The problem of Cranford's structure is central to an understanding of the book. Until Martin Dodsworth's article “Women Without Men at Cranford”¹ appeared, critics generally believed that it consisted of a number of loosely-connected incidents with no underlying progression lending direction to the plot. Dodsworth, however, finds a central unity in Cranford's “pattern of guilt and expiation.” He sees the novel as divided into two sections of unequal length. The first part deals with Captain Brown's invasion of Cranford's wholly feminine society and his accidental death, symbolizing feminine rejection of the male's role in the community. The second represents an atonement on the part of Cranford females for their guilt in the death-rejection through a reintroduction of men into their society. This expiation is accomplished by a series of incidents proving “the insufficiency of the female in a world of two sexes.”

Dodsworth is correct in seeing a distinct movement in the novel; he is also correct in believing that this progression advances from a complete rejection of the male at the beginning of the book to a complete acceptance of him at the end. The reader is told on the very first page that

… Cranford is in possession of the Amazons; all the holders of houses above a certain rent are women. If a married couple come to settle in the town, somehow the gentleman disappears; he is either fairly frightened to death by being the only man in the Cranford evening parties, or he is accounted for by being with his regiment, his ship, or closely engaged in business all the week in the great neighbouring commercial town of Drumble, distant only twenty miles on a railroad. In short, whatever does become of the gentlemen, they are not at Cranford. What could they do if they were there?²

Ironically enough, the rest of the book is devoted to answering this question; but though a man figures importantly in almost every incident which occurs in the novel, its structure and movement are dependent on the heroine's psychological make-up. Miss Matty, champion of Christian ethics and paragon of all feminine virtues, determines the progression of Cranford by her willingness to develop as a human being. Dodsworth is right when he proposes that “the principle of male vitality returns to Cranford, bringing with it promise of new life”; but this is not brought about by the defeat of Cranford's females. On the contrary, it seems to come about by the emergence of genuine femininity as manifested in the character of Matty. The structure of the novel, then, is based on characterization, not incident or plot; and it is the females who dominate this element of the novel.

In my opinion, the book is divided into two parts—each dominated by one of the Jenkyns sisters who directs the narrative by force of her unique personality. The first section describes the reign of Miss Deborah Jenkyns as social arbiter of Cranford; the second relates Matty Jenkyns's struggle and triumph over the village's policy of feminine isolationism which her sister had initiated. By teaching Cranford to emphasize its humanity as well as its propriety, Matty changes the temperament of the town. The movement of the book can be explained as a progression from psychological abnormality to psychological normality, from a perverted sense of feminism to a natural application of femininity. Far from proving the “insufficiency of the female in a world of two sexes,” the movement of Cranford demonstrates the limitless strength of the female when she overcomes her fear of male domination by concentrating her whole being on giving tenderness and understanding to mankind. Dodsworth has laid the groundwork for a psychological study of the novel; but in emphasizing theme rather than character analysis he seems to have missed the basic irony which informs the story and provides its humor with a background reservoir of well-conceived pathos, an irony resulting from the paradox of weakness and strength as found in the personalities of the two Jenkyns sisters. Deborah's psychology is the key to Matty's, which is, in turn, the key to the novel's progression.

At the beginning of the story, Cranford is pictured as a fortress of feminism defended by the indomitable Deborah. Captain Brown and his two daughters arrive, and in a short time the Captain has insulted the propriety of Deborah's Cranford ladies by admitting without shame that he lacks money. Destined to be forever wrong in the female community, the Captain antagonizes Deborah again when he begs to disagree with her as to the superiority of Dr. Johnson, her late father's favorite author, over the author of the Pickwick Papers.

