Old Nurses
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Old Nurses
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The Old Nurse’s Story
by
Elizabeth Gaskell
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A concise biography of Elizabeth Gaskell plus historical and literary context for The Old Nurse’s Story .
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Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson was the youngest of eight children, but only she and one of her brothers lived past infancy. Her father was a minister in Lancashire before becoming the Keeper of Treasury Records, and her mother came from a prominent family. Her mother died a little over a year her birth. Her father panicked and sent Elizabeth off to live with Hannah Lumb, her aunt on her mother’s side. She would spend the rest of her youth living as a guest in her aunt and grandparent’s home, causing her future to seem rather uncertain, as she didn’t have any personal wealth or a permanent home. Elizabeth went many years without seeing her father, but her brother John visited her often until he went missing in 1827 while on an expedition with the Merchant Navy to India. Elizabeth received the standard education of a young woman from a wealthy family, and her father and aunt encouraged her to pursue her writing. In 1832, she married a minister named William Gaskell and settled in Manchester. Her first daughter was stillborn; however, she would go on to have four healthy daughters. In 1835, Gaskell started a diary to document her life as a parent and her observations of her children, specifically the relationship between her two eldest daughters. She co-authored a series of poems titled Sketches among the Poor with her husband in 1836. Her first work was published in 1840 under the authorship of “a Lady.” In 1841, they moved to Germany, and the literature she encountered there influenced her short stories which she published under the pseudonym Cotton Mather Mills. The death of her infant son, William, inspired Gaskell’s first novel, Mary Barton , which was very successful. In 1850, the Gaskells were back in Manchester, where she wrote the remainder of her works and became well-connected to other writers. She died of a heart attack in 1865.
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“The Old Nurse’s Story” was written in the Victorian Era, a defining time of change in England. In 1837, Queen Victoria took the throne as Britain began to grow in influence and expand its empire. However, in Britain itself, the 1840s presented failed harvests, earning them the title of the “Hungry Forties.” Despite this famine and raging unemployment, the industrial revolution took off, and by the 1850s had Britain on an economic rise. This allowed for years of progress, especially in science, medicine, and technology. These advances did not bring about much change for women’s role in society, however, as most women were still limited to marrying, childbearing, and taking interest in their husband’s occupations. Elizabeth Gaskell subverted these limitations on women’s roles by giving “The Old Nurse’s Story” a cast of female main characters who are strong and complex, a choice that would have been quite radical at this time.
Charles Dickens edited a weekly English newspaper called Household Words , in which he published Gaskell’s writing on multiple occasions, including her story “Lizzie Leigh” and her novels Cranford and North and South . “The Old Nurse’s Story” was also featured in Dickens’s A Round of Stories by the Christmas Fire . Looking toward other works from the mid 1800s, Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights shares similarities with “The Old Nurse’s Story,” in that it also takes place in a manor house in the countryside and involves the betrayal of a sibling and the presence of a ghost. The almost entirely female society featured in Gaskell’s Cranford is also similar to the female-dominated cast of “The Old Nurse’s Story,” indicating Gaskell’s overarching interest in closely examining women’s lives in her stories. Lastly, Gaskell said that Jane Austen influenced her writing.
Key Facts about The Old Nurse’s Story
Schweibert, Kennedy. "The Old Nurse’s Story." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 23 Feb 2022. Web. 15 Oct 2022.
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Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on Elizabeth Gaskell's The Old Nurse’s Story . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.
Lost to History. Charles Dickens suggested and wrote an alternative ending to “The Old Nurse’s Story,” arguing that the conclusion of Gaskell’s draft dulled down the terror of the story. Gaskell went on to make edits to the ending, but not in the manner Dickens suggested. Unfortunately, the original draft did not survive, so it is unclear what Gaskell’s original ending was.
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Instant downloads of all 1649 LitChart PDFs
(including The Old Nurse’s Story ).
LitCharts Teacher Editions. Teach your students to analyze literature like LitCharts does.
Detailed explanations, analysis, and citation info for every important quote on LitCharts.
The original text plus a side-by-side modern translation of every Shakespeare play.
From the creators of SparkNotes, something better.
The Old Nurse’s Story
by
Elizabeth Gaskell
Teachers and parents! Struggling with distance learning? Our
Teacher Edition
on The Old Nurse’s Story can help.
Teachers and parents! Struggling with distance learning? Our
Teacher Edition
on The Old Nurse’s Story can help.
