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

[BishyBarnyBee]

Following the very successful Madame Bovary readalong, we have decided to explore another woman who refused to be bound by contemporary mores.
So shocking at the time, two of Gaskell's friends burnt their copies.

"Elizabeth Gaskell's Ruth (1853) was the first mainstream novel to make a fallen woman its eponymous heroine. It is a remarkable story of love, of the sanctuary and tyranny of the family, and of the consequences of lies and deception, one that lays bare Victorian hypocrisy and sexual double-standards. Shocking to contemporary readers, its radical utopian vision of a pure woman faithfully presented predates Hardy's Tess by nearly forty years."

We will aim for two chapters a week - a weekend chapter and a mid week chapter. If I have time, I'll try and do a ChatGPT chapter summary, but anyone else is welcome to jump in if I haven't got there first.

We start 1st Jan, so if you are up for a bit of Victorian passion, guilt, regret and redemption, sign up here!

Although if Ruth were on MN, I think everyone would be saying to her, Take the money! The equivalent of telling women now to file a claim with CMS and get those deadbeat dads to pay😂

I'm still here too although I seem to be permanently out of synch - I was behind but now am ahead! Thank you for the summaries and everyone's insights. I wasn't really enjoying the book at first as I found the character of Ruth rather insipid but she's growing on me. I am really enjoying the insight into the Victorian psyche, or rather the constant self-refection and desire for self-betterment from a spiritual point of view. It is fascinating and maybe we need a bit more of that these days.

Thank you to @ShabanahFazal for GM discussion too. It's been years since I read it. Really interesting.

Also - has anyone any idea of what that £50 is worth? Just wondering how much her scruples have cost.

About £8k

Ah - £8k assuming the book is contemporary/set about the time it was written. It now occurs to me, I don't know that for sure?

I'm not sure. Earlier on the Bensons say that the money is enough to keep her for a week or so (in Wales) and pay for her journey back which makes it sound like not too much. In a book I have on Victorian London it says that in 1834 Dickens was earning £273 a year as a clerk which was a decent salary. £8000 sounds a bit too much I think? Anyway, I guess it was a big enough chunk to feel like a sacrifice to send it back. I wonder what the Bellinghams were expecting it to be used for exactly.

I used this tool to check: www.officialdata.org/uk/inflation/1853?amount=50

Hi, I’m still around too. As I said before, I finished the book soon after the thread started but won’t spoil anything. Will pop back in now and again to read all the interesting comments and insights. The chapter summaries and your angle on them @BishyBarnyBee are also helpful in refreshing my memory, though as a long-time habit I also keep my own notes as I go along on most books. The characters in the Benson household were by far my favourite characters in the novel, so I’ll definitely go back to read what I thought at the time add my thoughts later this weekend.

But for the moment, in an off-topic aside, can someone please explain
the chat icons? I can’t find a guide anywhere on this site. I don’t get why there’s both a save and a bookmark icon? And why does the save look like a ‘like’ on Twitter, and how is that different from a Thanks on this site? Please excuse the stupid questions, but this thread is my first time on Mumsnet and it’s not clear. I also find any site that doesn’t allow editing - or only one edit - frustrating as I’m very prone to typos, belated self-corrections and endless afterthoughts….

The bookmark marks the last post on the thread that you’ve read, so when you go back to that thread it takes you straight to your bookmark/last post read. Saving a post is a bit like ‘favouriting’ it so you can find those posts later to reread, so works a bit differently to the bookmark.

The ‘thanks’ icon is just to pass your thanks to the writer of that post - it’s similar to the ‘like’ function of Facebook except that here only the writer of the post sees the thanks, nobody else does.

The time limited editing is deliberate so people don’t go back and significantly change what they wrote if people disagree with them. It would make threads very hard to follow if people go back and change what they originally wrote. It gets argued a lot that there should be an edit function but lots of people are against it for the reason I’ve given.

Hope that’s helpful!

I'm still here too, and really enjoying the thread. I'm currently a bit behind with the book and finding the insights into the chapters I still have to read really enjoyable (and not spoilers, because I've read the book before and remember the skeleton of the story). Thank you, @BishyBarnyBee and everyone who's contributing. Hopefully I'll be able to participate properly soon.

