The natural scene

Abstract

Elizabeth Gaskell’s works most often have their inception in an Arcadia which is either real or nostalgically remembered. Even Mary Barton begins with an excursion to Green Heys Fields, and all the sombreness of the succeeding action in industrial Manchester cannot quite obliterate the memory of that May afternoon. The countrybred heroine of Ruth, first seen as a dressmaker’s apprentice in a decayed urban setting, chooses to sit where she can look at the flowers painted on the panels of a once beautiful room. Such beginnings were natural to Elizabeth Gaskell because her earliest recollections were of such an Arcadia and because it continued to represent, throughout her life, the most satisfying form of existence that she knew.