Description: Gaskell's (1810-65) embodiment of the conventional Victorian loyal wife, good mother, and respected writer has led 20th- century literary critics to discount her, but Hughes (literature, Texas Christian U.) and Lund (English, Longwood College) point out how her high standing in society allowed her to effect change in the very ideology she represented. They characterize her as an elusive and self-aware writer who refused to grant authority to a single perspective and recirculated the fundamental assumptions and debates of her era, which enabled her simultaneously to fulfill and deflect the expectations of the literary marketplace.

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