Reading Order
Wives and Daughters Reading Order
Wives and Daughters (1864-66) by Elizabeth Gaskell is her last and fullest novel — an unfinished masterpiece (Gaskell died before completing the final chapters, and the novel ends with Molly and Roger's relationship still unresolved) that investigates the social world of the country town of Hollingford in the early nineteenth century through the eyes of Molly Gibson, the motherless daughter of the local doctor. Molly's world is upended when her father remarries — his new wife Hyacinth (a widow of great charm and no depth) brings her own daughter Cynthia into the household, and Cynthia's dazzling beauty and genuine warmth (combined with her moral carelessness) become both Molly's greatest friendship and her greatest source of suffering. The novel is organized around the parallel between Molly's steady, reliable, self-forgetful love (for the scientist Roger Hamley, who initially falls for Cynthia) and Cynthia's brilliant, charming, fundamentally uncommitted relationship to everyone around her. Wives and Daughters is Gaskell's closest approach to a Tolstoyan or Eliot-level social investigation — the character comedy of Miss Phoebe and Miss Browning, the tragedy of Squire Hamley and his son Osborne, and the portrait of the provincial scientific world (Roger is a naturalist who goes to Africa) all contribute to a picture of a whole society in transition.
Where to start
Wives and Daughters (1864-66) — the complete novel as Gaskell left it (with the short final chapter summary by the editor Frederick Greenwood). Best Gaskell reading order: North and South → Wives and Daughters → Mary Barton → Cranford.
Complete Wives and Daughters Book List
- 1Buy
Wives and Daughters
Elizabeth Gaskell·1866·The complete novel — Molly Gibson, Cynthia Kirkpatrick, Roger Hamley, and Hollingford. Gaskell's finest and most novelistic work; the Penguin Classics edition is recommended; the BBC television adaptation (1999) with Justine Waddell and Anthony Howell is excellent - 2Buy
North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell·1855·The companion — Margaret Hale and John Thornton. The companion as the more politically engaged and more dramatically intense version of the same investigation: where Wives and Daughters is organized around the social comedy of a country town, North and South is organized around the intellectual confrontation between the agricultural South and the industrial North - 3Buy
Middlemarch
George Eliot·1871·Eliot's companion masterpiece — the social world of a Midlands provincial town. The companion as the nearest equivalent in English fiction to the scale and depth of Gaskell's investigation: both novels are organized around the relationship between a woman of exceptional quality and the provincial world that both forms and limits her - 4Buy
Mary Barton
Elizabeth Gaskell·1848·Gaskell's companion first novel — the Manchester working class. The companion as the predecessor in the Gaskell investigation: where Wives and Daughters is organized around the social comedy of the middle-class provincial town, Mary Barton is organized around the suffering of the industrial working class in the same period - 5Buy
Emma
Jane Austen·1815·Austen's companion — Emma Woodhouse in Highbury. The companion as the predecessor in the tradition of the country-town social comedy: both novels are organized around a social world seen through the eyes of an intelligent young woman, and both use the social comedy of a small English community to investigate the relationship between intelligence, self-knowledge, and the possibility of genuine love - 6Buy
Cranford
Elizabeth Gaskell·1853·The companion — the ladies of Cranford. The companion as the more concentrated and elegiac investigation of the same small English provincial world: where Wives and Daughters is organized around the full social comedy of Hollingford, Cranford is organized around the last survivors of the old order — the Amazonian ladies — and their comedy of management and survival - 7Buy
The Warden
Anthony Trollope·1855·Trollope's companion investigation of the same English provincial world — the Barchester clergy. The companion as the male and clerical version of the same investigation: both novels are organized around a small English community in the mid-nineteenth century, and both investigate the relationship between the social world's ordinary comedy and the moral questions that underlie it - 8Buy
The Mill on the Floss
George Eliot·1860·Eliot's companion — Maggie Tulliver's search for a life the world cannot give her. The companion as the more tragic investigation of the same provincial English world: Molly Gibson and Maggie Tulliver are companion figures — both daughters of limited but loving fathers, both with complicated relationships to a brilliant other woman (Cynthia/Lucy), and both in love with a man who initially chooses the other
Wives and Daughters — Frequently Asked Questions
What is Wives and Daughters about?
Wives and Daughters is about Molly Gibson, the motherless daughter of the local doctor in the Cheshire town of Hollingford, and the upheaval caused by her father's second marriage. Mr. Gibson remarries a charming widow (Hyacinth Kirkpatrick) who brings her own daughter Cynthia into the household; Cynthia's dazzling beauty and genuine warmth — combined with her fundamental moral carelessness — become both Molly's greatest friendship and the source of her greatest suffering. The novel is organized around the contrast between Molly's steady, reliable, self-forgetful love (for the scientist Roger Hamley, who initially falls for Cynthia) and Cynthia's brilliant, charming, fundamentally uncommitted relationship to everyone around her. Gaskell died before finishing the novel — the last installment ends before Molly and Roger's relationship is resolved — but the editor Frederick Greenwood provided a summary of what was to come, and the novel is generally regarded as among the finest in English.
Is Wives and Daughters finished?
Wives and Daughters is not quite finished — Elizabeth Gaskell died of a sudden heart attack in November 1865, while still writing the final chapters. The novel had been appearing serially in The Cornhill Magazine since 1864, and the final installment was published posthumously in January 1866. The editor Frederick Greenwood wrote a brief postscript summarizing what was to come: Roger would return from Africa, Molly's goodness would finally be recognized, and she and Roger would eventually come together. The novel is thus generally read as complete-in-substance, even if the final chapters are missing — the thematic and formal arc is fully developed, and what is absent is only the explicit resolution. It is widely considered among the finest Victorian novels.
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