropriate the conservative power associated with religious symbolism for a radical revisioning of women's social subjection." "By analyzing the neglected spiritual crises these women experienced, their discourse, and that produced by other Victorian women, this study reveals a more complex, problematic, and polemical dialogue during the period than has previously been argued."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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When Patsy Stoneman's Elizabeth Gaskell first appeared in 1987, it was welcomed as 'the first major full-length feminist study of Gaskell' (Victorian Studies). Though long out of print, it is still widely used and cited in university contexts, making it certain that this augmented edition will be equally welcome. This pioneering study, described as 'a model of feminist criticism' (The Year's Work in English Studies), reveals Gaskell as an important social analyst who deliberately challenged the Victorian disjunction between public and private ethical values, maintaining a steady resistance to aggressive authority and advocating female friendship, rational motherhood and the power of speech as forces for social change. Since 1987, Gaskell's work has risen from minor to major status. Despite a wealth of subsequent gender-oriented criticism, however, Stoneman's 'combination of psychoanalytic and political analysis', which Choice found 'thought-provoking' in 1987, remains challenging in its use of modern motherhood theories. This new edition, therefore, presents the original text unchanged (except for bibliographical updating) together with a new critical Afterword. Patsy Stoneman's extensive new Afterword offers detailed evaluation of all the Gaskell criticism published between 1985 and 2004 which has a bearing on her subject, and thus provides both a wide-ranging debate on the social implications of motherhood, and an invaluable survey of Gaskell criticism over the last twenty years. This edition, with an updated bibliography and index, will bring a well-known classic to a new audience, while also offering a uniquely comprehensive overview of current Gaskell studies. Book jacket.