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Gothic Lit & Writing for the Major
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Elizabeth Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story” is a nifty, well-written ghost story with a great Serling-esque ending. A brief summary for those who haven’t read the story: in the past, two sisters were in love with the same man, a foreign musician their father had stay with them because he loved making music. Miss Maude, the eldest sister, eventually won the musician’s heart and secretly married him and had a daughter. The younger sister, Miss Grace, was incensed by this and revealed all to Old Lord Furnivall, their father. In a fit of anger, Lord Furnivall struck the child with his cane and, while Miss Grace looked on with grim satisfaction, sent the child and Maude out into the snow to die. When emotions are brought back to the surface, occasioned by the cheerful presence of Rosamond in the house, Lord Furnivall’s ghost and “ghost” of young Miss Grace appear to the residents of Furnivall Manor. This time, Miss Grace pleads with her father not to do the child harm and dies muttering, “Alas! alas! what is done in youth can never be undone in age!” There is a sense of redemption on the part of Miss Grace, who I feel was “bound” to the house because of the horror she caused; however, I also feel that there is a sense of delayed justice for the restless spirits of Furnivall Manor.
I was drawn from the beginning once I started Gaskell’s “The Old Nurse’s Story.” I liked the idea of it being a tale told by an old nurse to children in the beginning, but throughout the rest of the tale I forgot all about that until I went to the top of the page again. Once I got to the end of the story I couldn’t believe the old nurse was telling that tale to Miss Rosamond’s children. I also thought that maybe if she was trying to tell them a scary story she might have been exaggerating; however, there is also the possibility that she wasn’t.
I enjoyed the point of view that this story used. In old houses, the servants are typically the ones who know everything that happens. Hester’s reliance on the other servants seemed very likely. I thought the use of the household hierarchy was interesting in this story. Hester went to the lesser servants for information on the old house. In the Furnivall household, there was Miss Grace and Mrs. Stark below her and the closest to being her equal due to their friendship. Then there was James and Dorothy. James “looked down a little on his wife” (3) because she came from a farm house. Below them to do the hard work was Agnes. Hester seemed to be somewhere beside Dorothy and James with Miss Rosamond being on a level with Miss Grace. All of this attention to social status is the underlying theme in the tale of Miss Grace’s past with her family. A foreign musician who had no social standing came into the household of the proud Furnivall family and split them apart because of his lower social standing and the havoc he wrecked on the hearts of the two young sisters.
Hester also brings attention to Miss Rosamond’s children that their grandmother married beneath her, but her husband, a shopkeeper’s son, was a “clever, fine gentleman as ever was” (1).
In a way there seems to be a message that Hester is trying to pass along of the harm that can befall a family from judging too carefully the social statuses which they believe they hold and where others belong in relation to them.
Pfeffer
I thought this story was interesting, especially compared to the other Gothic literature we have read so far, in that it seemed to have a very clearly stated purpose or message. At the end of the story Miss Furnivall repeats “what is done in youth can never be undone in age!”. While this story shares the supernatural and ghost story aspects of the others, it is the only one, at least of the stories I have read so far, to have what seems to me to be such a clearly stated moral or message. It is an interesting choice on the part of Gaskell, it seems she is warning the reader, but putting her message in an interesting and engrossing ghost story.
So I guess the old nurse became an old maid? The story mentions in the beginning that she was once engaged, but I don’t remember her getting married. Could this explain her “love” for Miss. Rosemond and perhaps bias her point of view; particularly because of where she’d come from socially. Just askin’…
I have been meaning to replace this statement because it is off a bit. Regarding the old nurse’s point of view:
The story was written from the old nurse’s point of view and narrated through her to the children of Miss. Rosemond. The old nurse starts by describing how she became Miss. Rosemond’s nurse maid. She establishes her points of view in describing the culture of honor. For example, how she was acknowledge as among the brightest and the best, even though she was poor. This theme of honor, for lack of a better description was employed throughout the writing in describing other people.
The question that I would want an answer to, is why did the nurse assume the kids wanted her to get to the point? Another question perhaps is why the children are not heard responding to her statements?
