She braved the opprobrium of her husband’s Unitarian congregation, in part for her depiction of prostitution and illegitimacy, particularly in her novel Ruth, and also for her challenge to the traditional view of women’s role in society. 

Elizabeth Gaskell biography: The Gaskell Society

Various critics and biographers describe Mrs. Gaskell’s writings as “old-fashioned”, “warm hearted”, “melodramatic”, and even “over-wrought”. Some of the feminists have taken her up as a “proto-feminist”, although her portrayal of female characters seems to me to be most conservative and traditional. Ruth, Mrs. Gaskell’s story about a “fallen woman”, portrays the title character as woman bound to lifelong penance and disgrace, with maybe a possible inkling of a chance to become a saint at last.

I tend to think of sin “but lightly”. Sin is something to be repented, forsaken, and forgotten. Modern psychology and evangelical Christianity would say that this is a healthy way to think about the wrongs that we do to one another. In fact, moderns would go a step further, reclassifying many of the sins that horrified the Victorians and those who came before them as human foibles and minor eccentricities. Adultery, fornication, all the sexual sins as well as greed, jealousy, envy, and conceit are not really SIN, but just a difference of opinion or the way a certain person deals with life.

In Ruth, characters are crushed by their own sin and horrified and judgmental about the sin of others. Not just Ruth herself, but other people in the book judge themselves or others harshly when they perceive that their actions have broken God’s law or the social code of Victorian society. Mrs. Gaskell shows in Ruth how this judgmental and unforgiving attitude is unfair and limiting, often pushing sinners back into the sin they would choose to leave, if permitted. Ruth in the book is allowed to repent and to live a reformed life, but the weight of her sin is ever present, and the consequences of her youthful actions are visited on her illegitimate son as he is called upon to suffer for Ruth’s sin.

Maybe there’s a balance somewhere in there. I don’t believe we need to live with guilt and shame weighing us down so much that we become like Ruth, some kind of shadow people, who never feel worthy or whole enough to live in the light of God’s forgiveness and grace. Ruth is self-abnegating to the point of being nearly suicidal. But . . .

If you think of sin but lightly

nor suppose the evil great,

here may view its nature rightly,

here its guilt may estimate.

Mark the sacrifice appointed,

see who bears the awful load;

’tis the Word, the Lord’s anointed,

Son of Man and Son of God.

Our sin is great, but God’s mercy is greater. I suppose that’s the balance we need to strike. And if Mrs. Gaskell’s sometimes melodramatic and devastating portrayal of sin and its consequences can swing the pendulum back toward a truer vision of our need for repentance, then it’s not a bad antidote for a society bent on denying that sin is sin or need have any negative consequences at all.

I thought Ruth gave a good picture of Victorian England and its view of sexual sin and its consequences. It’s a compassionate book, and even if the male characters, whose sin is just as great or greater than Ruth’s, get off lightly in terms of earthly consequences, Ruth is clearly the heroine of the story whose life and reputation “shine like the brightness of the heavens, and . . . lead many to righteousness, like the stars.” (Daniel 12:3)

I read 22 books of biography, autobiography or memoir in 2021. Becoming Elisabeth Elliot was probably the best of the lot, although The Hiding Place is a timeless classic worth reading over and over again.

• The Hiding Place by Corrie ten Boom (re-read) If I had a book I read every year, this one would probably be worth the re-reading. I was inspired once again to live for Christ where I am in the situations and with the people where God has placed me.
• When God Doesn’t Fix It by Laura Story. Singer, song writer, and worship leader, Laura Story writes about her husband Martin and his struggle with a brain tumor, but also about her life as the wife of a man with short term memory loss and other issues as a result of the brain tumor. We did a study of this book at church, and it was excellent and encouraging, even though it’s about “Lessons You Never Wanted to Learn, Truths You Can’t Live Without.”
• Becoming Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn. Fantastic, not hagiographic at all, but also not a tearing down of a woman I greatly admire. Reading this story of the first half (approximately) of Elisabeth Elliot’s life made me anxious to read promised sequel as well as wanting to re-read Ms. Elliot’s books, especially her one novel, No Graven Image. Or I might want to read some of her books that I haven’t read before.
• Witness by Whittaker Chambers. Long, but worth the time and effort. I learned more about Chambers and Alger Hiss and the Communist Party and spying in the 1920’s in the the U.S. than I ever dreamed of asking.
• Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Caroline Fraser. Good stuff about Laura Ingalls Wilder, made me even more anti-Rose Wilder.
• The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh by Candace Fleming. Excellent biography of a flawed man.
• The Best Cook in the World: Tales From My Momma’s Table by Rick Bragg. Humor, with recipes.
• To Live Is Christ by Beth Moore. A biography of Paul, the apostle, as well as notes on the book of Acts. Ms. Moore write good, well-researched, accessible Bible commentary.
• The Genius Under the Table by Eugene Yelchin. I guess (???) it’s autobiographical, somewhat fictionalized, told from a child’s point of view, about the author’s childhood and family growing up in Soviet Russia. I’m not sure how much is fact and how much is fiction. I did like it, but Yelchin is an odd writer for me. Maybe there’s a culture gap? I’m not always sure when he’s joking and when he’s serious.
• Autobiography by Fanny J. Crosby. Not the best writing I’ve ever read, but some of the best, time-tested, Christ-infused ideas.

“People who do not know the Lord ask why in the world we waste our lives as missionaries. They forget that they too are expending their lives . . . and when the bubble has burst, they will have nothing of eternal significance to show for the years they have wasted.”

~Nate Saint in Becoming Elisabeth Elliot

“[Communist faith] is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of man without God.”

~Witness by Whittaker Chambers

“At that end, all men simply pray, and prayer takes as many forms as there are men. Without exception, we pray. We pray because there is nothing else to do, and because that is where God is—where there is nothing else.”

~Witness by Whittaker Chambers

“The mind appears to me like a great storehouse into which we place various articles for safekeeping and sometimes even forget that they are there, but sooner or later we find them; and so I lay aside my intellectual wares for some future day or need; and in the meantime often forget them, until the call comes for a hymn.”

Fanny J. Crosby’s Autobiography

“Kindness in this world will do much to help others, not only to come into the light, but to grow in grace day by day. There are many timid souls whom we jostle morning and evening as we pass them by, but if only the kind word were spoken they might become fully persuaded.”

Fanny J. Crosby’s Autobiography

“I cannot see what I have gone through until I write it down. I am blind without a pencil.”

~Anne Lindbergh, quoted in The Rise and Fall of Charles Lindbergh

“Am I going to let my circumstances determine my view of God, or am I going to let God determine how I view my circumstances?

~When God Doesn’t Fix It by Laura Story

“Look at the Psalms. David wrote many of them when he was broken; and in them he poured out some painful and intimate questions. Sometimes David got answers. Sometimes he got silence. But even when David’s questions weren’t answered, his faith in God was stronger than his need to know.”

~When God Doesn’t Fix It by Laura Story

“Waiting on God requires the willingness to bear uncertainty, to carry within oneself the unanswered question, lifting the heart to God about it whenever it intrudes upon one’s thoughts. It is easier to talk oneself into a decision that has no permanence, than to wait patiently.”

~Becoming Elisabeth Elliot by Ellen Vaughn