Question 1

Is Wives and Daughters finished?

Accepted Answer

Wives and Daughters was left unfinished at Elizabeth Gaskell's death in November 1865; she died suddenly of a heart attack while talking with family, and the final chapter was not written. The novel had been serialized in the Cornhill Magazine, and the editor Frederick Greenwood wrote a note for the final installment explaining what Gaskell had told him would happen: Molly Gibson and Roger Hamley would marry, her stepmother Hyacinth would come to appreciate Molly, and the various subplots would be resolved. Gaskell had written almost all of the novel — only the final chapter remained — and the existing text is complete enough that most readers do not feel the absence of the ending while reading. The novel as published is not broken off mid-narrative; it ends in a place where the reader can reasonably infer what is coming. Greenwood's note explains what it would have been.

Question 2

How does Wives and Daughters compare to Pride and Prejudice?

Accepted Answer

The comparison is apt and was made by Gaskell's contemporaries. Both novels follow a young woman of limited means navigating a society structured around marriage, with a mother whose self-absorption and social anxiety are a constant source of difficulty. Both are fundamentally comedies of manners that contain genuine emotional weight. Both feature a morally serious and perceptive heroine whose judgment is usually right, and a romantic hero who requires the heroine's influence to become worthy of her. But the differences are significant: Gaskell's social observation is more directly engaged with the economic realities of Victorian life (the doctor's income, the land economy, scientific careers), her novel is warmer and more specifically provincial in its texture, and Molly Gibson is less witty than Elizabeth Bennet — more quietly observant, more genuinely vulnerable to being hurt. Austen's irony is consistent and defended; Gaskell's is softer and more sympathetic.

Question 3

Who is Roger Hamley and why is he significant?

Accepted Answer

Roger Hamley, the younger son of the local Squire, is the romantic hero of Wives and Daughters — but he is a different kind of Victorian romantic hero from Rochester or Thornton. He is not brooding, not secretive, not dark; he is a naturalist, intellectually serious, genuinely good-natured, and notable primarily for his solidity and his scientific intelligence (he is eventually going to Africa as a naturalist, and Gaskell drew on Darwin and Hooker in creating him). His first attachment in the novel is to Molly's stepsister Cynthia, who is charming and unserious and does not value him; his gradual recognition of Molly's worth, and Molly's of his, is the novel's quiet center. Gaskell was interested in a romantic hero who was admirable rather than dazzling — someone worth loving for what he was rather than for his intensity or his secrets. Roger Hamley is the Victorian ideal of the man of science as romantic figure.

Wives and Daughters Reading Order

Complete Wives and Daughters Book List