23 Elizabeth Gaskell : Wives and Daughters

Dr. Neeru Tandon

    22.0 The Upshot

22.1: Introduction

22.2 Her Fictional oeuvre

22.3: Elizabeth Gaskell as a Novelist

22.4 Wives and Daughters: Introduction

22.5: Wives and Daughters: Story

22.6: Plot Constructions

22.7: Places mentioned in the novel

22.8: Major Characters

22.9 : Beginning and the Ending of the Novel

22.10:Story of mature Love

22.11: Narrator‟s point of view

22.12: Social Images: “Cheese is only fit for the kitchen”

22.0 The Upshot: The present module discusses Elizabeth Gaskell and her famous novel Wives and Daughters. Introduction tells readers about Elizabeth Gaskell‟s biography and her works. The content further elaborates Gaskell as a novelist. Reader will come to know its story line, Chapter wise summary, Characters, Plot construction, her narrative style and main points about the novel and the novelist. Some interesting facts about Gaskell and her times make the study interesting. Multiple choice questions and long questions are there to help the learner in knowing the novelist and the novel. Some important quotes from the novels are inscribed to help the scholars in understanding the ethos of the prescribed work. It is further supported by Bibliography and Webliography.

22.1:    Introduction: Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell,

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell, née Stevenson, often referred to simply as Mrs Gaskell, was an English novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era. (Wikipedia)

Born: September 29, 1810, Chelsea, London, United Kingdom

Died: November 12, 1865, Holybourne, United Kingdom

Spouse: William Gaskell (m. 1832)

Movies: The Followers, Cousin Phillis The Sins of a Father

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell is one of the most critically hailed novelists of Victorian literature. She was born on September 29th, 1810 to William Stevenson, a Unitarian minister, and Elizabeth Stevenson. She was also noted for biography of her friend Charlotte Bronte. After her mother’s death in 1811, Gaskell lived with her aunt, Hannah Lumb, in Knutsford, Cheshire (also known as “Gaskell Avenue”). Hollingford in Wives and Daughters and Cranford in Cranford was modeled on this place Knutsford.

By 1832, Elizabeth was the assistant minister at Cross Street Unitarian Chapel and married William Gaskell, also a Unitarian minister. They moved to Manchester, an industrial hub known as bustling city with a vibrant intellectual and cultural center „, where Gaskell helped her husband in his mission of helping poor and deprived at the church. Elizabeth was well versed in– the classics, arts, decorum and manners, and writing. Her brother provided her with travel literature and stories of the sea.

Elizabeth had four daughters who survived to adulthood out of seven children. She was happily busy with motherhood and the obligations of being a minister’s wife. However after the death of her only son William from scarlet fever she was a changed person and felt more strongly her sense of identity with the poor and her desire to express their hardship. Gaskell tried to assuage her grief by taking up writing.

Her first published work was the short essay “Clopton Hall,” which appeared in William Howitt’s Visits to Remarkable Places (1840). She completed her first novel, Mary Barton, in 1848 and published it anonymously. The Gaskells moved to a villa in Plymouth Grove in 1850; which is where Elizabeth wrote the rest of her literary works. She participated in a vibrant literary and social circle, which included at one time or another Dickens, Charles Eliot Norton, Charlotte Bronte, William and Mary Howitt, and John Ruskin. Charles Dickens called her his „dear Scheherazade‟. [(shuh-hair-uh- zahd)] The sultan’s wife who narrates the Arabian Nights.

22.2 Her Fictional oeuvre

Her first novel, Mary Barton, published namelessly and winning the praise of Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle, told the story of a working-class family in which the father, John Barton, due to hatred carries out a vengeful murder at the directive of his trade union. The novel was a immediate success, Dickens invited her to contribute to his magazine, Household Words, where her next major work, Cranford, was serialized beginning in 1851. North and South was published in 1854. Charlotte Brontë was her big fan. When Brontë died in 1855, her father, Patrick Brontë, asked Gaskell to write her biography. The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857) was written with admiration and covered a huge quantity of firsthand material with great narrative skill.

