Reference > Cambridge History > The Victorian Age, Part One > The Political And Social Novel > Sylvia’s Lovers
  Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë Cousin Phillis  

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The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907–21).
Volume XIII. The Victorian Age, Part One.

XI. The Political And Social Novel.

§ 18. Sylvia’s Lovers.


But the strictures passed upon passages of this biography gave much pain to its author, and for some years she published little of importance. Lady Ludlow, which was reprinted with several other tales in the pleasantly introduced collection Round the Sofa in after appearing in Household Words during the summer months of the previous year, cannot be reckoned among her best stories; though some of the characters, from the highbred châtelaine to the acute little poacher’s son, are admirably drawn, the machinery, for once, does not move easily. Mrs. Gaskell found herself and her wonderful power of narrative again in Sylvia’s Lovers (1863), a perfect story but for a certain lengthiness and excess of /??/ towards the close. 64  The terrors of the press-gang, a remarkably lucid account of which, after the time-honoured manner of Scott, introduces the story, serves as a background to a domestic drama of extraordinary power, strengthened in its hold upon the mind by the graphic art that brings the grand “Monkshaven” seascape and the rough times of the great naval wars vividly before us. 65  Sylvia’s Lovers can certainly not be called a political novel; but it is a historical novel in the broader sense in which The Heart of Midlothian may be thus described, and worthy to be named with that masterpiece as a tale of passion and anguish that goes straight to every human heart. “It was,’ Mrs. Gaskell said, “the saddest story I ever wrote”; and she poured into it all the infinite pity of which her loving nature was capable. The canvas of the story is full of figures, instinct with life and truth, including Kester, her single male example of a class always a favourite in British fiction, but never drawn with more affectionate humour than by Mrs. Gaskell, whom her own domestic servants adored.   55
Note 64. The motif of Philip’s return to his wife reappears in Mrs. Gaskell’s short tale The Manchester Marriage (1859). Both this and Sylvia’s Lovers were earlier in date of publication than Enoch Arden (1864). [ back ]
Note 65. Crabbe’s story of Ruth in Tales of the Hall, already mentioned, may have suggested the first idea of a tale of impressment to Mrs. Gaskell; but this part of the plot of Sylvia’s Lovers is based on a historical episode of Whitby life of which she had carefully studied the facts. [ back ]

CONTENTS · VOLUME CONTENTS · INDEX OF ALL CHAPTERS · BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD
  Mrs. Gaskell’s Life of Charlotte Brontë Cousin Phillis  
 
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