She braved the opprobrium of her husband’s Unitarian congregation, in part for her depiction of prostitution and illegitimacy, particularly in her novel Ruth, and also for her challenge to the traditional view of women’s role in society. 

Elizabeth Gaskell biography: The Gaskell Society

Various critics and biographers describe Mrs. Gaskell’s writings as “old-fashioned”, “warm hearted”, “melodramatic”, and even “over-wrought”. Some of the feminists have taken her up as a “proto-feminist”, although her portrayal of female characters seems to me to be most conservative and traditional. Ruth, Mrs. Gaskell’s story about a “fallen woman”, portrays the title character as woman bound to lifelong penance and disgrace, with maybe a possible inkling of a chance to become a saint at last.

I tend to think of sin “but lightly”. Sin is something to be repented, forsaken, and forgotten. Modern psychology and evangelical Christianity would say that this is a healthy way to think about the wrongs that we do to one another. In fact, moderns would go a step further, reclassifying many of the sins that horrified the Victorians and those who came before them as human foibles and minor eccentricities. Adultery, fornication, all the sexual sins as well as greed, jealousy, envy, and conceit are not really SIN, but just a difference of opinion or the way a certain person deals with life.

In Ruth, characters are crushed by their own sin and horrified and judgmental about the sin of others. Not just Ruth herself, but other people in the book judge themselves or others harshly when they perceive that their actions have broken God’s law or the social code of Victorian society. Mrs. Gaskell shows in Ruth how this judgmental and unforgiving attitude is unfair and limiting, often pushing sinners back into the sin they would choose to leave, if permitted. Ruth in the book is allowed to repent and to live a reformed life, but the weight of her sin is ever present, and the consequences of her youthful actions are visited on her illegitimate son as he is called upon to suffer for Ruth’s sin.

Maybe there’s a balance somewhere in there. I don’t believe we need to live with guilt and shame weighing us down so much that we become like Ruth, some kind of shadow people, who never feel worthy or whole enough to live in the light of God’s forgiveness and grace. Ruth is self-abnegating to the point of being nearly suicidal. But . . .

If you think of sin but lightly

nor suppose the evil great,

here may view its nature rightly,

here its guilt may estimate.

Mark the sacrifice appointed,

see who bears the awful load;

’tis the Word, the Lord’s anointed,

Son of Man and Son of God.

Our sin is great, but God’s mercy is greater. I suppose that’s the balance we need to strike. And if Mrs. Gaskell’s sometimes melodramatic and devastating portrayal of sin and its consequences can swing the pendulum back toward a truer vision of our need for repentance, then it’s not a bad antidote for a society bent on denying that sin is sin or need have any negative consequences at all.

I thought Ruth gave a good picture of Victorian England and its view of sexual sin and its consequences. It’s a compassionate book, and even if the male characters, whose sin is just as great or greater than Ruth’s, get off lightly in terms of earthly consequences, Ruth is clearly the heroine of the story whose life and reputation “shine like the brightness of the heavens, and . . . lead many to righteousness, like the stars.” (Daniel 12:3)