This incident is the first in a series of small psychological details which Mrs. Gaskell provides to help the reader understand Deborah's immoderate attachment to the father-figure. Miss Jenkyns had become the constant companion of her real father, the minister of Cranford, after he had driven away his only son Peter in a moment of hasty anger. It becomes evident that even after his death her whole course of life is dominated by his personality, that she has made herself into a living shrine to his memory. She prefers being called Debōrah, for instance, because her father had “once said that the Hebrew name ought to be so pronounced” (14). Her excessive identification with the late Reverend leads her to behave ridiculously at times. In the illuminating chapter, “Old Letters,” the narrator Mary Smith and Miss Matty peruse Deborah's correspondence, and the reader finds that she wrote even to her close friends pretentious sermons instead of the congenial notes one would expect a woman to compose. She tried, in effect to become a substitute for the late Reverend Mr. Jenkyns, and in Cranford society she succeeded.

Ironically, instead of being a leader in the cause of feminine superiority as she thought she was, Deborah existed simply as a shadow of the man she had most respected in her early life. Her feminism was merely superimposed. Her rivalry was not with her father as representative of male authority, but rather with those who might replace her in his affections, e.g., brother, sister, and mother. She found the solution to this competition in complete identification with the Reverend's character. Afraid of paternal rejection, she assimilated her father's ideals and idiosyncrasies. This desire to remain close to her father—both during his life and after—led to the expulsion from Cranford of any male whose vitality threatened to overshadow the minister's influence, an influence not wholly advantageous since the Reverend was sometimes overly proud and unfeeling.

Again, ironically, Deborah's success in Cranford does not come about through her own efforts. Her principal victories, the death of Captain Brown and the expatriation of Peter Jenkyns, are not victories at all; they occur because the two males involved have strong characters. As Dodsworth points out, however, Deborah “sees Brown's death as the consequence of his failure to give way to her will”; for was he not “killed for reading … that book by Mr. Boz” (27)? In reality, he was killed while saving the life of a child, though it is true that moments before his death he had been deeply engrossed in the Pickwick Papers. And again, although it was Peter's wish “to plague Deborah” (60), which brought about his downfall, his exile was self-imposed. His father had beaten and upbraided him publicly for masquerading as his older sister. Oppressed by the unjust magnitude of his punishment, Peter decides to run away from home and join the navy. He bids a cursory but tender good-by to his mother, and from that time on Deborah appears to assume first place in her father's affections and, by extension, leadership in the Cranford community.

Miss Matty relates that Deborah “was such a daughter to my father as I think there never was before or since. His eyes failed him, and she read book after book, and wrote, and copied, and was always at his service in any parish business. She could do many more things than my poor mother could; she even once wrote a letter to the bishop for my father” (70-71). After Mrs. Jenkyns's death, Deborah attempted to be everything to her father; but though the Reverend appreciated her efforts, she could not take the place of his wife and son whose principal gift had been the talent to love. Miss Matty says that in spite of Deborah's attentiveness “he missed my mother sorely; the whole parish noticed it” (71). When Peter comes home for a visit the reader discovers the tenuous position which Deborah's industry has won for her in her father's heart. Miss Matty relates naively, “He never walked out without Peter's arm to lean upon. Deborah used to smile … and say she was quite put in a corner. Not but what my father always wanted her when there was letter-writing or reading to be done, or anything to be settled” (71). Deborah's pathetically unsuccessful struggle to possess her father's love completely must have led to the rigid feminism of her later years. It is sadly ironic that her failure to do this should have led to her success as leader of the feminist cause in Cranford, that her personal abnormality should have been adopted by the community.

Mrs. Gaskell stages a structural coup d'état when she brings Deborah's reign in Cranford to a close not by describing Miss Jenkyns' own death but by describing the death of Miss Brown and the patient endurance of Miss Jessie, her younger sister. Not only is Miss Jessie's love story intended as a contrast and parallel to Miss Matty's, but both Brown sisters reflect the character of the minister's daughters—Miss Jessie and Miss Matty, the benevolent sacrificial lambs; Miss Brown and Miss Jenkyns, the indomitable tyrants. Miss Brown's death speech could well have served for Deborah's: “‘Oh, Jessie! Jessie! How selfish I have been! God forgive me for letting you sacrifice yourself for me as you did! I have so loved you—and yet I have thought only of myself. God forgive me!’” (23). It is interesting, too, that one of her last speeches concerns how much she loves her father and how sorry she is that his life has been filled with sorrow. It is yet more significant that Miss Brown's very last words are “‘But you will be alone—Jessie!’” (23). This is a foreshadowing of what is in store for Miss Matty who had, like Miss Jessie, rejected a suitor in order to remain with her sister—a foreshadowing which Deborah, a witness to Miss Brown's death, must have recognized.