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Hester is the titular “old nurse” who helped raise Miss Rosamond and is now telling Miss Rosamond’s children a story from their mother’s youth. In Hester’s story, Miss Rosamond’s mother comes to the village school…
read analysis of Hester
Miss Rosamond is the little girl whom Hester , the titular “old nurse,” cared for and is now telling a story about. In Hester’s story, Miss Rosemond is only four or five when her mother …
read analysis of Miss Rosamond
Miss Grace Furnivall is the lady of Manor House and Lord Furnivall ’s great aunt, making her Miss Rosamond ’s distant relative. She’s about 80 years old when Miss Rosamond and Hester come to live…
read analysis of Miss Grace Furnivall
The eldest daughter of the old lord , Miss Maude Furnivall was “Miss Furnivall” by right and was known to sterner and more beautiful than her younger sister, Miss Grace Furnivall . Miss Maude is…
read analysis of Miss Maude Furnivall
The old lord was Miss Maude Furnivall and Miss Grace Furnivall’ s father. He is dead in the story’s present, but Hester learns about him from Dorothy . The old lord was excessively proud and…
read analysis of The Old Lord
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The little girl was Miss Maude Furnivall and the foreigner ’s daughter. She died when the old lord discovered her secretly living in the east wing of Manor House and banished Miss Maude and the…
read analysis of The Little Girl
Many years before the story takes place, the old lord invited the foreign musician to Manor House to share his musical gift. While there, he got the old lord hooked on playing the organ and…
read analysis of The Foreigner
Miss Rosamond ’s mother is a dedicated and loving mother who adores her daughter. She first meets Hester when she is still pregnant with Miss Rosamond and is in search of a nursemaid. However, when…
read analysis of Miss Rosamond’s Mother
Lord Furnivall is Miss Grace Furnivall ’s great-nephew and Miss Rosamond’s mother ’s cousin. He arrives upon Miss Rosamond ’s mother’s death to handle affairs. He is stern and proud, just like all the Lord…
read analysis of Lord Furnivall
Mrs. Stark has been Miss Grace Furnivall ’s maid since her youth, and because of this, she is more like a sister and friend to Miss Grace than a part of the staff. As old…
read analysis of Mrs. Stark
A member of the staff at Manor House and James ’s wife, Dorothy is a close friend to Hester and a doting caregiver to Miss Rosamond . Dorothy is from Westmorland like Hester, and James…
read analysis of Dorothy
James is a staff member at Manor House and Dorothy ’s husband. He looks down on Dorothy for having grown up on a farm, while he has spent his entire life living with the Furnivalls…
read analysis of James
Agnes is James and Dorothy ’s servant. Hester sees Agnes as below her and only engages with her when she is unable to get information out of Dorothy about the organ . Unlike Dorothy, Agnes…
read analysis of Agnes
Schweibert, Kennedy. "The Old Nurse’s Story Characters." LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 23 Feb 2022. Web. 15 Oct 2022.
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You know, my dears, that your mother was an orphan, and an only child; and I dare say you have heard that your grand-father was a clergyman up in Westmoreland, where I come from. I was just a girl in the village school, when, one day, your grandmother came in to ask the mistress if there was any scholar there who would do for a nurse-maid; and mighty proud I was, I can tell ye, when the mistress called me up, and spoke to my being a good girl at my needle, and a steady, honest girl, and one whose parents were very respectable, though they might be poor I thought I should like nothing better than to serve the pretty, young lady, who was blushing as deep as I was, as she spoke of the coming baby, and what I should have to do with it. However, I see you don't care so much for this part of my story, as for what you think is to come, so I'll tell you at once. I was engaged and settled at the parsonage before Miss Rosamond (that was the baby, who is now your mother) was born. To be sure, I had little enough to do with her when she came, for she was never out of her mother's arms, and slept by her all night long; and proud enough was I sometimes when missis trusted her to me. There never was such a baby before or since, though you've all of you been fine enough in your turns; but for sweet, winning ways, you've none of you come up to your mother. She took after her mother, who was a teal lady born; a Miss Furnivall, a granddaughter of Lord Furnivall's, in Northumberland. I believe she had neither brother nor Sister, and had been brought up in my lord's family till she had married your grandfather, who was just a curate, son to a shopkeeper in Carlisle - but a clever, fine gentleman as ever was - and one who was a right-down hard worker in his parish, which was very wide, and scattered all abroad over the Westmoreland Fells. When your mother, little Miss Rosamond, was about four or five years old, both her parents died in a fortnight - one after the other. Ah! that was a sad time. My pretty young mistress and me was looking for another baby, when my master came home from one of his long rides, wet, and tired, and took the fever he died of; and then she never held up her head again, but lived just to see her dead baby, and have it laid on her breast before she sighed away her life. My mistress had asked me, on her death-bed, never to leave Miss Rosamond; but if she had never spoken a word, I would have gone with the little child to the end of the world.
The next thing, and before we had well stilled our sobs, the executors and guardians came to settle the affairs. They were my poor young mistress's own cousin, Lord Furnivall, and Mr Esthwaite, my master's brother, a shopkeeper in Manchester; not so well to do then, as he was afterwards, and with a large family rising about him. Well! I don't know if it were their settling, or because of a letter my mistress wrote on her death-bed to her cousin, my lord; but somehow it was settled that Miss Rosamond and me were to go to Furnivall Manor House, in Northumberland, and my lord spoke as if it had been her mother's wish that she should live with his family, and as if he had no objectioins, for that one or two more or less could make no difference in so grand a household. So, though that was not the way in which I should have wished the coming of my bright and pretty pet to have been looked at - who was like a sunbeam in any family, be it never so grand - I was well pleased that all the folks in the Dale should stare and admire, when they heard I was going to be young lady's maid at my Lord Furnivall's at Furnivall Manor.
But I made a mistake in thinking we were to go and live where my lord did. It turned out that the family had left Furnivall Manor House fifty years or more. I could not hear that my poor young mistress had ever been there, though she had been brought up in the family; and I was sorry for that, for I should have liked Miss Rosamond's youth to have passed where her mother's had been.
My lord's gentleman, from whom I asked as many questions as I durst, said that the Manor Ho
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