We have been doing this project for 2 weeks and I decided to 'investigate' Elizabeth Gaskell. I started with research looking at what, why, where and how finding out as much as I could about Gaskell for a base to the project. Certain facts about her life really interested me such as how she was not brought up by her parents (father, mother died in soon after giving birth to her) but her aunt who lived in Chester.
How she wrote even though it was similarly to other Victorian writers she set herself apart from them by emphasising women’s roles in her novels and having a continual theme of Unitarianism. She was the last of 8 children but only she and her brother John survived however he went missing while on a voyage to India.
When her son William died, it inspired her to write, Mary Barton. It seems as though Gaskell went through a lot of hardship though out her life being abandoned by her father when she was younger, losing her only sibling with no explanation and even suffering losing more than one of her own children.
I feel the next step for me to further my project is to visit her house on Plymouth grove, investigate further into her brother’s disappearance, read more of her work to get a real feel for the way she writes and always backing it up with observation drawing.
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