New Year, New Fallen Woman: Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth Readalong

All caught up with chapter 4 and 5. I am wanting to read on to find out what happens next. Mr B is a very unsavoury character and very judgemental ‘’I’ve seen your little hunch back. He looks like Riquet-with-the-Tuft. He is not a gentleman though’’ Well he is more of a gentleman than Mr B could ever be. I am feeling for poor Ruth how on earth is this going to pan out. Hopefully once Mr B has grown tired of his pet Ruth and she is not completely beyond all hope she will go and seek out the kind Thomas and Mary for refuge.

I really enjoyed the ironic contrasts in this chapter on the theme of outer versus inner beauty, which you find in other 19th novels and plays eg Jane Eyre, where plain Jane is contrasted with the shallower but more beautiful Blanche Ingram, and when Mr Benson is introduced I found myself thinking of the French play Cyrano de Bergerac (1897) and the contrast between the pretty boy lover and the ugly hero with a beautiful soul.

Ruth has already been shown to be entirely without vanity about her physical beauty. However, that’s the only thing Bellingham admires about her, seeing her as a mere trophy or ornament to show off.

The theme is deepened in the contrast between Bellingham and Benson, who may be smaller of stature and not outwardly handsome like him, but is morally the bigger man, and beautiful inside. He also has a profound appreciation of the beauty of nature, which makes him of course a kindred spirit to Ruth, who also finds spiritual solace there. In contrast, the shallow Bellingham only becomes more irritated the more Ruth talks of the beauty of nature, and he really starts to become detestable in this chapter.

Not surprisingly, Benson also loves religious nature poetry, and I like how Gaskell picks up that element by starting the next chapter with a short quotation from George Herbert’s poem ‘Sweet Vertue’. In later chapters, it becomes clear that’s just the kind of Metaphysical poet and poem an intelligent well-read man like him would like. (That’s not remotely a plot spoiler!). Whether intentional or not, I can’t help seeing a moral connection in that poem between him and Ruth, and wondering whether the title perhaps ironically emphasises her innocence - even though she’s technically a fallen woman at this point?

@BishyBarnyBee great summary again.

It seems strange that people looking at this couple are aware of Ruth's young age and comment on her innocent looks but make no effort to help- they just feel that they should disapprove of her (and that their virtue is proved by doing this). To them B is just behaving as young men will.

I was most struck in chapter 4 with the way B responded when Ruth was re-living her memories at the house. Her emotions were clear on her face- he just admired how she looked while feeling them. He had no empathy or even interest in what she felt.

Good observation cassandre.
'Dickens was a well-dressed, dapper man, never a hair out of place' would sound ludicrous!

That description makes her sound like a Sunday school teacher instead of someone whose novels dealt with controversial themes.

That's true Fuzzy! I was struck by the narratorial intervention critiquing Mrs Mason, in the context of her declared interest in 'keeping up the character of her establishment': 'It would have been a better and more Christian thing, if she had kept up the character of her girls by tender vigilance and maternal care.'

It's interesting to see when the narrator pipes up with a comment on events. Thank you for pointing out the rare appearance of 'I', @BishyBarnyBee , when the narrator says of Thomas that 'I think that his prayers were heard'; I hadn't noticed that!

@GrandMarnierChocolate , your comment about how religion is keeping the poor in their place is intriguing! I don't know if Gaskell herself would have seen it that way, because I think she was quite committed to religious faith. But google tells me that she and her family were Unitarians, which is quite a radical and forward-thinking version of Christianity as far as I know. (According to my fundamentalist Christian parents, Unitarians were pretty much already halfway to hell, ha!)

By the way, this is a bit random, but part of the Wikipedia entry on Gaskell had me rolling my eyes. I love Wikipedia and rate it highly, but sometimes you get weird glitches of writing cut and pasted from dubious sources, like this:
A beautiful young woman, Elizabeth was well-groomed, tidily dressed, kind, gentle, and considerate of others. Her temperament was calm and collected, joyous and innocent, she revelled in the simplicity of rural life.

Well-groomed? 😂Some old-fashioned biography is surely being cited here. It's so gendered; I mean, I'd like to see a wikipedia entry on Dickens that informed us that the young Dickens was well-groomed and tidily dressed!

