Paperback Castles

“I'll not listen to reason... reason always means what someone else has got to say.”

Brilliantly funny. Gaskell's little town of Cranford is both absurd and heartwarming, witty and charming. Gaskell was such a skilled observer, and even now when a hundred years have passed, I can still recognize the dilemmas of gossip, economy and wild fancies. My favorite part of this delicious little novel was when every woman in Cranford suspected robberies and theft in their comfortable homes - and dear Mrs. Forrester scared the life out of everyone by starting to talk about ghosts. I couldn't help but to laugh.

Gaskell is quite genius to make up this entire society of timid women and their small concerns. How one ought to dress, the purchase of a perfect silk gown or the wishful thinking of a fashionable turban instead of a common yellow hat - the little wonders of everyday life fills quite a lot in this book. The constant fear of gentlemen and marriages is so very different from so many other novels at the time where the entire plot revolves around the possibility of a marriage.
In fact, I do not even think "Cranford" has a plot at all. It mostly consists of comical episodes which arranges themselves into vague glimpses of a simple life. Gaskell simply wishes to amuse and to please her reader - and she succeeds gracefully.