Thanks for that very clear explanation @ChessieFL, I wasn't sure about some of that even though I've been on mumsnet for longer than I like to admit.

It's great that so many people are following and the comments this week have been so interesting. It had just been a bit quiet for a week or so and I wasn't sure whether I was on my own with it, but we will definitely keep going.

Chapter 13
In which we are introduced to a spotless house and a wary housekeeper, learn how Thurston became disabled and witness the brutal shearing of Ruth's crowning glory.

Sally, the Benson's loyal and life-long servant, is radiant at their return but suspicious of the young "widow" and scathing about the expected baby. We see how she labours to keep the simple, charming house spotless, and learn that her faithful service is rooted in guilt. As a young nurse-girl, she was in charge of the young Thurston when he had the fall that caused his current disability.

Gaskell compares the household with the virtue of Ruth's mother, and we see how they share an innocent and unselfconscious goodness. They may have failings - and Sally's anger may be one of them - but generally a fault in one brings out the goodness in the others and they complement each other in a way which leads to harmony and peace.

However, when the exhausted Ruth sleeps badly and is late for breakfast, Sally slaps the cold, leathery toast down in high dudgeon. Faith distracts Ruth from her sadness - and Sally's rumbling bad temper -with gentle chat about their friends, including the clearly significant Bradshaws. Faith remembers that Ruth must have a wedding ring and brings out her grandmother's, but it is too late to satisfy Sally's judge-like severity.

The chapter ends with Sally's insistence that "whether widows wears wedding rings or not, they shall have their hair cut off, they shall". Wielding a formidable pair of scissors she mercilessly hacks Ruth's luxuriant, disheveled, chestnut curls into a boyish crop. Ruth's soft yet dignified submission shows she is utterly broken and touches Sally, though she hides her misgivings and instructs Ruth to wear a widow's cap from now on.

I am all caught up now. There is something different (to me) if the way the Benson's siblings approach helping Ruth. Mr Benson's helps seems more logical - like he is doing what he knows to be right. Mrs Benson's is more emotional - she doesn't necessarily know it to be right but cannot help but help, iyswim. I like Mrs Benson the better for it.

Ruth seems more like a child than ever now. Not realising why she gets a seat in the carriage and the Benson's sit up top etc. Makes me wonder how she will cope with a child...

Yes, thanks - very helpful! Will remember that bookmark short cut. I know the reason for limited editing, and agree with the principle of not radically changing your original post, as that’s not in the spirit of things. However, as someone that writes slowly and makes a lot of minor wording changes as I go along, I was just expressing my frustration!

I was feeling very frustrated with Ruth and thinking the spirited girl who stood up to the dressmaker in the workshop had gone through a complete personality change. Then I remembered our discussion about Bellingham grooming her and then systematically breaking down her self confidence. That and the betrayal of him abandoning her have truly broken her. But the saying no to the £50 seems like a glimpse of the old Ruth, and the discussion of how the Benson's household works through its difficulties to peace and harmony might be a hint that things are going to improve for her. The hair cropping is brutal though, especially coming after all that description of domestic bliss and harmony, it's quite a shock.

I seem to remember from Hardy (Return of the Native?) that you could get good money for hair. I'm surprised they didn't suggest it!

Delurking too. My first time with a read along thread. I found it late so was behind and now somehow am ahead! I do think Ruth is very naive, but refusing the £50 shows she still has some spirit, and her own moral compass. If he doesn’t love her she doesn’t want his money. It does feel like she has her own ideas of what right and wrong is not shaped by society and the church. She is prepared to pretend to be a widow, and is pleased to be having a child when the church would say that is a sin she should atone for.

I’m still here too. Got behind while reading other things but back on track now. After enjoying the first few chapters I found the Welsh section harder to get through, perhaps because Ruth lost her spark (as others have said). I’m enjoying the character of Sally, she makes a good contrast to Miss Benson. I thought the descriptions of Ruth putting on the ring and the haircut were very moving.
Slightly confused by Benson’s disability. Did Sally really cause it or does she just think she did? I had previously assumed it was congenital.
Looking forward to reading on.