Among her later works, Sylvia’s Lovers (1863), is notable for its impact of the Napoleonic Wars upon simple people, her last and longest work, Wives and Daughters (1864-66), concerned the interlocking fortunes of two or three country families and is considered by many her finest work. Gaskell died before it was finished. On 12 November 1865, during a routine visit to Hampshire, Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving Wives and Daughters unfinished. It was published in book form in 1866. A memorial was dedicated to Gaskell in 2010 at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

In November 1865, when reporting her death, The Athenaeum rated Gaskell as “if not the most popular, with small question, the most powerful and finished female novelist of an epoch singularly rich in female novelists.”

Gaskell left behind a rich literary legacy, including six novels, several short stories and non-fictional pieces, as well as the first biography of Charlotte Bronte. Her novels are cherished for their vivid characters and arresting portrayals of Victorian life. Gaskell was a vibrant new voice to the genre of industrial fiction. Her work helped reawaken Victorian society into aiding humanitarian causes. Her shorter fiction, stories and essays, for example, are beginning to attract more and more critical interest and critical essays on Gaskell„s oeuvre engage in a variety of topics such as class, gender, and culture, theories of evolution, publishing, community making and breaking, genre, imperialism and colonialism.

22.3: Elizabeth Gaskell as a Novelist:

Victorian author, biographer, humanitarian, social campaigner, wife and mother, Elizabeth Gaskell‟s books explore timeless themes of human dignity, suffering and hope. Her pioneering independent spirit and tireless energy presented her as an absolute modern woman. In her introduction to The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell (2007), Jill L. Matus notes how ―Elizabeth Gaskell has become a figure of growing importance in the field of Victorian literary studies and it is true that, although still lagging behind such critical favorites as Charles Dickens or George Eliot, for example, she is slowly shedding the mantle of a ―minor novelist‖ and gaining a more prominent place in the field of Victorian studies. In recent years, Gaskell scholarship has expanded its interests regarding the texts studied and topics explored. Two controversies marred Gaskell’s literary career. In 1853 she shocked and offended many of her readers with Ruth, an exploration of seduction and illegitimacy.The second controversy arose following the 1857 publication of The Life of Charlotte Brontë. The biography’s initial wave of praise was quickly followed by angry protests.

22.4 Wives and Daughters: Introduction

Wives and Daughters is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in the Cornhill Magazine as a serial from August 1864 to January 1866. Her short novel Cousin Phillis is recognized as a fitting prelude for Gaskell’s final novel, Wives and Daughters.The final installment was never written, yet the ending was known and the novel as it exists is virtually complete.

Originally published: August 1864

Author: Elizabeth Gaskell

Adaptations: Wives and Daughters (1999)

Editors: Pam Morris

Characters: Molly Gibson, Cynthia Kirkpatrick, Mr. Preston, Mr. Gibson,Mrs Hyacint, Kirkpatrick

The subtitle of this novel is An Every-Day Story, and while Ms. Morris goes a long way to dispute the accuracy of this label, relating it not only to fairytale and feminism, but also to Darwinism.

22.5: Wives and Daughters: Story

This Victorian novel is a story of Miss Molly Gibson, who at the age of 17 gets not only a new stepmother but also a very beautiful stepsister. The novel follows Molly throughout the next couple of years of her life as she adjusts to the new circumstances of her life, and the many challenges it brings with it.

This novel takes place in England in the 1800’s. When Molly was a small child her mother died leaving Molly to be raised with her father the town doctor. After some time Molly‟s father in order to Molly having a mother to teach her how to be a young woman and all the things he can’t, marries a widow woman with a daughter about Molly’s age named Cynthia. Cynthia is beautiful and charming and she and Molly became fast friends. Molly loved Cynthia and would do anything for her, that love is tested many times.

Before Molly’s father‟s marriage, Molly has become friends with Hamley‟s a family in the neighborhood. The Hamley’s have two sons Osborne, and Roger. Osborne is everything Molly thought she could like about a boy and Roger was just the opposite of his brother. Molly and Roger became friends and Roger talks to Molly about books and science and teaches her things she always wanted to learn. During one visit with the Hamley’s Molly overhears and secret she wishes for years to come that she never knew. Osborne has secretly gotten married and wants her to help keep his secret from his father.

