Portraying the growth and change of Gaskell's motherless heroines

Abstract

This dissertation is an endeavour to provide a study of the motherless heroines who are portrayed in Elizabeth Gaskell' s novels. I will analyse four novels of Gaskell, in which we find the heroines who are left motherless or orphaned at some point in their lives. The girls have the hard task of growing up without any guidance from a mother, something that is very crucial in a girl's life. It is the mother who provides a girl with the lessons of life and as these girls do not find this advice given to them, they are at risk of acting according to their instincts, not knowing what is good and what is bad in the eyes of society. The novels analysed are Mary Barton, Ruth, North and South and Wives and Daughters. These books were chosen because Gaskell's depiction of the motherless heroine brings up themes which are recurrent in all the novels. The girls all have to go through painful experiences to reach an understanding of themselves and to learn about what the norms of society are. They are all girls who are unreformed at first because they have not had anyone to show them the right behaviour, but in the end we find them all to have reached maturity.