Elizabeth Gaskell

Were women writers helped or hindered by an ideology of womanliness that allowed the good mother to be a writer? This new study of Elizabeth Gaskell's major work, including her novels and her biography of Charlotte Bronte, shows her negotiating her way through the difficulties of being a woman artist in the Victorian period. Her gender, class position and religious beliefs all contribute to the development of a complex author who sometimes appears as an optimistic spokeswoman for her society and sometimes offers a bold challenge to its accepted beliefs.