Though Miss Jenkyns never directly asks forgiveness of her own younger sister, is she not symbolically attempting to atone to Miss Matty when she allows Miss Jessie's one-time suitor to enter her home for the purpose of re-courting the bereaved woman? Has not Deborah opened the way for Miss Matty's character development by sanctioning Miss Jessie's femininity? One day when Matty breathlessly bursts in to tell Deborah that there is a man in the drawing-room with his arm around Jessie, Miss Jenkyns crushingly replies, “‘The most proper place in the world for his arm to be in. Go away, Matilda, and mind your own business’” (26).

It is fitting that Deborah is last pictured with the product of her match-making, Miss Jessie's offspring, Flora; for though she talks a good deal about Dr. Johnson in this scene, she has taken the first step toward unfettering the latent femininity of her sister who will, in turn, unchain the whole of Cranford society from its feminist imprisonment. The end of Deborah's life has served as a bridge in the novel's structural development.

After Deborah's death, Miss Matty attempts to tread lightly in her sister's footsteps; but it is obvious from the beginning that her own personality has been submerged long enough. It is symbolic that in deference to her sister's wishes she asks Mary Smith to address her henceforward as Miss Matilda. The narrator explains “we all tried to drop the more familiar name, but with so little success that by-and-by we gave up the attempt” (28). The reader suspects Miss Matty of overcompensation when it is learned that “Miss Jenkyns's rules were made more stringent than ever, because the framer of them was gone where there could be no appeal” (32). For what reason is she overcompensating? The reader discovers the basis of Matty's mixed emotions toward her late sister when the kindly spinster meets her one-time suitor in Cranford, a suitor whom she had rejected because her father and sister had insisted that he was below them socially. Matty's sisterly love cannot help but be spiced with a touch of resentment which she must fight to conquer. Deborah and the Reverend had ruined her chance for marital happiness, just as the Reverend alone had earlier destroyed her mother's peace of mind; in both cases their own rigid code of social behavior made them value propriety above human love and kindness.

Matty is still deeply in love with Thomas Holbrook when she accidentally meets him for the first time in many years. The reader learns that Mr. Holbrook is worthy of her love, for “he despised every refinement which had not its root deep down in humanity” (34).

Matty is about to discover that she, unlike her late sister, does not put great stress on the superficialities of the social code. As a matter of fact, they grow less and less important to her as the book advances. She accepts an invitation to dine at Mr. Holbrook's house; and, with a shyness forced upon her by sterner spirits, she says afterwards, “It is very pleasant dining with a bachelor. … I only hope it is not improper; so many pleasant things are” (40-41).

During the dinner-visit, Mr. Holbrook, well versed though he is in literature, admits that he does not know Dr. Johnson's poems well. Mrs. Gaskell has symbolically set him up as a foil to Deborah. His influence over Matty is directly opposed to hers; he stands for a commitment to humanity itself; she represents a devotion to a man-made code of behavior. It is sad, but necessary for Mr. Holbrook to die soon after their meeting; for this unseals Matty's heart as nothing else could have. When she learns of his death she retires to her room, and Mary Smith explains that later “She came into the drawing-room at tea-time, but it was evidently an effort to her; and, as if to make up for some reproachful feeling against her late sister, Miss Jenkyns, which had been troubling her all afternoon, and for which she now felt penitent, she kept telling me how good and how clever Deborah was in her youth …” (46).

