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

In the following essay, Stoneman argues that Gaskell's writing, rather than reflecting the bifurcation of society along class and gender lines, tends to blur the sharpness of these distinctions through role reversal, the behavior of domestic servants, and the description of the "inhuman possibilities of authority. "

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...