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Women, Literature and Finance in Victorian Britain pp 85–137Cite as

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Elizabeth Gaskell: Investment Cultures and Global Contexts

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Abstract

This chapter investigates the financial networks that influenced Gaskell’s early life, including the business activities of her extended family in relation to the financial plots in Mary Barton, Ruth, Cranford, North and South, Sylvia’s Lovers and Wives and Daughters. Gaskell’s investments in docks, railways and real estate demonstrate that her critique of capitalism was complicated by the investments upon which she depended to support herself and her daughters. Shifting the critical and biographical focus away from Manchester and toward Gaskell’s rich explorations of other communities such as Liverpool, Wales and Whitby, Henry emphasizes the importance of familial, economic networks to her identity and her fiction.

And don’t forget the Kath. Docks dividend.

— Elizabeth Gaskell, J.A.V. Chapple and Arthur Pollard, The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell

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  1. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA

    Nancy Henry

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Henry, N. (2018). Elizabeth Gaskell: Investment Cultures and Global Contexts. In: Women, Literature and Finance in Victorian Britain. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Economics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94331-2_4

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