I thought the return of the £50 was nicely done in that it emphasises Ruth's moral compass (she won't be 'paid off') but at the same time shows her naivety, made clearer when we see how poor the Bensons are & the difference it might have made.

While Ruth is very passive in this section, so much has happened to her in the short time since becoming an orphan that it's perhaps unsurprising that she's totally overwhelmed & has little agency. She's still very young, and has so little experience of the world.

She reminds me of Fanny Price in Mansfield Park in some ways. Fanny is often criticised for her passivity, but without any acknowledgement of the impact of being taken from her parents & everything she knew age 11 to live with total strangers, and having her inferior position continually made clear.

I think you're right, the text is ambiguous: "It was believed by everyone, and by Sally herself, that his deformity was owing to a fall...". The "It was believed" does imply it might not be true.

I felt for Sally in that she thought she was the cause of Mr Benson’s disability, and that she has remained loyal to brother and sister ever since. I like her character and think she is doing what she thinks is best to help Ruth when she cuts her hair as she knows it will help with her disguise as a widow.
I also enjoyed some of the descriptive writing. ‘’Bright glittering tins on which the ruddy fireplace danced” just lovely writing. I was also struck by how the sitting room was described as being called the parlour but this was an old fashioned term. I thought this would be an up to date term for those times but I really don’t know.

I like Sally. She was very hard on Ruth in this chapter, but her heart is in the right place. I love this line; 'If I'd a been her mother, I'd ha given her a lollypop instead of a husband. Hoo looks fitter for it'.

Totally agree with your excellent summary of the Benson household @BishyBarnyBee ”Gaskell compares the household with the virtue of Ruth's mother, and we see how they share an innocent and unselfconscious goodness. They may have failings - and Sally's anger may be one of them - but generally a fault in one brings out the goodness in the others and they complement each other in a way which leads to harmony and peace.”

This is precisely why they were my favourite characters, and a welcome contrast to the now maddeningly passive Ruth. I know she’s been traumatised, but at this point in the novel I couldn’t shake off the image of her pitifully degrading herself by running off after the worthless Bellingham’s disappearing carriage. However much I understood her lonely desperation, that undignified sight had to be the lowest point in my sympathies for her. Sally’s brutal cropping of her hair actually restored my feeling for Ruth and had me raging against Sally for her, as I’ve always had a visceral reaction to any attempt to cut, control or cover women’s hair. Not only is it a violation, but a political act since we know that patriarchal societies see a woman’s hair as a symbol of her sexuality, and of course curbing that is what Sally’s instinctive punitive act represents. Although she’s basically a good ‘un with a big heart and nothing like the pharisaical Mr Brocklehurst in Jane Eyre, this scene did remind me of his visit to Lowood School, when he fulminates against the girls with curled hair and top-knots, ordering they be chopped off immediately on pain of eternal hell-fire (watched on, hypocritically, by his own fashionably curled wife and daughters). Sally of course doesn’t have a grand religious justification for it, but simple conventional prejudice and I think more interestingly, annoyance that she hasn’t been told the full facts about why her ‘betters’ have taken Ruth in. It’s faintly funny - almost as if by committing this barbarous act, she’ll be proving she’s no fool by exposing Ruth’s guilt.

Sorry to pursue the hair theme, but I’m completely fascinated by Victorians’ preoccupation with hair; it was everywhere in their literature, art and actual life, with their habit of keeping locks of hair in lockets etc. So for anyone who’s interested there’s an even more upsetting scene in the The Woodlanders, by Hardy (he was obsessed with and often wrote about his first wife Emma’s nut-brown tresses).

SPOILER ALERT:

In this novel, a very poor female character is driven to cut her own hair off by a wealthy woman who covets her beautiful tresses and uses her power to get what she wants. So here, hair is political in an additional way - not just objectification but commodification. It’s a beautiful, heartbreaking novel and one of my favourite Hardys.

Me too! Loved her. Apart from the hair-cropping scene, she’s an absolute hoot and much needed comic relief but not in a patronising way. She’s absolutely a vividly drawn, rounded, complex character in her own right and gets the funniest, most memorable lines.

@ShabanahFazal Yes, it was The Woodlanders I was thinking of, not Return of the Native. Geting my Hardy novels mixed up!