I read North & South last year and was struck by how much the trains changed young ladies’ lives.
Jane Austen’s novels were set ~30 years earlier, and the characters’ lives were incredibly restricted. Her novels were set in 1-3 locations. If you needed to travel, you needed to arrange carriages with coachmen, footmen, a host of servants packing your trunks… It meant days sitting in a loud, jouncing, uncomfortable carriage to go anywhere.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s heroines, on the other hand, are in constant motion. Need to talk with your lawyer? Pop down to London on the train for a day. Want to visit your childhood home? On a whim, hop on a train. She travels alone, no need to pack anything except maybe a purse and an umbrella.
Sure, social class does play a role. A middle-class woman was allowed far more personal freedom than a high-society lady. But as free-spirited as Elizabeth Bennett was, she never would have dreamed of just jumping on a train to Bath for a solo spa weekend.
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I read North & South last year and was struck by how much the trains changed young ladies’ lives.
Jane Austen’s novels were set ~30 years earlier, and the characters’ lives were incredibly restricted. Her novels were set in 1-3 locations. If you needed to travel, you needed to arrange carriages with coachmen, footmen, a host of servants packing your trunks… It meant days sitting in a loud, jouncing, uncomfortable carriage to go anywhere.
Elizabeth Gaskell’s heroines, on the other hand, are in constant motion. Need to talk with your lawyer? Pop down to London on the train for a day. Want to visit your childhood home? On a whim, hop on a train. She travels alone, no need to pack anything except maybe a purse and an umbrella.
Sure, social class does play a role. A middle-class woman was allowed far more personal freedom than a high-society lady. But as free-spirited as Elizabeth Bennett was, she never would have dreamed of just jumping on a train to Bath for a solo spa weekend.