SOURCE: "Two Nations and Separate Spheres: Class and Gender in Elizabeth Gaskell's Work," in Elizabeth Gaskell, Indiana University Press, 1987, pp. 45-67.

In the following excerpt, Stoneman investigates the means by which Gaskell blurs traditional gender roles across class divisions and criticizes patriarchal authority in her short fiction.

The society in which Elizabeth Gaskell lived and wrote was intersected horizontally by class and vertically by gender divisions. Critics have created a divided image of her work by focusing on one or other of these axes—'industrial' or 'domestic'—and we can simply, but radically, revise this view by considering their interaction. I want to begin by drawing examples from Elizabeth Gaskell's lesser-known fiction, in which the issues are often very clear, but which critics have less completely labelled and categorised; this discussion will then serve as a context for a rereading of the familiar works in subsequent chapters.

What...