SOURCE: “A Penchant for Narrative: ‘Mary Smith’ in Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford,” in Journal of Narrative Technique, Vol. 20, No. 3, Fall, 1990, pp. 318-30.

In the following essay, Carse investigates the character and interpretive role of Cranford's self-effacing narrator, Mary Smith.

Readers must wait until chapter twelve before the narrator of Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford finally promises to “say a word or two here about myself” (117). What then follows, however, is not at all a revelation about herself, but only a brief comment, necessitated by the plot, explaining why she has extended her recent visit to Cranford. This reticence is perhaps the reason that critics of Gaskell's most popular fiction seldom give more than brief attention to her narrator; when she is mentioned at all, the tendency is to dismiss her importance or possible complexity. ‘Mary Smith’ (who does not even reveal her name until chapter fourteen) has been called an...