As Molly and Cynthia become closer Molly realizes that her new sister seems to have a power over most young men and they can’t’ help falling for her charms. Roger Hamley would be no exception, and soon proposes marriage to Cynthia. Molly isn’t sure why she isn’t happy for her sister. But she is very jealous of the relationship between the two. Molly doesn’t think her sister loves Roger the way Roger deserves to be loved.

While Roger is away in Africa, Molly finds out her sister has a secret. She is already engaged to another man. Cynthia had promised to marry another man when she was only 16 and now she wanted to break it, but the man would not let her do so. Molly helped her sister at the risk of her own reputation. Some of the town women saw Molly talking to him and they thought she was having an affair with him and Molly is the one who ended up the bad reputation. That is until Lady Harriet the daughter of the Lord and Lady of Hollingford stood up for her and cleared the air.

Cynthia calls off the engagement the day before Osborne Hamley dies. And when Roger comes to town to take care of the funeral business, and the matter of Osborne’s secret wife and now 2 year old son, he realizes the love he was looking for was growing right in front of him all along in the shape of Molly and not Cynthia.

22.6: The Plot: The plot of the novel is complex, relying far more on a series of relationships between family groups in Hollingford than on dramatic structure. Throughout Wives and Daughters the humorous, ironical, and sometimes satirical view of the characters is developed with a heightened sense of artistic self-confidence and maturity.

Wives and Daughters was first published as a serial from August 1864 to January 1866 in the Cornhill Magazine. The story revolves around Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a widowed doctor living in an English town in the 1830s. She is also part of a cast of four young people whose romantic interactions are portrayed with striking realism. We do not see love at first sight or passionate attachment that, pursued faithfully, makes up a happy ending. We see arbitrary and consuming love turned into disillusionment. This is contrasted with mature and deeper love that grows slowly and selflessly. The latter is not such an exciting read as the former, but it gives a more lingering impact and marks Gaskell as a mature and thought-provoking novelist rather than a sentimentalist.

22.7 :Places Mentioned in the novel

Hollingford

Hollingford is the town in which the novel takes place. It is based on the town the author, Elizabeth Gaskell was raised from the age of 13 months.

Molly’s Home

Molly’s home is where she and Mr.Gibson have lived all of Molly’s life. It is also where her father has his surgery, when he had the young men who were interning with him stayed. When he married Mrs. Kirkpatrick, she and Cynthia made it their home also. Most of the story takes place inside the Gibson home.

Hamley Hall

Hamley Hall is where the Hamley’s live, it has been in the Squire’s family for many years. No one in the town of Hollingford can remember a time when the land didn’t belong to the Hamley’s.

The Hollingford Towers

The Towers is where the Cumnor famliy lives. It is where Mrs. Gibson lived before she was married.

22.8:MAJOR CHARACTERS

Molly Gibson

The heroine is a little girl called Molly Gibson who lives with her father; her life is a happy one, only marred by the death of her mother. And very quickly smart and well educated Molly is 17 years old and her father is worried that she needs a mother to guide her in this time of her life. She isn’t as obviously beautiful as her stepsister but she is very pretty, and everyone loves her. She makes a good impression on all she meets. She speaks her mind even if that may seem rude to some. She loves her father very much and was not at all happy when he got married for the second time.

Molly loses herself in the gardens, misses lunch, has a headache, and after being rescued is forgotten about and left to oversleep and miss her carriage by Clare Kirkpatrick, the woman who will later be her stepmother. Molly is rightfully upset by both the events of the day and the words of Mrs. Kirkpatrick which make her feel “guilty and very unhappy” (48), and though she cries at times about the predicament she has gotten into, Molly also finds herself worrying about how her father will feel when she is not there to make his tea for him. This scene foreshadows the role.

Molly will play in relation to her father and stepmother. In the midst of her trouble, Molly thinks of others’ feelings, as well, and this trait will continue to grow in her.

