63 pages • 2 hours read
Elizabeth GaskellRuth
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1853A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
Parental Love and Protectiveness
Gaskell’s novel depicts several parent-child relationships, showing how those relationships can be either destructive or constructive for a child’s future. A common theme displayed across these relationships is a desire for parents to protect their children from what they perceive as threats. In some cases, this can backfire and prove harmful. Mrs. Bellingham believes that Ruth has seduced her son and might be trying to lure him into marrying her or providing her with money, mistakenly believing that Ruth is “the girl […] whose profligacy had led her son astray” (64). In her cruel actions toward Ruth, she operates out of misguided love for her son, but as a result, she causes great pain to Ruth and encourages her son to keep leading a self-centered and irresponsible life.
Likewise, Mr. Bradshaw truly wants Jemima to be happy and is correct in noticing that she and Mr. Farquhar could be a good match. Through his meddling, and his attempts to save Jemima from herself, he almost ends up ruining the relationship, whereas if he had not interfered, Farquhar and Jemima could likely have come together on their own. More seriously, Mr. Bradshaw’s strict moral severity with Richard is intended to protect the young man, but it sets Richard up to be comfortable with lying and deception, which ultimately becomes his downfall. For example, Richard confides to Jemima that he has been to the theatre in London, but Jemima later overhears her brother “condemning some one […] by alleging that the young man was a play-goer” (159). Out of pressure to live up to his father’s rigid standards, Richard learns to lie and deceive, which prepares him to commit crimes of deception in his business practices.
In contrast, Gaskell also shows parent-child relationships where loving protectiveness proves beneficial to a child. Unlike her husband, Mrs. Bradshaw wants to help Richard after his crime, so she hurries to Mr. Benson to intervene on her son’s behalf. Mrs. Bradshaw offers Mr. Benson reimbursement and explains that “if I’m to choose between my husband and my son, I choose my son” (301). Ultimately, her concern is unnecessary because Mr. Benson is already sympathetic to Richard, but the contrast between Mr. and Mrs. Bradshaw reveals very different parental attitudes.
Most significantly, Ruth shows intense protectiveness toward her son from the moment he is born. She wants to protect him both from the social stigma of his illegitimate birth and any corrupting moral influence that might result from a relationship with his father. Ruth achieves the second goal even at a significant personal cost to herself; she continues to have romantic feelings for Bellingham, but her determination to protect her son gives her the strength to reject Bellingham. She passionately tells Bellingham that “if there were no other reason to prevent our marriage but the one fact that it would bring Leonard into contact with you, that would be enough” (222).
Protecting Leonard from social ostracism and shame is not entirely within Ruth’s power: when the young boy does learn the truth about his birth, he has a brief negative reaction. Ultimately, however, Ruth’s love for her son and her hard work and good reputation make it possible for Leonard to be sheltered from shame. Because so many people come to love and respect Ruth, Leonard feels proud to be her son, able to “wal[k] erect in the streets of Eccleston, where ‘many arose and called her blessed’” (318). Ruth’s hard work as a nurse ultimately leads Mr. Davis to offer Leonard the chance to receive a good education and build a stable professional future for himself as a surgeon.
Moral Rigidity Leading to a Lack of Compassion
Most characters respond with moral revulsion when they first learn about Ruth’s illicit relationship and illegitimate child. In Wales, Mrs. Morgan, Mrs. Bellingham, and even Mrs. Bellingham’s maid react judgmentally to Ruth. They are much more forgiving toward Bellingham, but Mr. Benson is the only person willing to show Ruth compassion. Even characters such as Faith and Sally, who subsequently come to love Ruth dearly, initially treat her as someone who is shameful. Faith even says that “it would be better for her to die at once” (84). These characters show moral rigidity and a lack of compassion because they have an idea of what it means to be a fallen woman, and at first, they cling to that theoretical idea rather than the reality of what they observe in Ruth.
