“We none of us spoke of money”: Economy in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Novels

Economy figures in its many aspects throughout Gaskell’s fiction, both within and beyond the mere “cash nexus” that connotes the relations between employers and laboring classes [Mulvihill]. The characters’ lives unfold against the background of industrialism, showing how private experience and historical forces may intersect. In her Manchester novels, Mary Barton (1848) and North and South (1855), the author focuses on the fluctuations in the economy of the 1830s and 1840s, which resulted in poverty and starvation among the workers [Matus]. The absence of money to buy basic essentials and the preoccupation with the cost of living lie at the root of social divisions, which Gaskell proposes to heal by discovering grounds for understanding and sympathy between the classes. Making her characters act in dramatic circumstances, as protests, riots and strikes, the author records the effects of social transformations on the individual. Cranford (1853) is seemingly far from the public theme: the genteel women who inhabit the village try to preserve traditions against the pressures of progress. Nevertheless, they witness the developments that affect landscape and economy – the construction of the railway is an emblematic example – and they experience the incursion of commerce into their enclosed world. Although they ignore and despise money, their life is paradoxically tied to pecuniary considerations, as the bankruptcy episode shows. Gaskell is aware of living in an age of transition, and the ending of North and South confirms the possibility of reaching a compromise between financial interests and ethical values: the protagonist, Margaret Hale, inherits property and invests her capital in a business providing new jobs. Hence, the analysis of the novels reveals the author’s intention to reconcile the poles of domestic and commercial culture.