Five-minute digest
Cranford
Summary
Cranford is a small English country town, twenty miles by railway from the busy commercial city of Drumble, where nearly every householder of the better sort is a single lady or a widow. The narrator, Mary Smith, a young woman from Drumble, visits often and describes their code: calls of exactly fifteen minutes, card parties with wafer bread-and-butter, and an 'elegant economy' that treats spending as vulgar and never names poverty. The ladies are shocked when the retired Captain Brown arrives and says openly in the street that he is poor; yet he wins them over by his kindness, even advising Miss Betsy Barker to dress her Alderney cow, which has fallen into a lime-pit, in grey flannel. He argues with the formidable Miss Deborah Jenkyns, the late rector's daughter, over whether Dr Johnson or the new 'Pickwick Papers' is the better writer. Captain Brown is killed by a train while saving a little child who has strayed onto the line; his invalid elder daughter dies soon after, and the younger, Jessie, marries her old suitor Major Gordon. After Miss Jenkyns's death the book centres on her gentle younger sister, Miss Matty. Mary learns that Miss Matty once refused her cousin Thomas Holbrook, a plain-spoken yeoman farmer, because her family thought him beneath them; the two meet again, but he dies soon after a trip to Paris. Reading old family letters, Miss Matty tells the story of her brother Peter, a boy given to jokes who was publicly flogged by his father, the rector, for a prank, ran away to sea, and was never seen again. A widowed aristocrat, Lady Glenmire, comes to stay with the grand Mrs Jamieson; a travelling conjuror, Signor Brunoni, throws the town into a panic about robbers; and Brunoni, injured when his cart breaks down, proves to be a former soldier, Samuel Brown, whose wife carried their last child across India. Her mention of a kind Englishman called the Aga Jenkyns leads Mary to write secretly to India. Lady Glenmire scandalises Cranford by marrying the good-hearted surgeon Mr Hoggins. When the Town and County Bank fails, Miss Matty loses nearly all her income, after first giving a farmer five sovereigns for one of its worthless notes. Her friends quietly pool what they can spare, her maid Martha marries and takes her in as a lodger, and Miss Matty sells tea from her parlour. Peter at last comes home from India, restores the family's comfort, and reconciles Cranford's quarrelling ladies. The chapters appeared irregularly in Charles Dickens's weekly Household Words from December 1851 to May 1853 and were collected as a book in 1853. The library text is the 1904 J. M. Dent edition, whose picture captions for C. E. Brock's illustrations are kept in brackets though the pictures are not.
Top Lessons
Kindness beneath the rules
Cranford's ladies keep fussy rules about calls, dress and money, and Gaskell laughs at them. Yet when trouble comes, the same ladies give quietly and generously, so the comedy turns out to cover real tenderness.
Honesty when it costs
Miss Matty gives five sovereigns for a farmer's worthless note because she feels responsible as a shareholder. Captain Brown admits his poverty openly. Both choose honesty over appearances.
Old loves and long regrets
Miss Matty's lost chance with Thomas Holbrook and the family's loss of Peter show how pride and harshness can shape a whole life. Gaskell treats these sorrows gently and lets late grace restore some of what was lost.
Old ways and the railway age
The railway that brings news from Drumble is also the train that kills Captain Brown, and the joint-stock bank that pays Miss Matty fails without warning. Gaskell shows a small community meeting the new world with its old loyalties.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“IN the first place, Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women.”
“How naturally one falls back into the phraseology of Cranford! There, economy was always “elegant,” and money-spending always “vulgar and ostentatious”; a sort of sour-grapeism which made us very peaceful and satisfied.”
“Get her a flannel waistcoat and flannel drawers, ma’am, if you wish to keep her alive.”
“God pardon me, if ever I have spoken contemptuously to the Captain!”
“he was always in scrapes; he was too easy.”
“only I would rather exchange my gold for the note, if you please”
Frequently cited
“We all love Miss Matty, and I somehow think we are all of us better when she is near us.”
Medical Lens
Medicine appears in small domestic forms. Mr Hoggins, the town surgeon, is trusted for his skill while his manners are deplored, a neat picture of the general practitioner in a genteel town. Captain Brown's elder daughter dies after a long illness nursed by her sister; Mr Holbrook declines and dies after his Paris trip; Signor Brunoni, hurt when his cart breaks down, is nursed back under Mr Hoggins with Lady Glenmire acting as nurse. Miss Matty's fear of green tea as bad for some constitutions and the ladies' home remedies give period colour. Mrs Brown's account of losing six children in India and carrying the last across the country is the book's most serious passage of illness and grief.
- Ch. II
Mr Hoggins says Miss Brown cannot live many days; her sister nurses her through her last illness after their father's death.
- Ch. XI
The injured conjuror is moved to lodgings and nursed under Mr Hoggins, whose verdict Cranford treats as infallible.
- Ch. XI
Mrs Brown tells how her children died in India and how she carried her last baby to safety.