SOURCE: “Structure and Movement in Cranford,” in Nineteenth Century Fiction, Vol. 23, No. 2, September, 1968, pp. 161-76.

In the following essay, Wolfe focuses on Miss Matty as the heroine of Cranford and a figure illustrating the novel's thematic progression from an initial female rejection of men to their gradual acceptance.

The problem of Cranford's structure is central to an understanding of the book. Until Martin Dodsworth's article “Women Without Men at Cranford”¹ appeared, critics generally believed that it consisted of a number of loosely-connected incidents with no underlying progression lending direction to the plot. Dodsworth, however, finds a central unity in Cranford's “pattern of guilt and expiation.” He sees the novel as divided into two sections of unequal length. The first part deals with Captain Brown's invasion of Cranford's wholly feminine society and his accidental death, symbolizing feminine rejection of the male's role in the community. The second...