At first it seems that all Mr. Holbrook's death has accomplished is to create in Matty a sense of guilt and to bring forth her latent tendency toward sentimentalism. Mr. Holbrook's death is not to be in vain, however; for as a result of her freshly-aroused love, Miss Matty makes her first attempt to right the wrong her sister had inadvertently done to the community. She allows her servant-girl, Martha, to have a steady beau, a thing unheard of in Deborah's reign. In a tender scene, Miss Matty tells Martha of her decision and ends with “‘God forbid … that I should grieve any young hearts!’” (48) In one sentence Mrs. Gaskell has expressed the wealth of sorrow which Matty has had to endure.

Having described Miss Matty in relation to her family, Mrs. Gaskell next depicts her against the background of Cranford society. Dodsworth points out that these chapters (VII and VIII) “describe the emptiness of village society—its greed …, its snobbery … ; the triviality of it …”; but they also illuminate Miss Matty's position in the midst of this pettiness. They show that whatever the motives of other Cranford women, Miss Matty is uniformly motivated by kindness and generosity. Although she has not yet assumed her rightful position as liberator of Cranford femininity, she manifests in this portion of the novel the love and charity necessary for the accomplishment of the task.

When Deborah died “something of the clear knowledge of the strict code of gentility went out too” (77); in Miss Matty one finds a knowledge of the code of gentleness. It is amusingly symbolic that Matty is never able to answer questions of decorum without becoming supremely perplexed.³ Miss Matty's only answers to social questions are based upon naive good sense and a high degree of personal benevolence, not upon a superimposed code of social behavior. She settles the matter of visiting the nouvelle riche Mrs. Fitz-Adam, for instance, by innocently suggesting that the lady in question may have moved to Cranford for the specific purpose of being accepted into its society; “and if this had been her hope it would be cruel to disappoint her” (77).

Miss Matty is always meek, often bewildered, and sometimes silly; but there is a latent dignity about her which manifests itself when the situation most demands it. She may wear two caps at once when flurried or nervous, but she also has the ability to meet indignities with honor and to answer contempt with homely majesty as her painful interview with Mrs. Jamieson proves. Mary Smith narrates:

… Mrs. Jamieson came now to insinuate pretty plainly that she did not particularly wish that the Cranford ladies should call upon her sister-in-law [Lady Glenmire] … with slow deliberation she was explaining her wishes to Miss Matty, who, a true lady herself, could hardly understand the feeling which made Mrs. Jamieson wish to appear to her noble sister-in-law as if she only visited “county” families. Miss Matty remained puzzled and perplexed long after I had found out the object of Mrs. Jamieson's visit.

When she did understand the drift of the honourable lady's call, it was pretty to see with what quiet dignity she received the intimation thus uncourteously given. She was not in the least hurt—she was of too gentle a spirit for that; nor was she exactly conscious of disapproving of Mrs. Jamieson's conduct; but there was something of this feeling in her mind, I am sure, which made her pass from the subject to others in a less flurried and more composed manner than usual. Mrs. Jamieson was, indeed, the more flurried of the two, and I could see she was glad to take her leave.

(84-85)

During this time of strained social relations in Cranford, Miss Matty plays the role of pacifier. She alternately soothes the ruffled Miss Pole, shows her disapproval of the other women's sarcasm, and avoids dwelling on the slight Mrs. Jamieson has given the community. Though anything but vindictive, she rejects the idea of attending Mrs. Jamieson's party when the invitations are finally issued to the villagers; she has decided that while she will not engage in a petty quarrel with the “honourable” widow, neither need she continue social intercourse with one who has proven herself unworthy. Miss Pole, in contrast to Miss Matty, accepts the invitation immediately although she had originally been the most outraged of all the injured ladies. It seems, however, that she has recently become “possessed” of “a very smart cap, which she” is “anxious to show to an admiring world …” (88). Miss Matty finally relents after Miss Pole lectures her on forgiving and forgetting. She is persuaded to attend the party only because she has been convinced that it is her duty as a self-effacing Christian. Noble even in capitulation, Miss Matty reasons, “‘I suppose it is wrong to be hurt or annoyed so long about anything; and, perhaps, after all, she did not mean to vex us. But I must say, I could not have brought myself to say the things Mrs. Jamieson did about our not calling’” (88). The reader sees that Matty not Miss Pole, is the true peacemaker; for she arrives at her decision out of conviction and not caprice.

