Wives and Daughters

We watched Wives and Daughters a couple nights ago, which really should be called Wives and Daughters and Fathers and Sons and Townsfolk and Gentry and How They Live...or maybe just Relationships. I had seen this movie before, as well as read the book, but it had been my first exposure to the author, Elizabeth Gaskell. This time it was a little different, as I am currently enamoured with North and South by the same author.

The plots are very different in place and character, but also in treatment. W&D is considered Gaskell’s masterpiece: it has an elegantly and superbly crafted plot, every one of the vast cast of characters is memorable, and the main character is endearing. N&S had a simple story, though it is more beautiful than W&D IMHO, with few main characters and no surprises. N&S was about how the characters get to the destination; W&D doesn’t let you know the destination until you’re there. In the end, they are vastly different but equally enjoyable stories.

The one thing that binds them together is Gaskell’s treatment of characters. Like Anthony Trollope, she doesn’t allow herself a full villain, but creates very human characters and treats them with sympathy. N&S really had no dislikable characters, and W&D’s Mr. Preston and Hyacinth Kirkpatrick are quite understandable. None of the good characters are infallible also, but it is how they let their mistakes shape their character that separates the good from the bad. A lovely undercurrent of forgiveness and redemption is throughout the stories. In N&S it is limited to one relationship, but W&D is chock full of them and they all need forgiveness.

First there is the relationship of the new Mrs. Gibson and her daughter and stepdaughter; then Mr. Gibson and his daughter and stepdaughter, and then the relationship of the daughter and stepdaughter to each other. In the other family, there is Squire Hamley and his two sons, also Mrs. Hamley and her sons, and then the sons with each other. Then there are the aristocratic Cumnors and how they relate to the “lower” folk, and the ordinary townsfolk who complete the picture. All of these relationships intermingle with each other, and the outcomes are uncertain until the end, but they all revolve around the main character: Molly Gibson.

The people making the movie picked an excellent actress for Molly, who is very quietly pretty and ingenuous looking, and who quite accurately pales in beauty when compared to her beguiling stepsister Cynthia. Like Fanny of Mansfield Park, Molly is the only constant one of the bunch, and her good and quiet influence both soothes everyone else’s relationships and makes them all love her. And though she is put upon by some of them, in the end they do good to her because she was good to them, and it all ends well. This was yet another long BBC drama that was well worth the watching and owning.