While many characters display initial moral rigidity, most of them also change their mindset once they get to know Ruth better. Within a few days of Ruth arriving, Sally begins to change her mind about Ruth since she “had been much softened by the unresisting gentleness” (112). By exploring these changing attitudes, Gaskell suggests that moral rigidity might be a natural human reaction but that individuals are also capable of behaving in more complex and nuanced ways. The characters who look beyond their initial reaction, take Ruth’s behavior into account, and take the time to get to know her end up showing love and compassion for her.
Jemima and Mr. Bradshaw’s reactions to Ruth’s history reflect what happens when characters learn about Ruth’s past after they already know her. When Mr. Bradshaw learns of Ruth’s past, he offers no compassion. Instead, he abruptly cuts ties with her and Mr. Benson, whom he views as complicit because he lied about Ruth’s past. Despite all evidence to the contrary, he worries that Ruth has been a negative and corrupting influence on his young daughters. Mr. Bradshaw hypocritically clings to moral rigidity in his response to Ruth’s situation, even though he himself has engaged in corrupt and morally questionable behavior in the election of Mr. Donne. By contrast, Jemima almost immediately sees past her preconceptions because she knows that Ruth is a good person, no matter her past behavior. Jemima concludes that if Ruth had not fully redeemed herself, “my contempt would have turned to loathing disgust, instead of my being full of pity, the stirrings of new-awakened love, and most true respect” (251). The experience of forming community, family, and close emotional ties transcends an insistence on narrow and theoretical definitions of “good” and “bad” people.
Redemption, Atonement, and Self-Sacrifice
Even though several factors leave Ruth vulnerable to being seduced, Gaskell still portrays her protagonist as someone who made a moral error and needs to atone for it. The radical (for the time) message of her novel argues that Ruth is not utterly lost and irredeemable but can be reintegrated into society and contribute to a community. Ironically, the more conventional social practices of ostracizing women who engaged in premarital sexual relationships tended to leave them with no option other than sex work to support themselves. Had Mr. Benson not intervened, Ruth might have decided to die by suicide.
Instead, he creates opportunities for Ruth to better herself and become a contributing member of society and an excellent mother. Ruth “learn[s] neither to look backwards, nor forwards, but to live faithfully and earnestly in the present” (133) and develops “a more complete wisdom, and a more utter and self-forgetting fate” (123). Because of how she cares for her son and her reputation for integrity and hard work, Leonard is offered the opportunity to train as a surgeon and will likely positively impact the world. Through Ruth’s work as a nurse and Leonard’s prospective work as a surgeon, many lives are literally saved, and that positive impact would have been lost had Ruth not been given a chance at redemption.
While Ruth is portrayed as deserving of a second chance, her status as a fallen woman also requires atonement and self-abasement from her. Ruth will never be wealthy, and she will always have to work hard, including taking on work as a nurse that is often low-status, unpleasant, and sometimes outright dangerous, described as “disagreeable and painful work” (289). Redeeming her moral integrity requires her to reject Bellingham, even though she still desires him, and he can offer a luxurious life as either his mistress or wife. Moreover, there never seems to be any possibility of Ruth finding a new partner and establishing a family of her own. Her secret past, and the shame around it, means that Ruth leads a completely aromantic life and can only pour her love and devotion into her son. In a sense, the requirement for redemption means that Ruth’s life is cut short after her moral fall, and she never gets to fully experience some milestones of adulthood, such as finding a partner and setting up a home of her own.
Ruth’s stunted development is most prominently revealed during her death scene, in which she regresses to the state of a child. In the illness leading up to her death, Ruth “never looked at any one with the slightest glimpse of memory or intelligence, not even at Leonard” (331). Ruth dying in a state of forgetful, child-like innocence provides her with a final form of moral redemption, but it also suggests that there is no way she could live as both a fallen woman and a fully self-actualized one.
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By Elizabeth Gaskell
