This conversation is very telling, for in many ways it holds the key to the novel’s attitude about social class. Molly’s criticism of Lady Harriet essentially makes the point that if social distinctions are “natural”—if members of other classes seem like “stranger animals”—then it is wrong of Lady Harriet to speak with her as an equal. Lady Harriet’s response is an amalgamation of traditional class snobbery and modern notions about class: To her, people of different classes are different because they inhabit (often to their detriment) their rank, while she acknowledges that rank itself is not a “solid thing.” Moreover, Lady Harriet believes in distinction—both of character and talent—and expresses it in calling Molly “simple and truthful” and in appreciating how Molly has joined her brother in his admiration of Roger Hamley.
In the context of the larger narrative strain about Roger Hamley’s success as a scientific explorer, the conversation takes on the coloring of a social commentary. Roger stands for the emergence of a new class of the scientific intelligentsia, one shift among the more widespread power shifts in nineteenth-century British society, as rank loses its status as the dominant wielder of power. Ultimately, what Gaskell is querying in this exchange is the question of whether differences among classes of people are natural or are constructions—a philosophical issue that has significant bearing on the “social ecology” she is sketching in her novel. In a larger sense, the question of whether people can be “taxonomized” in the same way that “strange animals” can be provides an uncomfortable, if unresolved, backdrop to the novel, one that because of the presence of Africa in the novel (and persistent concerns throughout the nineteenth century with race) encompasses race as well as class. Racial theory in the 1860s figured black Africans as so different from European whites that there was speculation they were of a different species. In this light, the fact that Africa primarily appears in Wives and Daughters as a proving ground for Roger Hamley (the epitome of the vital Englishman) suggests the way in which the novel participates in, rather than simply reflects, cultural values about race and nation. And yet the fact that the novel points in its concluding moments toward a kind of hybridity for the future generations is fascinating: The recognized heir of the Hamley estate is part English and part French, the son of landed gentry and a common servant. In this provisional way Wives and Daughters perhaps suggests that (an albeit limited concept of) hybridity, as a social as well as a scientific concept, is England’s future and perhaps best hope.
In a novel as long and as minute in the detailing of everyday life as Wives and Daughters is, it is perhaps niggling to turn our attention to what is not in the novel. And yet what is absent in a novel that calls itself an “every-day story” is itself fascinating, so by way of closing let us consider what Gaskell excludes from the everyday First, there is a decided absence of the depiction of labor in the novel, made all the more glaring because of the number of references to work. So, for instance, Dr. Gibson is often said to be away from home to attend to a patient, but the narrative never follows him to a bedside. Likewise, although we hear a great deal about the “draining works” that Squire Hamley has had to postpone for lack of funds, the reader is never privy to the details of the project even when the work begins again. Indeed, the one laborer (Old Silas) who speaks in the novel is on his deathbed. In a novel about the “everyday,” the lack not only of details but of scenes of labor seems a significant omission and makes the reader question its purport. Although Gaskell is not alone among nineteenth-century novelists in not representing the everyday details of work, another way of understanding the omission is through the lens of the novel’s title, which avows that its subject is the feminine sphere: Perhaps Gaskell wishes to shine light on the work of wives and daughters, and so highlights the private sphere by deliberately avoiding the details of the masculine public sphere of work. Indeed, the very best moments in the novel in which men play a part are scenes of leisure, especially (as the Cornhill editor draws our attention to) the scene of tobacco smoking at the end of chapter 2 3 . Here the conversational rhythms of speech and the import of this masculine ritual are memorably drawn.
The second notable absence in Wives and Daughters is the absence of institutional religion. None of the characters are ever shown attending church on a Sunday, and there is no clergyman among the otherwise large stock of Hollingford characters. When Dr. and Mrs. Gibson are married, the clergyman is implied but not mentioned in the scene; only Old Silas on his deathbed mentions a clergyman who has been to see him—“ ‘Parson’s been here; but I did na tell him. He’s all for the earl’s folk, and he’d not ha’ heeded. It’s the earl as put him into his church, I reckon’ ” (p. 334)—but otherwise clergymen do not enter into the narrative. The absence of the establishment church (the Church of England) in the portrayal seems pointed, for the ritual of churchgoing would have been a mainstay of country life. Uglow suggests that Gaskell’s faith was “so integral to her life that she rarely writes about it”—but this does not quite account for the choice, which would have been contrary to her narrative purpose, to eliminate this everyday feature from the scene (Uglow, p. 451). Gaskell, who was raised as a Unitarian and chose to marry a Unitarian minister, belonged to what was considered a dissenting sect—that is, a sect that had separated from the national church (the Church of England) over doctrinal differences. Unitarianism was an open religion that only asked of its members that they believe in the one God and the divine mission of Jesus. Unitarians debated the nature of Jesus, the notion of original sin, and—most importandy—the doctrine of atonement. That is, Jesus was considered a teacher and a moral example, rather than a divine entity. This was, as might be expected, controversial, with many believers denying that Unitarians were Christians, for their beliefs, including their emphasis on reason and freedom of thought, seemed to fly in the face of the primacy of faith (Uglow, pp. 5-7). This account of the faith to which Gaskell adhered (although necessarily abridged) might give us a biographical answer to the absence of organized religion in Wives and Daughters: The Church of England held no sway in Gaskell’s life, and so it would have little sway in her novel. However, religion might be located in another place in the novel. Rather than in the parish church, to which the narrative does not go, the impetus of religion is felt in the presentation of Molly’s character. The way in which Molly examines her actions and feelings as an individual in light of deeply felt moral principles might be understood as inspired by Unitarian principles and values; hence the absence of religion in the novel is perhaps better understood as an absence of the Established Church.