Molly has a temper and learning to control it, is one of her first lessons as she grows from a child into a young woman. She once “flew out in such a violent passion of words in defense of her silent trembling governess” (67), that she stunned the housekeeper who had been speaking impertinently. Her comment at her father’s plans to remarry is worth consideration:

She did not answer. She could not tell what words to use. She was afraid of saying anything, lest the passion of anger, dislike, indignation – whatever it was that was boiling up in her breast – should find vent in cries and screams, or worse, in raging words that could never be forgotten. (145)

Two people had a palliative effect on Molly’s temperament: Mrs. Hamley and her youngest son Roger Hamley who becomes Molly’s intellectual counselor. When Molly is terribly upset over her father’s remarriage, Roger gives her hope by telling her the story of another girl in a similar position, and the advice “to try to think more of others than of oneself” (152). It defines Molly‟s character as Molly has a strong sense of duty to the people who she cares about and when their happiness is endangered, she will do all that is in her power to help and comfort them.

Though Molly does not deviate far from her moral code, the women of the town determine falsely that Molly has “disregarded the commonest rules of modesty and propriety” (568) and consider her as a pariah. But Molly mostly keeps silent and checks her retaliation.

Molly’s strength of character is evident from her acceptance of the relationship between her old friend Roger Hamley and Cynthia. We are sure that Molly loves Roger, whether she is always aware of it or not, and because she cares so much for both of them, “she would have been willing to cut off her right hand, if need were, to forward his attachment to Cynthia; and the sacrifice would have added a strange zest to a happy crisis” (390). Her loving care to the old Squire Hamley after the loss of his eldest son, Osborne is another example. The Squire also wishes Molly to face Osborne’s mysterious wife for him because he can not do it. When Mrs. Osborne Hamley falls ill, Molly is again the provider of strength and comfort.

Mr Gibson- Mr Gibson,a doctor by professon, is Molly‟s father. In Molly’s eyes her father is a man among men, the wisest judge, and a person to be trusted and relied upon in all situations. As a doctor, Mr. Gibson is a caring and honest man, educated and respectful. For the mutual benefit of himself and his daughter, Mr. Gibson remarries so that Molly will have a mother again and he will have a wife to promote domestic harmony.

Mr. Gibson has noticed his wife’s shortcomings as well, but he puts on a brave face and attempts to ignore them as much as possible. Mr. Gibson has plenty of chaos in his daily life: when he comes home at night he wants to enjoy peace and contentment with his family. He wants this so much that he blinds himself to the reality that his choice of wives was perhaps not the best.

Mrs Gibson- Mrs. Kirkpatrick/Mrs. Gibson is marvelous. A pretentious but poor widow, she eagerly accepts Mr. Gibson‟s offer of remarriage and the improvement in her material circumstances and social standing the marriage offers. She instantly sets about „improving‟ his house, his diet, and his daughter and, intriguingly, putting off the return of her own daughter Cynthia, who is the same age as Molly, from school in France. But Cynthia does eventually return and she is just as wonderful and flawed as her mother.

When Mrs. Kirkpatrick becomes Mrs. Gibson, she professes to love Molly as if she were her own daughter and to have her interests at heart at all times; however, in the picture of Mrs. Gibson which Gaskell paints so clearly, what she says and what she does are two completely different things. Though Mrs. Gibson speaks as though her greatest pleasure is to know that the people she cares for are comfortable, in truth she cares mostly for her own personal comfort.

Cynthia: Cynthia came as a gift to Molly along with a new mother provided by her father‟s remarriage. Cynthia bursts into Molly‟s life in a whirl of colour and energy. She is beautiful and captivating, spirited and somewhat mysterious. They quickly become close alleys, true sisters. The greatest benefit by far of Mr. Gibson‟s marriage is the introduction of Cynthia into Molly‟s life and it is the complications caused by the beguiling Cynthia that truly see Molly mature. Molly is thoughtful and considerate, guided by intelligence and good judgment where Cynthia is selfish and thoughtless, eager to jump ahead without considering the consequences, to run away when complications ensue. But Cynthia adores and admires Molly, conscious of her own flaws and Molly‟s moral superiority. Cynthia may lament her shortcomings, as in this little speech to Molly, but she would much rather have and be able to laugh at them than to attempt any great effort to reform herself:

‘…I am not good and never shall be now. Perhaps I might be a heroine still, but I shall never be a good woman, I know.’

