Elegant economy

Cranford is one my favorite novels. It's a charming work set in a small town in England in the 19th century and contains all the ingredients an Anglophile like me could possibly want. But in addition, the author, Elizabeth Gaskell, paints an accurate picture of the class system that was entrenched in society. Perhaps that is why I love her character Captain Brown because he defied those conventions. He had to make do on a very limited income but was unashamed and kind to all people regardless of their class. He helped a poor woman carry her meal from the communal bakehouse to her home and did not apologize for this act, even though the Cranford gentry thought he committed a grave social faux pas. Given the influence of the past, I can't help but wonder if we inherited some of those same classist ideas. We ape our betters by trying to keep up with the Joneses. We pretend we live in a world where everyone is middle class and no one we know (especially not us!) is living from paycheck to paycheck or struggling to make ends meet. A world where "We had tacitly agreed to ignore that any with whom we associated on terms of visiting equality could ever be prevented by poverty from doing anything that they wished."

Cranford is much lighter compared to Gaskell's other novels, which are more pointed in their social commentary such as North and South. But I can't help but feel a gentle reproof underlying this endearing and funny tale. But that's the mark of a good novel. Not only is the plot engaging, it's a window into human nature with all its quirks and failings. Perhaps at a deeper level, it strikes a chord because we've all had contact with the shame of being in need whether on the giving or receiving end or both. Read the following excerpt and decide for yourself:

I imagine that a few of the gentlefolks of Cranford were poor, and had some difficulty in making both ends meet; but they were like the Spartans, and concealed their smart under a smiling face.  We none of us spoke of money, because that subject savoured of commerce and trade, and though some might be poor, we were all aristocratic.  The Cranfordians had that kindly esprit de corps which made them overlook all deficiencies in success when some among them tried to conceal their poverty.  When Mrs Forrester, for instance, gave a party in her baby-house of a dwelling, and the little maiden disturbed the ladies on the sofa by a request that she might get the tea-tray out from underneath, everyone took this novel proceeding as the most natural thing in the world, and talked on about household forms and ceremonies as if we all believed that our hostess had a regular servants’ hall, second table, with housekeeper and steward, instead of the one little charity-school maiden, whose short ruddy arms could never have been strong enough to carry the tray upstairs, if she had not been assisted in private by her mistress, who now sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes...

“Elegant economy!”  How naturally one falls back into the phraseology of Cranford!  There, economy was always “elegant,” and money-spending always “vulgar and ostentatious”; a sort of sour-grapeism which made us very peaceful and satisfied.  I never shall forget the dismay felt when a certain Captain Brown came to live at Cranford, and openly spoke about his being poor—not in a whisper to an intimate friend, the doors and windows being previously closed, but in the public street! in a loud military voice! alleging his poverty as a reason for not taking a particular house...

Death was as true and as common as poverty; yet people never spoke about that, loud out in the streets.  It was a word not to be mentioned to ears polite.  We had tacitly agreed to ignore that any with whom we associated on terms of visiting equality could ever be prevented by poverty from doing anything that they wished.  If we walked to or from a party, it was because the night was so fine, or the air so refreshing, not because sedan-chairs were expensive.  If we wore prints, instead of summer silks, it was because we preferred a washing material; and so on, till we blinded ourselves to the vulgar fact that we were, all of us, people of very moderate means.  Of course, then, we did not know what to make of a man who could speak of poverty as if it was not a disgrace.

Cranford, Elizabeth Gaskell, Dover Thrift Editions, 2003, pp. 2-4.