Victorian Women in Gaskell’s Gothic Tales: A Study on “Lois the Witch,” “The Grey Woman” and “The Old Nurse’s Story”

Abstract

Elizabeth Gaskell, a famous and prolific Victorian novelist, known as much for her involvement in the society around her as for her use of her fiction to criticise it, published several Gothic tales in which she pays special attention to the situation of Victorian women. In these texts, she took refuge behind a genre which, thanks to the distance it offers from reality, as well as its fantastic nature, as opposed to the realism of her novels, gives her greater freedom to aim her sharp and accurate satirical remarks at the patriarchal society of the nineteenth century and its values. Nevertheless, as in her longer works, Gaskell once again shows her knowledge of human nature by portraying the world as a vast mosaic of greys in which not every man is a tyrant and not every woman a poor, helpless victim. This study will therefore allude to three of Gaskell’s gothic stories, “Lois the Witch,” “The Grey Woman” and “The Old Nurse’s Story,” in which the author shows, among other things, how Victorian women were not only victims, but could also be vile and ruthless.