‘Do you think it easier to be a heroine?’

‘Yes, as far as one knows of heroines from history. I’m capable of a great jerk, an effort, and then a relaxation – but steady every-day goodness is beyond me. I must be a moral kangaroo!’ (p. 229)

A nuisance to her widowed mother, Cynthia was sent away to school in France at a young age. Consequently she did not develop a strong attachment to her remaining parent and is much more independent than Molly. In this case, however, independence comes with the loss of good parental guidance and Cynthia, who calls herself “a moral kangaroo” (258), finds herself entangled in an unwanted engagement to Mr. Preston, a local land agent. Cynthia may never be good but, like Vanity Fair‟s Becky Sharp, she will always be interesting. It comes as no surprise when she instantly smites Roger on their first meeting. Cynthia was always the same with Molly: kind, sweet-tempered, ready to help, and professing a great deal of love for her. Unable to free herself from the situation of deceit and shame in which she finds herself, Cynthia enlists the help of innocent Molly to retrieve her love letters, to which she agreed so easily.

SQUIRE HAMLEY

Squire Hamley is very emotional. He speaks about what he feels, while everyone else conceals his or her emotions. He certainly suffers the most, losing his beloved wife and his son. His verbal reprimands of his eldest son Osborne only drive them further apart. Squire Hamley must be the antidote to such ascetics yet he manages to be emotional and sympathetic without being ineffectual. He has an irresistible personality and can be venal in his desires and expectations.

Osborne Hamley

Osborne Hamley’s failures make his invalid mother‟s illness worse and widen the divide between him and his father, which is amplified by the considerable debts Osborne has run up in maintaining his secret wife. Mrs Hamley dies, and the fissure between the squire and Osborne seems irrevocable. Younger son Roger continues to work hard at university and ultimately gains the honours and rewards that were expected for his brother. Mrs. Gibson tries unsuccessfully to arrange a marriage between Cynthia and Osborne. But Osborne secretly marries Aimee.

Roger Hamley

Roger is an avid naturalist, enchanted by the natural world around him, and Molly, to some extent, catches his enthusiasm. Roger feels so real. He is perfect in so many ways but not in all. Like any young man of twenty two, he is easily blinded by love, falling prey to Cynthia‟s numerous charms in a quite ridiculous manner. Molly, however, has always preferred Roger’s good sense and righteous character and soon falls in love with him. Unfortunately, Roger falls in love with Cynthia. Just before Roger leaves on a two-year scientific expedition to Africa, he asks for Cynthia’s hand and she accepts, although she insists that their engagement should remain secret until Roger returns. Molly is heartbroken, and struggles with her sorrow and her knowledge that Cynthia lacks affection for Roger.

22.9 : The Beginning and the End of the Novel: In the opening scene Molly Gibson, the main character of this novel, is getting ready for the gala. The gala is an annual festival given by the Lord and Lady Cumnor. This year the Lord Cumnor himself has invited Molly to attend the gala. She is to be picked up with the Browning sisters, and taken to the Towers. The Towers is the estate the Lord and Lady live on. Scene Starts like this:

‟ In a country there was a shire, and in that shire there was a town, and in that town there was a house, and in that house there was a room, and in that room there was a bed, and in that bed there lay a little girl; wide awake and longing to get up, but not daring to do so for fear of the unseen power in the next room – a certain Betty, whose slumbers must not be disturbed until six o’clock struck, when she wakened of herself ‘as sure as clockwork’, and left the household very little peace afterwards. It was a June morning, and early as it was, the room was full of sunny warmth and light.‟‟(Opening lines of Chapter 1)

Though the ending of the novel was not written by the novelist mrs Gaskell still Towards the end we are told that Roger Hamley will marry Molly. Had the writer lived, she would have sent her hero back to Africa forthwith. The day before, he had believed that Molly had come to view all the symptoms of his growing love for her, – symptoms which he thought had been so patent, – as disgusting inconstancy to the inconstant Cynthia; that she had felt that an attachment which could be so soon transferred to another was not worth having; and that she had desired to mark all this by her changed treatment of him.

