Some of you may have enjoyed a show on PBS Masterpiece (née Theater) called “Cranford.” It was a story of genteel English countryside meets the modern age. I enjoyed the show and was surprised to find out it was based on the 1852 novel, Cranford, by Elizabeth Gaskell.
Some carping Amazon reviewers say the book is not the same as the episodes on television – but if we wanted the same thing, we would read scripts, not books.
When Mrs Forrester, for instance, gave a party in her baby-house of a dwelling, and the little maiden disturbed the ladies on the sofa by a request that she might get the tea-tray out from underneath, everyone took this novel proceeding as the most natural thing in the world, and talked on about household forms and ceremonies as if we all believed that our hostess had a regular servants’ hall, second table, with housekeeper and steward, instead of the one little charity-school maiden, whose short ruddy arms could never have been strong enough to carry the tray upstairs, if she had not been assisted in private by her mistress, who now sat in state, pretending not to know what cakes were sent up, though she knew, and we knew, and she knew that we knew, and we knew that she knew that we knew, she had been busy all the morning making tea-bread and sponge-cakes.
If you do not find that cute and funny, I doubt you will enjoy the book. But that is very much in synch with the ladies of Cranford we met on the Masterpiece series.
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