![]() ![]() She has just been orphaned and her indifferent guardian finds her the position Ruth is barely 15 years old. The story opens with Ruth having recently taken up a post as a seamstress in a Victorian sweatshop. Ruth does the same (and the results are not much better), though for all her atoning for her “sin” she is an incredibly, painfully innocent heroine. I do know the general plot, though, and have picked up the idea that Tess is doomed because she has sex outside of marriage. I’ve never read Tess I tread very lightly with Hardy after my traumatic experience with Jude the Obscure. I will start by saying that I somehow stumbled across this being described as a bit of an antidote to Hardy’s Tess of D’Urbervilles. She reminds me of Anne Bronte, the least flashy of the Bronte sisters IMO (and of course Gaskell was famously a friend and biographer of Charlotte Bronte).Īnyway, Ruth. I don’t know why I haven’t read everything Gaskell’s written already since I really do enjoy her realistic and emotionally sensitive writing. Still, it was a number of years before I tried another of her works I read Mary Barton last year. ![]() I eventually read both books and liked them each quite well. I also watched and adored the PBS adaption of Cranford, a very different kind of story. ![]() I was first turned onto Gaskell’s work not in print but by the miniseries version of North and South, which I love. ![]()
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