Ruth season at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House online
Sarah-Clare Conlon, Literature Editor
Throughout 2025, the team at Elizabeth Gaskell’s House is taking a deep dive into Ruth, one of the famous 19th-century author’s most shocking texts. Her novel about a single mother was “banned, burned and denounced from the pulpit” for its controversial storyline.
A ground-breaking work, it is now recognised as the first mainstream novel to tell the story of a ‘fallen woman’ sympathetically. The story centres on the beautiful young Ruth, who loses her home and her job as a seamstress after being seduced by the gentleman Henry Bellingham. She seeks redemption through love for her illegitimate child as she hides from social judgement. Elizabeth Gaskell brought this story to shocked Victorian readers and it still challenges us to consider our attitudes to sex and sin today.
The online talks will give audiences the chance to find out more about the contexts in which Ruth was written, exploring the influence of Victorian society and the industrial Manchester in which Elizabeth Gaskell lived on social change and attitudes, and examining her novel against others published at the same time by authors from Charlotte Brontë to Charles Dickens.
Talks take place 7-8pm and tickets are £6; check out the Elizabeth Gaskell’s House website for all the information and booking links. The season continues on 7 & 21 May, 4 June, 3 September, 1 & 15 October and 19 November (we’ll bring you more on those as the year progresses). The season streams from Elizabeth Gaskell’s House on Manchester’s Plymouth Grove in Chorlton-on-Medlock, but if you can, you should also try and visit in person – just awarded official museum status, the venue is celebrating its 10-year anniversary of opening to the public – read more here.
Ruth – An Introduction (Wednesday 15 January) The 2025 season of Ruth events unfolds with a special introduction to the novel – as the respectable wife of a Unitarian minister, why was Elizabeth Gaskell the first to tell the story of a ‘fallen woman’? How did her writing challenge contemporary stereotypes? What about Elizabeth’s real-life plea to Charles Dickens for help with a seduced teenager? Find out more with speaker Elizabeth Williams.
The Real Ruth – Mapping Elizabeth Gaskell’s Ruth (Wednesday 29 January) Enjoy a literary journey of discovery as Dr Diane Duffy takes you on a virtual visit to some of the places, buildings and landmarks featured in Elizabeth Gaskell’s classic novel. This intriguing talk will interest anyone who wants to find out more about the historic reality of Elizabeth’s writing with vivid descriptions and extracts from the book mapping the way to locations around Cheshire and the English and Welsh countryside.
Motherhood – The Good, The Bad and The Tolerable (Wednesday 26 March) Elizabeth Gaskell’s novels are often pre-occupied with mothers and motherhood. The role of mother was regarded as the peak of Victorian womanhood – women were thought to be domestic angels, designed for the sacred role. With four daughters herself, Elizabeth Gaskell was once dismissed as a cosy writer of domesticity, wrongly regarded as being ‘unintellectual… and easily shocked’. So, what did she actually have to say about motherhood in her writing? Sherry Ashworth delves into Elizabeth Gaskell’s literary mothers and shines a light on the depictions of motherhood in other 19th-century novels, from the ghastly Mrs Gibson in Wives and Daughters to the iconic Mrs Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Marmee in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women.