Four incidents at the center of the novel mirror the progression of the book as a whole, and Miss Matty's reaction to them gives the reader a clearer insight into her psychological state. The magic show, the robbery panic, the discovery of the magician, and the subsequent generosity of the Cranford ladies serve to hasten the development of both Matty and the town.

The performance of Signor Brunoni, the magician, is representative of the mystery surrounding the male image in Cranford. The male is an enigma too dangerous to be solved. As Dodsworth points out, Mrs. Gaskell uses images throughout the book which associate the men in it with the exotic strangeness of the East. Miss Matty is attracted by the Signor's wondrous performance, but she is not at ease until she discovers that the present Rector of Cranford has sanctioned the exhibition by his presence. It is ironic that the man who has replaced the Reverend Mr. Jenkyns is the one who lends symbolic approval to the latest male invasion of Cranford.

The panic which follows this invasion manifests the irrational fear of masculinity which characterizes the psychological condition of Miss Matty and the other Cranford ladies; they sincerely believe that Signor Brunoni may have been a dangerous criminal and may well be responsible for the thievery which everyone imagines to be rampant in Cranford after his apparent departure. The rash of alleged robberies provides an excuse for unleashing the pent up hostility of the feminine community. The incident purges them of their fears which dominated the first half of the novel.

The discovery of the Brunonis (alias the Browns) in the midst of misfortune calls out the latent femininity in Cranford females and marks the turning point of the novel. The panic is forgotten; Mrs. Brown and her small daughter, Phoebe, are welcomed into the community, while Mr. Brown is nursed back to health by the ladies of the village. The mystery surrounding the male image is being dispelled. Signor Brunoni, the conjurer, has become simply Samuel Brown, the invalid. The most symbolic part of this episode involves Miss Matty and the penny ball which she had used during the panic to determine whether any fierce men lurked beneath the bed. Mary Smith explains that she found the spinster covering the ball with colorful material in order that little Phoebe could have “‘a good game of play in her life’” (126). Miss Matty relinquishes her last means of defense against the onslaught of masculinity in favor of the most feminine of all forces—the maternal instinct.

Having once had her large store of affection unsealed, Matty starts to correct the thinking of the community. After Miss Pole delivers a lecture on the horrors of marriage, for example, Matty tells Mary Smith not to be warned away from it; for a husband is “a great protector against thieves” (127). She remembers when she herself wanted to marry. “‘It is so long ago, and no one ever knew how much I thought of it at the time,’” Miss Matty admits, “‘unless, indeed, my dear mother guessed; but I may say that there was a time when I did not think I should have been only Miss Matty Jenkyns all my life …’” (128). A Cranford spinster has at last acknowledged her distaste for the single life. Miss Matty has had the honesty and courage to admit that she is not a spinster by desire, and with this admission she symbolically rids Cranford society of much of the pretense its propriety dictated.

In another self-revealing passage, Matty describes the deeply rooted frustration which the thwarting of her maternal instinct has produced:

… do you know, I dream sometimes that I have a little child—always the same—a little girl of about two years old; she never grows older, though I have dreamt about her for many years. I don't think I ever dream of any words or sound she makes; she is very noiseless and still, but she comes to me when she is very sorry or very glad, and I have wakened with the clasp of her dear little arms round my neck. Only last night … my little darling came in my dream, and put up her mouth to be kissed, just as I have seen real babies do to real mothers before going to bed.