Soon Roger begins to realize that his affection for Molly is more than that of a brother for a sister. Aided by the kind interference of Lady Harriet, who has always recognized Molly’s worth and charms, he finds himself pained at the thought of Molly with anyone else. Still, he hesitates at giving in to his feelings, feeling unworthy of her love after throwing away his affection on the fickle Cynthia. Before he returns to Africa, he confides his feelings to Mr Gibson, who heartily gives his blessing to the union. Roger is thwarted, this time by a scarlet fever scare, in his attempt to speak to Molly before he leaves. Gaskell’s novel stops here, unfinished at her death. She related to a friend that she had intended Roger to return and present Molly with a dried flower (a gift Molly gave him before his departure), as proof of his enduring love. This scene was never realised and the novel remains unfinished. In the BBC adaptation, an alternative ending was written in which Roger is unable to leave Molly without speaking of his love, and they marry and return to Africa together.

Roger and Molly are married; and if one of them is happier than the other, it is Molly. Her husband has no need to draw upon the little fortune, which is to go to poor Osborne’s boy, for he becomes professor at some grey scientific institution, and wins his way in the world handsomely. The squire is almost as happy in this marriage as his son. If any one suffers for it, it is Mr Gibson.

22.10: Story of Mature Love

Molly and Roger have known each other for years. They met when Molly was younger and Roger only saw her as a sister. Roger used to talk to Molly about books he had read or animals and bugs he was studying in college. To Molly he was the teacher and she looked forward to his visits so she could learn what he was learning. He was blind to the young women she was becoming. Roger even proposed marriage to Molly’s stepsister Cynthia who Molly really loved too. She was always loyal to Roger telling herself the feelings she felt toward him were feelings one feels toward a brother, but she couldn’t help being jealous of the attention he paid to Cynthia. After one and one half years being apart while Roger was in Africa, Roger comes home and finally sees Molly for who she is not the girl he left.

Molly had been half in love with her romanticized ideal of Osborne before meeting him but Roger‟s first love is rather more serious. His keen analytical skills and strong morals fall rather to the wayside, unconsciously compromised by his selection of Cynthia as his future wife. She is his ideal and the entire time he is falling in love with her, he never really sees her for what she is and how horribly ill-suited they are. And poor Molly, only starting to realise her feelings for Roger when he begins to shower Cynthia with attention, having to watch him commit himself to a woman who she knows doesn‟t care for him half as much as he does for her.

22.11:Point of View

The point of view of the novel is third person. This point of view is omniscient; narrator not only knows the event she reports upon, she also can tell the reader what other characters feel. This point of view is important to the novel because the reader knows not only that Molly did something but also what is the emotion behind what she did.

They story is told through mostly the narrator‟s point of view which helps to move the story along more quickly. This helps us to understand the situations surrounding the main events that are taking place better, and to better give us the background needed to understand the reasons why the characters are the way they are. This novel is told through the eyes of the people who are living in Hollingford, but we only get a glimpse of life though their dialogues and action.

22.12: Social Images: “Cheese is only fit for the kitchen”

In the narrative, meals and wine are used to create and recreate social images and social identities but the article of food which Mrs Gibson sees as detrimental to the social image of Mr Gibson and consequently of the whole family is cheese. When being questioned about her father„s likes and dislikes by her step-mother, Molly Gibson reveals that her father ―doesn„t care what he has, if it„s only ready. He would take bread-and-cheese, if cook would only send it in instead of dinner‖ (WD 127). This implies an attitude to food that emphasizes the nutritional dimension of food: food appeases hunger and fills the stomach after ―a long ride (WD 127) to see patients and prepares for another. Thus cheese, for example, is not just food, but a symbol of vulgarity: ―we must change all that. I shouldn„t like to think of your father eating cheese; it„s such a strong-smelling, coarse kind of thing.… Cheese is only fit for the kitchen (WD 128).

