Scheherezade in the Marketplace: Elizabeth Gaskell and the Victorian Novel
by Hilary Margo Schor, Professor of English Comparative Literature Gender Studies and Law Hilary M Schor
Category: Women and literature

Specifically, she explores how Gaskell used what seems to be the most conventional plot her culture offered, the heroine's courtship plot, to revise cultural expectations, and to open up the novel to new ideas and new forms. Examining the structure of Gaskell's final novels, Schor illustrates the possibilities offered therein for alternative fictions. By following the evolution of the heroine's plot throughout Gaskell's career, and tracing her development as a novelist, this study places Gaskell's fiction back in the marketplace of Victorian literature. Bringing to light her connections with Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics, her response to Darwin, changes brought on by industrialization, and her continuing battles over publication with Charles Dickens, Schor re-orients discussion of the seemingly ahistorical forms of the novel.