Cranford in 1853, a great year for the English novel

Cranford was one of three major English novels published in 1853,* along with Bleak House and Villette. Should I add Gaskell's own Ruth to the list? It's still read, at least, which is more than I can say for any other English novels from that year. Feel free to correct me.

First, then, 1853, was a banner year for the English novels. Four that are still read, that is extremely rare. Only a few years in the 19th century can make that claim (miraculous 1818 has five). The 19th century English novel is one of the great achievements of human civilization, but that doesn't mean that there were three good ones every year.

Especially, setting Ruth aside, since I ain't done read it, three as good as these, which happen to be my favorite Dickens, new favorite Charlotte Brontë, and favorite Elizabeth Gaskell. Also, almost my only Gaskell, but given the nature of her other books, I bet it will remain my favorite.

All three books share tricky, innovative first person narrators. Bleak House's Esther Summerson is perhaps not so tricky herself - a little tricky, though - but she shares the novel with an omniscient third person narrator, a structure that works like a charm and solves any number of Dickensian problems. Dickens never used it again; nor did anyone else that I can think of. I have no idea why not.

The narrator of Villette, being a Brontë character, is, of course, some kind of supernatural spirit, an imp or an elf or something. Brontë uses Lucy Snowe to push her novel in some strange Modernist directions that I found appealing. Whatever it is, there's no other Victorian novel like it, although Lucy does resemble Cranford's Mary Smith in a number of ways. They both stay in the background, or say they do, and both have delightful, slightly cruel senses of humor.

But where Villette is very much Lucy's story, the narrator's attempt to exercise control of her own life, Mary Smith's function really is to tell us the story of the Cranford ladies. She intrudes into the story but is never quite a complete character. The real story belongs to some of the other characters, so Mary remains a device, to some degree, a necessary and useful means of telling a certain story. This almost sounds like a complaint, but it's not. Cranford has just as much of its narrator as it needs.

All right, that's my little digression into literary history. Interest in literary history is my bugbear fault. One of them.

* Bleak House and Cranford had been appearing earlier as serials.