Mr. Gibson is described as facing a situation in which a meal and the whole setting of it convey an unwanted image of him and the whole household. He makes excuses for the shortcomings of the household that not only is his daughter away but more importantly he is a widower and does not have a wife to manage the household. It is actually partly the shame of not being able to entertain according to his desire or to his social and economic position that leads him to a second marriage. What a meal is called and when it is served is an issue of social class in Wives and Daughters especially for Mrs Gibson who realizes the power of correct terminology. Thus when she enters the Gibson household her new domestic arrangements include the changing of the meal times and their names: the one o„clock dinner becomes a lunch and dinner is moved to six o„clock. The arrangements are an inconvenience for most of the other members of the household: the cook does not like the trouble of late dinners (WD 178).

In another scene when Lord Cumnor hospitably urges Mrs Gibson to fill her stomach at the lunch for the reason that it would be her dinner and thus the main meal of the day he is acknowledging not only a difference between different meal times but also between social classes, and thus a difference between the middle-class Gibsons and the aristocratic Cumnors. The late dinners prevent invitations to ―the small tea-drinkings (WD440), which are the primary manner of socialising in Hollingford: ―How ask people to tea at six, who dined at that hour? How, when they refused cake and sandwiches at half past eight, how induce other people who were really hungry to commit a vulgarity before those calm and scornful eyes (WD 440). The rule of following the full forms of dining includes the presence of dessert even when none of the diners will eat it. When dining alone with Molly, Mrs Gibson insists on dessert being set on the table although everybody knows it will be left uneaten: „although Molly knew full well, and her stepmother knew full well, and Maria [the maid] knew full well, that neither Mrs Gibson nor Molly touched dessert, it was set on the table with as much form as if Cynthia had been at home, who delighted in almonds and raisins; or Mr Gibson been there, who never could resist dates, although he always protested against persons in their station of life having a formal dessert set out before them every day.„ (WD 497-8)In the absence of anyone who would actually consume and enjoy the dessert its function becomes symbolic. It is a sign of genteel lifestyle, a lifestyle that Mrs Gibson aspires to but her husband does not. Mr Gibson„s idea of the family„s social rank differs from that of his new wife who defends the presence of a formal dessert even when no one eats it:

―Its no extravagance, for we need not eat it – I never do. But it looks well, and makes Maria understand what is required in the daily life of every family of position.‟ (WD 498)

When Mrs Gibson, to whom a meal is never really just about food and who considers a dinner a good opportunity to introduce her daughter to prospective husbands, suggests that they should invite the squire Hamley„s sons to dine, Mr Gibson has some reservations about the plan: ―these young Cambridge men have a very good taste in wine, and don„t spare it. (WD 242-3)

Osborne is described as being anything but indifferent about food: he is particular and even fastidious about what he eats. After the death of his mother, Osborne is frequently invited to dinner at the Gibsons‟ house and he is happy to accept the invitations, partly because of the ―agreeable … feminine presence but mostly because the food served is preferable to what he is served at home: the meals, light and well cooked, suited his taste and delicate appetite so much better than the rich and heavy viands prepared by the servants at the Hall (WD 309). Osborne„s preferences as regards to food seem to correspond with his slightly effeminate body image but they also imply a preference to food that has more genteel connotations than the food that he eats at home.

Mrs Gibson„s need to deny her appetite in public is manifest in the way she lets it be assumed that the child Molly has emptied the whole tray of food: ―Molly could not help wishing that her pretty companion would have told Lady Cuxhaven that she herself had helped to finish up the ample luncheon‖ (WD 18). The fact that Molly feels ill and suffers from a headache is falsely attributed to the fact that she is suspected to have eaten too much and the shame of these suspicions bothers Molly.

In Wives and Daughters, the secrecy connected with the appeasing of hunger is linked with Mrs Gibson„s aspirations to behave like a real lady which are manifest in her attempts to give the desired genteel qualities an embodied expression. Mrs Gibson„s acts of consumption, whether of food or other commodities, express her wish to create and maintain a certain ideal character which is modeled mostly on the concepts of social ideals. When having guests for lunch she is shown to realise a character she obviously considers as reflecting the ideal of genteel femininity by making choices concerning food consumption and behavior in general.

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