It's interesting to compare Old Thomas's quiet prayerfulness and good intentions towards Ruth with Mrs Mason's faux Christianity and shunning of her.

Loving the summaries and the brilliant commentaries.

I was struck by how Ruth has learned to expect nothing in life. She won't take a cup of tea from the servant, and the reason she won't leave the inn to go to Old Thomas is because she has taken a cup of tea in the inn and now feels obliged to stay, beholden to Mr B. Yet, she doesn't see how easily others have dropped her (Mrs Mason, her father - he should have held it together for her sake, not succumbed to grief!).

I agree with all the comments on Mr B. Yet, I despair because this is how he was raised. He barely understands the world outside his narrow view. He does what he likes, criticises the grandmother, mislead the girl he's supposed to marry, threatens to put Mrs Mason out of business. And society seems to expect that this is how young men are (until they're married, I guess; maybe that's what matures them). I see a sort of parallel with young boys today who are growing up in the internet bubble, being raised on porn and violence, gaming all night. When they inevitably behave badly, we wonder how they have turned out the way they have.

Finally, religion - It has such a hold on the poor (Old Thomas, Ruth) keeping them in their place.

I agree about the dread @TheWriteStuff which Chapter 4 builds and builds! Ruth almost does save herself I think when it occurs to her that she could stay at Milham. The fact that she mentions this plan to Mr B. right at the end of the chapter and then the carriage heads towards London shows us that her agency has been taken away from her.

Just checking in having followed the fallen women read alongs last year. I have really enjoyed the opening chapters, especially the way in which Ruth’s vulnerability is revealed.

I sniggered when the most able seamstress were going to go to the dance but, in fact, other factors such as attractiveness came into play. Some things never Change for women.

Yes, TheWriteStuff. It suggests to me that goodness will prevail.

This is a significant turning point in the story.

" 'Yes'; the fatal word of which she so little imagined the infinite consequences. The thought of being with him was all and everything" sums it up well.

Oh the feeling of dread at the end of Ch 4! Ruth - save yourself!

The story is moving along now and I feel we are starting to really get to know Ruth and Bellingham.

The book so far seems to circle about contrasts: we had the contrast between old and new building works, between buildings and nature, between the monochrome of Ruth's world and the colour of B's, between Ruth's current circumstances and her past. Now we have this chapter which runs from a perfect day full of promise and hope, through to the end full of despair and threat.

There were also a stark difference in how Ruth and B saw Old Thomas. Ruth saw him as beautiful, because of the love he has for her and the memories they share. B dislikes him seemingly for his low status ("hard-featured, meanly-dressed old labourer"). We've seen before how B has no time for people he sees as below him and that are not pretty. And how older and wiser folk have got the measure of B alright. Plus, B's anger at being mistaken for Mrs Mason's son 🙄

But maybe there is some small chink of hope: Old Thomas spent the night praying for Ruth's soul and Gaskell says she thinks his prayers were heard. Could this be some small protection for our heroine?

Look into ideas about the 'New Woman' at the 'fin de siècle' to see how things changed through the Victorian era. Fear of women is very clear and a desire to divide them into 'virtuous' (and hysterical/unintelligent/boring but ideal) or 'fallen' (exciting/clever/bewitching and not fit for polite society) again.

I like the way 'Ruth' is a woman presenting women.

The fact that Gilman was a New England American also makes a big difference, so not quite the same context. In a nation where everyone was pushing new frontiers, the drive for women’s emancipation there came even earlier in some ways. Last year I re-read Henry James‘ brilliant The Portrait of a Lady, in which the American heroine Isabel Archer is much more spirited and independent-minded than her European counterparts - and that was 1880. Just one example.

I am enjoying the sideways dives! Mainly because I read the next chapter already and so am filling time before we can all discuss it

I am loving the readalong and rather regretting not finding you all sooner for the previous books.

Thank you @ShabanahFazal I will look up your reading suggestions.

@ShabanahFazal - that short story is really good. This line struck out to me as so true: "For his own pleasure he had chosen to rob her of her life's best joys."

And yes, what a difference those intervening years have made between Ruth and Turned in how the 'fallen woman' is written. Even more stark the difference between Tess (1891) and Turned (1911). But, of course, there is another difference between these two: Tess was written by a man.