(129)

Matty, unlike her sister Deborah, sees life clearly and sees it whole. She has learned that a woman's life requires an act of affirmation, “a little credulity” (129), in order to satisfy natural feminine desires which cry out for fulfillment. Matty understands that a woman must give in order to be happy, must accept and believe in others, must be a perpetual fountain of love and receptivity. She sees that marriage is the simplest method of achieving this state, since to be a wife and mother requires this kind of psychological generosity; but marriage is impossible for Matty, who, having loved the late Mr. Holbrook for years, can never accept another as husband. If the book is not to end tragically, Miss Matty must discover other ways of fulfilling her femininity. She has achieved a recognition of her problem; whether or not she can solve it is the question answered in the remainder of the story.

Many incidents described in the Brunoni chapters reflect Miss Matty's psychological needs and the subsequent events of the novel. For example, Mrs. Brown demonstrated the same desire for feminine fulfillment when she struggled to leave India in order to save her one surviving child from an early death. Significantly, it is the recounting of this story which leads to Mary Smith's discovery that Peter Jenkyns is still alive and in India. Like Miss Matty, he too aided Mrs. Brown and Phoebe. It is this mutual desire to affirm the life force, as represented by a mother and child, which will indirectly effect a reunion between the generous sister and brother. The engagement of Lady Glenmire to the surgeon, Mr. Hoggins, brought about also by a mutual desire to help the Browns, foreshadows the reunion of Matty and Peter. Male vitality will return to Cranford, and Miss Matty's reaction to the news of the engagement emphasizes this. “‘Marry!’ said Miss Matty. … ‘Well! I never thought of it. Two people that we know going to be married. It's coming very near!’” (137)

Thus far, Matty Jenkyns has shown herself to be the potential heroine of Cranford; she fulfills this potentiality when faced with financial ruin. The Town and County Bank fails, and Miss Matty, a shareholder, loses all but a minute portion of her income; but her first concern is for those people poorer than she who have trusted in the bank's reliability. Immediately after discovering the misfortune, she displays remarkable strength of character by a deliberate and generous action. She is in a Cranford store with Mary Smith picking out silk for a long-hoped-for new dress, when she overhears the salesman refuse to honor a farmer's bank note. With dignity and determination she offers to exchange his note for her sovereigns. Scorning the advice of Mary and the shopkeeper to save her coins, Miss Matty states,

“… I don't pretend to understand business; I only know that if it is going to fail, and if honest people are to lose their money because they have taken our notes—I can't explain myself, … only I would rather exchange my gold for the note, if you please, …”

(148-149)

Her decisiveness shocks Mary Smith, who is used to a submissive Miss Matty, but Matilda Jenkyns is facing her “moment of truth.” She has always been kind, receptive, generous; but her femininity can only be effectual if she has the courage to act in accordance with her principles and the strength to accept the new role in which fate has cast her. Courageously, Miss Matty figures out her account books; courageously, she faces poverty; courageously, she determines to sell the old rectory furniture, and equally courageously, she reconciles herself to selling tea in order to earn money.

The basic paradox of the story emerges clearly when Miss Matty comments. “‘I hope it's not wrong—not wicked—but, oh! I am so glad poor Deborah is spared this. She could not have borne to come down in the world—she had such a noble, lofty spirit’” (152). Mrs. Gaskell leaves no doubt in the reader's mind as to which sister is the stronger. Shy Miss Matty has earned the role of Cranford's heroine. Significantly, in these critical chapters she is constantly associated with her mother. She only cries, for instance, when she thinks “how my mother would grieve if she could know; she always cared for us so much more than for herself” (p. 158). The point is unmistakable. Mrs. Gaskell has identified Deborah with the father-figure and Matilda with the image of motherhood. Deborah and her father shaped Cranford's social code; Matty and her mother, its moral and ethical standards. At this point in the novel, the author seems to be judging implicitly the roles of man and woman in her society. She implies that man is and must be vitally concerned with the mundane—business, convention, etc.—while the woman, though interested in these things, is centrally involved in the development of human character. Mrs. Gaskell sets up the woman as the family's moral guide; she it is who must teach others how to love and, hence, how to live. Matty does this by example, not for a husband and child, but for a whole society. She teaches it to use the proper blend of humanity and propriety. She is a mother-figure to a larger and more important family—the Cranford community.

