James’s review may emphasize that the author is female, but, unlike our own contemporary obsession with the target demographics for various art forms—“chick-lit” and “chick-flicks,” to name two current monikers—it does not assume or even believe that the audience of the novel is necessarily female. If anything, James projects a male reader, one who will feel what he calls an “almost fraternal relation” to the heroine Molly Gibson. Elizabeth Gaskell was, as Henry James allows, a “lady-novelist,” but one who excites every “reader’s very warmest admiration.” Our contemporary concern for deemphasizing an author’s gender when evaluating art, while often simultaneously emphasizing who is meant to consume it, was not shared by the mid-Victorians. James’s review reflects this, as does the considerable attention Gaskell gave to what we now call the “packaging” of her first novel. Like her good friend Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell had sought a male pseudonym to use for her first novel, Mary Barton:ATale of Manchester Life (1848), even though her publisher had suggested that the novel would be more popular if it was known to be the work of “a lady” (Uglow, Elizabeth Gaskelclass="underline" A Habit of Stories, p. 183). The account that Jenny Uglow, one of Gaskell’s biog raphers, gives of the publishing process suggests that Gaskell was invested in the commercial presentation of the novel; Uglow speculates that Gaskell “may have felt that a man’s name (like the proposed title, “John Barton”) would make the readers take the politics of the book more seriously.” Gaskell agonized about the choice of the male pseudonym until she chose—too late—the name “Stephen Berwick” (Uglow, pp. 187—188). In the end, Mary Barton was published anonymously, but, having caused considerable controversy, the identity of its author was soon known and celebrated. Henceforth, Elizabeth Gaskell would publish her novels, if not quite in her own name, under her married appellation of “Mrs. Gaskell.”
To read Wives and Daughters today is to forget perhaps the extraordinary opportunity that writing fiction presented to Victorian women. The book trade during the period was a profoundly commercial enterprise. And unlike in earlier periods, the arts were divorced from either university ties or elite patronage, which particularly benefited women writers. Writing literature was one of the very few professional pursuits open to women in Victorian society. Elizabeth Gaskell was connected to a broad literary community of women, many of whom were her friends and some of whom she actively promoted with her own connections. This circle, which included Charlotte Brontë, Geraldine Jewsbury, Harriet Martineau, Anna Jameson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Caroline Clive, reads like a list of the most popular and important female literary figures of the day. And yet it would be a mistake to assume that a novel such as Wives and Daughters is solely the province of the female reader. Our contemporary perspective might look to the title Wives and Daughters and think the book is directed to the female reader, even though the title was most likely influenced by Russian novelist Ivan Turgenev’s Fathers and Sons (1862). The conventional assumption about novels, and romance plots and domestic narratives in particular, is that women make up their primary audience; indeed, the stereotype of the woman who reads too many novels, and becomes sick from “gorging” on too many delicious reads, originated in the eighteenth century and circulated widely in the Victorian period. And yet a host of descriptions, anecdotal evidence, figures from circulating libraries, and surveys about book ownership and reading habits suggest that men were as avid novel readers as women. And indeed what, exactly, in the novel marks it out for the female reader? As will become apparent as you read the novel and the following discussion, the work of Elizabeth Gaskell cannot be slotted into contemporary demographic readerships, but rather is inviting— as Henry James himself said—to anyone interested in an “ ‘everyday story’ ... in an everyday style.”
It is important to understand that the novel—as a distinct art form or literary genre—has not always been with us. Moreover, in some sense, it required the emergence of a middle-class society: one in which there was enough leisure time to read, privacy in which to do it, literacy to enable it, and enough money to purchase or borrow books. The literary critic Ian Watt, in his well-known book The Rise of the Novel, articulated the emergence of the novel, specifically his concept of “formal realism,” within the historical context of the early eighteenth century and as arising from the following conditions: the rise of the middle class, the growth of commercial capitalism, the eclipse of strict feudal and aristocratic relationships, and (more broadly and theoretically) the emergence of “individualism” as a value stemming from the Protestant Reformation. We know that the audience for novels grew considerably in the Victorian period. This was due to a number of factors, including cheaper production costs. (That the novels became cheaper to possess is related to the consumption of them as works of art, for just as reading a novel is scaled to one person, the capability of infinite reproduction of that artwork through cheap editions makes any one copy worthless.) Other factors contributed to the growth of the audience for novels, including the increase in literacy, although the extent of literacy in the Victorian period is hard to quantify with certitude. The growth of cities with their more concentrated markets, the expanded markets in the colonies, and the proliferation of circulating libraries were also significant factors. The circulating library, which lent books for an annual membership fee, was a common means by which Victorian readers obtained novels, for it was not until the 1890s that free public libraries became common and the institution of the circulating library collapsed. Cheap versions of fictional works were not as readily available as has been popularly imagined; reproductions of classics, abridgments, and penny popular fiction were available, but more serious fiction (including Dickens, Thackeray, Gaskell, Eliot, and Trollope) was not reprinted in cheap form for some time after the first printing—from one to three or even five years.
Novels, however, did not necessarily first appear as volumes, but were often first printed as serials. That is, installments of the novels—known as “numbers”—would come out in a magazine or journal. Wives and Daughters first appeared this way in the Cornhill Magazine, a respected monthly aimed at the educated middle and upper-middle classes. Charles Dickens, a publisher as well as an author, first brought out many of his novels—including Great Expectations (1861) and A Tale of Two Cities (1859)—in monthly installments in his magazines Household Words and All the Year Round. Dickens in fact published Elizabeth Gaskell. A great number of magazines other than the two Dickens edited brought out fiction in “part” form, and while the practice lasted (it had died out by the 1880s), it was often a lucrative device for authors and publishers alike. However, publishing in serial form, as might be surmised, did put certain constraints and demands on authors. Gaskell, whose professional relationship with Dickens lasted some thirteen years, is said to have chafed at some of the demands put on her by Dickens as editor. Gaskell, as the volume you are holding might suggest, is not known for being economical with words, and indeed this was a source of contention between Dickens and Gaskell; money did not enter into their disagreements, as Dickens was generous with his authors. As an editor Dickens sometimes asked Gaskell to alter conclusions and strongly encouraged her to end installments on important moments in the flow of the story, or even on cliffhangers—requests to which she would only occasionally comply. Gaskell would go on to publish in other journals, including Fraser’s Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, and the Cornhill. She was a popular author in the United States as well; she published her novels in American periodicals such as Harper’s New Monthly Magazine and The Atlantic Monthly beginning in 1849. Gaskell’s most important editor after Dickens was a George Smith, who together with William Thackeray edited the Cornhill, a journal that also published such Victorian luminaries as George Eliot, John Ruskin, and Matthew Arnold. Wives and Daughters first appeared in the Cornhill over the course of eighteen months; the first installment came out in August 1864, and the final monthly installment appeared in January 1866, several months after Gaskell’s death. Each installment was equal to approximately three chapters. If you were to look at the original serials of the Cornhill, you would see that Wives and Daughters appeared alongside novels by Anthony Trollope (The Small House at Allington) and Wilkie Collins (Armadale) .