![]() Also set in rural Cheshire, it has more men than Cranford and hence more romance (when the BBC produced it 10 years ago there was no need to graft on extra plots to produce something approaching a Mr Darcy moment). If you like this kind of steely pastoral then you should also try Wives and Daughters (1865), Gaskell's last book, which was unfinished at the time of her death. Captain Brown, played by Jim Carter, is dead pretty much from the beginning, which, as Gaskell explains, is what tends to happen to any man who strays into Cranford. The pace is gentler, although the anti-man undertow of the ladies' conversations is even fiercer. But don't expect it to be remotely like the telly. ![]() Read Cranford (1853) by all means - it is sublime. A prolific author who wrote for money when she needed to, Mrs Gaskell's oeuvre is patchy. And, in truth, there is a good reason why no one now bothers with these bits of journeyman prose. These last two belong to two other Gaskell stories, the seldom read My Lady Ludlow and Mr Harrison's Confession. ![]() Miss Matty's in there, of course, and Mary Smith and all the other gossipy old ladies, but Lady Ludlow (played by Francesca Annis) and Dr Harrison (scrummy Simon Woods) are nowhere to be seen. If your only knowledge of Cranford comes from the hit BBC production (which finished last night), you're going to find reading Mrs Gaskell's original text a bit of a shock. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |