Browsing by Subject "Elizabeth Gaskell"

In this thesis I look at the evolution of portrayals of English working-class women, more specifically in the north of England by close readings of three novels. First, I discuss the working-class female characters in Elisabeth Gaskell’s North and South from 1854. I then continue the analysis with Miss Nobody by Ethel Carnie from 1913, widely considered the first published woman of a working-class background. Lastly, I look at a more recent novel, Saltwater by Jessica Andrews from 2019. Across different time periods, these novels deal with similar issues of regional, gender and class divide, and provide narratives of working-class women which have been and still are underrepresented in literature. I discuss the novels through three different themes: gender, class, and region, which have been separated into subchapters for clarity of structure. Intersectionality offers the theoretical background for analyzing the three overlapping factors of identity. The historical outlook describes the developments, which have played a part in creating and maintaining these categories of class, gender, and regional divide in England. In this thesis, I show how these novels portray the development of the regional divide and chance of shifting class identity as women, and how despite changes over time in society, there are many similarities in their experiences as northern working-class women. The novels reflect changes in society whereby women gradually become more independent through employment opportunities, and social mobility becomes an achievable goal. Nonetheless, similar issues such as sexual harassment are found in all three narratives. Regionally, North and South and Miss Nobody represent the north of England in its industrial era, whereas Saltwater represents the post-industrial north reeling from the loss of industry. Despite the vast period these novels represent, all of them provide similar descriptions of ‘it’s grim up north’ simultaneously describing but also maintaining a stereotypical image of the northern areas of England. The Covid-19 pandemic revealed how deeply ingrained class structures and regional inequalities still are especially for women in England, demonstrating how important awareness and further research of these issues is.