I really enjoyed reading Gaskell’s short story, although I do have to agree with the class’s assertion that it had a far too complicated family tree, as well as it being too verbose for short prose. Like Wuthering Heights, the story used a large cast of characters to lend intrigue to the plot and keep within the Gothic literature theme. Even though the complicated sentence structure made the story harder to get through, the vividness of the details kept the reader engrossed within the events unfolding on the page.
I felt the author did a good job of emotionally involving the reader by cleverly switching our alliances from Miss Grace to Miss Maude. Although at first I felt sorry for Miss Grace, the loser in the competition for love, when Miss Maude and her child were turned out onto the wild and winter-cold Fells my loyalties sided with her. It was nearly impossible to like either character, but feelings of human empathy still develop after reading this story. Though her elder sister scorned her feelings of love for the foreign musician man, Miss Grace is certainly the sister more at fault, having allowed their father to turn out mother and child into the barren snow. The younger sister does seem to redeem herself through her clearly genuine, anguished, and perpetual sorrow, becoming withdrawn and half-mad in her old age. However, the horrible phantom scenes, whether real or imagined by the cabin-fevered family, play on within the house, a bitter reminder of the deadly sin. Even in her repentance Miss Grace cannot find peace, finally struck down by her long-ago hate and doomed to accept that her past actions cannot be changed.
I have spent a great deal of time considering why everyone was so drawn to young Ms.Rosamond, but there is one minor character that pays her no attention at all, Mr. Henry.”he bowed and said good-bye to us all,-taking no notice of my sweet little Miss Rosamond’s outstretched hand..(3).Gaskell made an effort to point out this lack of emotion from Mr. Henry. What is curious is that he made a point on the ride over to wake young Miss Rosamond up so that she could see the park and the manor.There seemed to be some sense of emotion there, but none in his good-bye. I explain this dynamic as a result of his relationship with the late Mrs. Rosamond, he was rumored to have loved her but he had to let her go. It is possible that he did not want to experience this loss again with her daughter.
This story poses many critical questions when reading it. One question that should be considered is how are all these characters are related. There is a family tree that seems to be very complicated and important to the story, however, it is too complicated to figure it out from simply reading it once. Another question that should be asked is what is Rosamond’s role in this story? We know that her kids are the audience for the story and Rosamond seems to be a major protagonist, but we do not know why these ghostly manifestations gravitate towards her. Who is this ghostly child and mother that haunt her? Why do they create havoc at the end of the story?
Another question that should be asked is what is the importance of the Nurse and how does she help explain the events that take place? The Nurse has no relation to the family, however, she is thrown right in the middle of this families turmoil. The Nurse is like the narrator in the house of Usher in the sense that they are both people from the outside that are interjected into another families supernatural issues.
This story really fascinated me. Though I have liked most of the stories we’ve been reading, this is the only one where I felt completely engrossed within the pages. I really, genuinely wanted to find out what was going to happen. I feel like the narrative point of view was really used well within this story. The narrator’s emotions are so poignant. I could tell that she loved Rosamund very much which made the first person narration seem much more dire when she was afraid for Rosamund’s safety. I was genuinely afraid for the little girl when she went missing even though I knew she must still be alive because the story is being told to her children. I felt like the action and the mystery really moved the narration forward more than some of the other stories which at times seemed to get bogged down with lofty prose. Also, I loved the ending. When the ghosts of the Furnivalls appeared, I expected for the old woman to die but I did not expect her final words to be a moral lesson. However, I believe that her message about being haunted by past deeds in old age was very effective. A lot of times when a moral to a story is thrown in at the last moment, it doesn’t really make sense or it feels like a cheap trick, but here it really worked. The moral didn’t overshadow the exciting plot and action and it was really made a lot of sense.
The question of why the girl outside the window is so attracted to Rosamond intrigued me, or for that matter, why everyone in the story seems to feel the same way. I know this was brought up in class, but until then I hadn’t associated the two. To me it seems like Rosamond is the embodiment of life in the story, and perhaps this is why she is so magnetizing. It’s almost as if she’s impervious to the melancholy of the house, which everyone else seems to catch. With supernatural occurrences pervading the story, I wonder whether this phenomena isn’t supernatural as well, or if Rosamond is just too young to understand or be affected by the situation.