‘It is only to the kindness of my friends that I can owe their company’ – Female Solidarity in the fiction of Elizabeth Gaskell

Alice Jackman

Female solidarity is a fundamental, yet under-explored, theme within the novels and short stories of Elizabeth Gaskell. Writing at a time when the ‘Woman Question’ was gaining prominence in the social fabric of Victorian society, Gaskell’s focus on the lives of women reveals a writer deeply concerned with the interrelations of female lives. 

This talk probes Gaskell’s writing and exposes her consistent messaging with regards to female alliance, both when it is strategically implied and when it is made explicit within the narrative, demonstrating Gaskell’s commitment to the ideals of female solidarity. Using four themes as a foundation for this exploration (mentoring, community, communication and empathy), Alice reveals how these themes are utilised in structure and narrative voice. This methodology reveals an embedded narrative concern with the positive outcomes that can be achieved when women support other women, regardless of age, marital status, class boundaries and societal expectations. Rather than positioning female friendship as a balm to patriarchal victimhood, she reorients the conversation away from viewing the female characters in relation to the male and focus on their relationships with each other, offering a broader theme of female interconnection.

Alice Jackman is a post graduate researcher and associate lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University (ARU). Her PhD considers the work of Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell, exploring how the interconnection of the female walker and their environment is presented in the narrative form. Alice has been published in The Gaskell Journal and was joint organiser of the Elizabeth Gaskell Conference at ARU in summer 2023.

This video is free to watch, so please do share with anyone who may be interested. Please also note that we do not allow downloads of this video for copyright reasons. 

We’ll keep the recording online for you to view until 30 April 2025.