Dodsworth characterizes Matty's financial loss as the factor “which is to purge the book finally of the dangerous elements of feminism,” and that is true. He further states, however, that

Miss Jenkyns's domination of her sister, even after death, culminates in financial ruin; her attempt to rival the male in his own world, that of banking and investment, has brought this upon her sister. Miss Matty, of course, is equally responsible for ignoring the advice of the narrator's father. As a consequence, the moment of truth arrives. Cranford is faced with a reality against which its gentility is helpless. Miss Matty is now dependent upon those who have paid no regard for Cranford spinster-hood—Martha and Jem—and on the male, Mary Smith's father, who is called upon to sort out Miss Matty's affairs. …

The facts are substantially correct, but the interpretation ignores Matty's feminine strength. Certainly she accepts help from those who earnestly want to give it to her, but she is offered this help only because she has proven herself worthy of it. Her nobility in the face of defeat, her selfessness in the face of misfortune, her generosity in the face of poverty—all these things have made the help of others a duty rather than a dole. Mrs. Gaskell is willing to concede that a man such as Mary Smith's father can settle accounts better than Miss Matty, but the basic virtues of a strong character are best exemplified in Cranford by the actions of a benevolent woman. Cranford's feminism has been purged, but it has been purged by Cranford's femininity.

Miss Matty's courage during her financial crisis, as well as her quiet generosity throughout the years, sensitizes the community as a whole. Martha and Jem hasten their marriage in order to keep Matty with them—more as a permanent house guest than as a lucrative boarder. The Cranford spinsters even break their taboo against speaking of poverty when they call a meeting for the purpose of contributing to the support of Miss Matty; she, of course, is to know nothing about it.

After the meeting Mary Smith is waylaid by Mrs. Fitz-Adam who tells her a story about the young Matilda Jenkyns which shows the reader why Miss Matty has been chosen to be the novel's heroine. She reminisces about the day when she met the young Matty out with her beau. Mrs. Fitz-Adam recalls,

… she was looking down at some primroses she had gathered, and pulling them all to pieces, and I do believe she was crying. But after she had passed, she turned round and ran after me to ask—oh so kindly—about my poor mother, who lay on her death-bed; and when I cried she took hold of my hand to comfort me—and the gentleman waiting for her all the time—and her poor heart very full of something, I am sure; and I thought it such an honour to be spoken to in that pretty way …

(167)

Miss Matty is a good person—no more and no less. She is not a dynamic Joan of Arc lighting the purgative fires of the community with a great torch; rather, she is an unassuming gentlewoman warming the cold hearths of Cranford with subtle understanding. Without being aware of it, she reshapes the values of her society, and therein is the key to the novel's structure and movement. It is Matty's good sense, for instance, which brings the community to sanction the marriage of Mr. Hoggins and Lady Glenmire. Matty expresses her opinion of the controversial union to Mary Smith:

… a man has a sort of knowledge of what should be done in difficulties, that it is very pleasant to have one at hand ready to lean upon. Now, Lady Glenmire, instead of being tossed about, and wondering where she is to settle, will be certain of a home among pleasant and kind people. … And Mr. Hoggins is really a very personable man …

(152)

Not only does her good sense open the minds of the female community to marriage, but also to the idea of raising families. Surprised at first that Martha has had a baby, Matty quickly adjusts and her “favourite employment” becomes taking care of little Matilda who is “as much at home in her arms as in its mother's …” (186).

It is Miss Matty's femininity which admits men into Cranford society finally and forever—the last step in the humanization of the community. She can stand by herself as her decisiveness in misfortune and her success in business have proven; but she also senses the ridiculousness of making this strength a reason for pride in feminine superiority. When her brother Peter returns from India in answer to a letter from Mary Smith, Miss Matty welcomes him as master of the house, not because she needs him to help her through her financial crisis—she has already managed that—but because she wishes to lavish on him the love which has been his due for years and to receive the comfortable masculine protection which she has been without for so long.

