Good god, Elizabeth Gaskell!

[blamebrampton]

Death, death, death and a bit more death! 

Why yes, I am watching Cranford and remembering why I was so horribly scarred in the days I was reading through the Gaskell oeuvre ... So many magnificent male characters, each cut off just as his life reached the possibility of happiness. And no, leaving Jem and Dr Harrison to have happy endings is not sufficient recompense.

Elizabeth Gaskell. Great-Grandmother of Emos everywhere ...

Comments

[shu-shu-sleeps.livejournal.com]

Cranford is one of hers that I've never read, and I have to admit I've missed the adaptation on ABC. But she's not THAT depressing, North and SoOuth and Wives and Daughters were quite happy books...... not like that depressing Hardy man - god, talk about slit your wrists stuff - after three years straight of being FORCED to read just about everything that Thomas bloody Hardy wrote (his poetry is the WORST) I haven't gone near anything he's written for years!

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

W&D was, but I seem to recallthat N&S had a few painful deaths and maimings as it went along ...

But yes, Hardy makes one wish to maim oneself, which is a different category altogether.