It is significant that Peter is much like Miss Matty—good-natured, tolerant, loving. Mrs. Gaskell is not departing from her central theme of feminine strength, for throughout the novel Peter has been associated with his mother. His mother, not the Reverend, is responsible for shaping his character; thus, he has mastered the secret of his mother's vitality; he understands that the fulfillment of life is found in giving. Peter has early learned the secret which his father had discovered too late. Mrs. Gaskell implies in her characterization of Peter that although the kind of strength displayed by Miss Matty and Mrs. Jenkyns might be best taught by a woman, it should be practiced by both sexes. Symbolically, one of the greatest bonds between Matty and Peter is their mutual admiration of their mother. After his return, Peter says to his sister, “‘I remembered your tastes; they were so like my dear mother's.’ At the mention of that name the brother and sister clasped each other's hands yet more fondly …” (182).

Matty has wrought a change in Cranford's values, and Peter continues her work by altering the complexion of the society. Expensive presents from far-off lands begin to show themselves in the hitherto frugally furnished village homes, thus dispelling some of Cranford's insularity. The women flock to hear Peter's outlandish stories of adventure in India, thus practicing a little of the “credulity” which Matty advised before. The outside world has invaded Cranford to a small extent—enough to make it more liberal, but not enough to make it corrupt. This new liberality is tested and proves successful at a gala performance of Signor Brunoni's act which Peter sets up to promote peace between the two most socially prominent women in Cranford, Lady Glenmire and Mrs. Jamieson. While it is true that a man accomplishes this seemingly impossible social task, it is also true that he undertakes it only because “‘it harasses Matty so much to hear of these quarrels’” (192). The moral impetus has come from a woman. Mrs. Gaskell allows that men are more effectual in accomplishing the chores of the world, but she emphasizes that women must instill in them the basic desire to do the good, the virtuous, the ethical thing.

Dodsworth admonishes the reader not to assume that the ending of Cranford is happy. “Miss Matty,” he says,

may be left playing with a baby, but it is not her own; her home may have a master, but it is her brother, not her husband. Cranford ends on an admonitory note for the reader, with a reminder that coming to terms with reality cannot always bring back lost chances. It makes the important point that dear old lovable Miss Matty is dear old pitiable Miss Matty too.

While it is possible that Matty might have been happier with a husband and children, to see her as essentially “pitiable” destroys the progression of the novel. She, like any other heroine, needed to undergo suffering so that she could develop as a human being. In this case, her sacrifice led not only to her own recognition of what it means to love, but also to the recognition of it by the whole community. She found her own salvation in selfless devotion to others and redeemed Cranford by her example. She discovered that life was not over because of one lost chance, that a human being can be happily effective—whether wife or spinster—if she can only find the strength to make others happy. In the last paragraph of the novel, Mary Smith tells the reader:

Ever since that day [the day of Brunoni's second performance] there has been the old friendly sociability in Cranford society; which I am thankful for, because of my dear Miss Matty's love of peace and kindliness. We all love Miss Matty, and I somehow think we are all of us better when she is near us.

(192)

Can there be any doubt that Miss Matty is meant to be honored rather than pitied? Cranford is her story and her triumph.

Notes

1. Essays in Criticism, XIII (1963), 132-145.

2. Elizabeth Gaskell, The Works of Elizabeth Gaskell, ed. A. W. Ward (New York, 1906), II, 1. All Cranford citations are from this edition.

3. When Miss Pole asks her how one should address Lady Glenmire, for instance, she becomes confusion personified: “Poor Miss Matty! she took off her spectacles and she put them on again. … ‘Dear! dear! how stupid I am! … Deborah would have known in a minute. “My lady”—“your ladyship.” It sounds very strange, and as if it was not natural. I never thought of it before; but, now you have named it, I am all in a puzzle’” (83).