Customer Reviews

Sylvia's Lovers (Penguin Classics)

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In this bleak novel Elizabeth Gaskell deftly weaves a dark thread of history into her narrative tapestry. While war hovers on the margins of the novel, no one is left unaffected by its horror. After a sometimes painfully slow setup of domestic life in the seaside town of Monkshaven in the first third of the book, the sense of doom grows increasingly palpable. Sylvia, the novel's heroine, is isolated by her supposedly protective domestic sphere, but Gaskell shatters the delicate domestic circle that surrounds her. While Sylvia is left to bear emotional scars, becoming an impassive, hardened woman, Charley Kinraid, her true love, returns from war a ghost, haunting the margins of Monkshaven to hide his terrible physical scars. The full realization of the blight on Sylvia's life comes when the novel spirals down to its inevitable conclusion, where even reconciliation and understanding brings a powerful sense of loss.

In spite of the racy title, this book has no sex in it whatsoever. It was written in a simpler time (the Victorian age), when Lovers meant people who loved someone and desired to court them in a purely innocent way. So, if you're looking for salacious writing, you've come to the wrong place.

I've recently developed a keen interest in Elizabeth Gaskell. I saw two mini-series based on her books "Wives and Daughters" and "Cranfield" (I immediately bought the DVDs). Since then I've read a few of her novels: Wives and Daughters, North and South, and now Sylvia's Lovers. I love the way this author looks into the hearts of her characters. There are no villains, just people who struggle to find happiness. Sometimes in the process, they might harm others, but it is rarely malicious. Some of her characters are truly saintly in their efforts to do the right thing. You go away feeling as if you know every character better than you know yourself. Elizabeth Gaskell has amazing human insight.

This story is not a romance. It is a redemption tale, beginning with establishing relationships and dynamics between characters, it progresses through tragedy and unexpected character development, to the end when moral courage triumphs over romance. This is not a story that could be told today, when romance always triumphs, but it is far wiser than any mere romance. It is a tale of moral courage.

Mrs. Elizabeth Cleghorn Stevenson Gaskell (1810-1865) is a fine Victorian author.
Among her many novels the best are: North and South; Cranford: Ruth; Wives and Daughters (left incomplete at her early death); Mary Barton and Sylvia's Lovers.
Sylvia's Lovers was published by Smith & Elder Company in 1863. It is a long novel consisting of 455 pages of small print in the Penguin Edition.
The story concerns the lives and loves of Sylvia Robson in the 1790s. Sylvia is an only child of Daniel and Belle Robson. They live on a farm where Sylvia is spoiled though she does do many farmland chores. She is besotted by a handsome seaman named Charlie Kinraid. They become engaged but he is impressed by the British Navy
in the life and death struggle with Napoleonic France. Sylvia weds her cousin Phillip Hepburn. Hepburn is a cloth merchant who is somewhat wimpy but loves Sylvia to distraction. The girl is illiterate. Phillip becomes her adoring tutor.
Sylvia's father is executed for leading a riot against an impressment party of soldiers. He is hanged in York. Phillip lies to her when he refuses to tell Sylvia that her lover Kinraid told he he loved her and would be true before being dragged away to foreign service by a press gang. Sylvia reluctanly weds Phillip giving birth the estranged couple's child Bella.
During the Siege of Acre sailor Kinraid is wounded but is rescued by his erstwhile enemy Phillip. Phillip had joined the marines after he parted in anger from Sylvia. Sylvia had learned that Phillip had lied to her about Kincaid's message of his continuing love for her. A few years later the badly wounded Hepburn returns home to Monkshaven in the north of England where Sylvia and Bella are residing. Sylvia has learned from a gossping friend that Phillip rescued Kinraid as in a hero. Phillip also rescues Bella who has fallen off a steep rock. Due to his efforts Phillip is mortally injured. Phillip and Sylvia are reconciled in a touching death scene. Sylvia never remarries and little Bella marries and moves to America. Charlie Kinraid weds a wealthy young woman.
Many readers will not like the north country dialect and the sentimental Victorian scenes of domestic life. Mrs. Gaskell said it was the saddest story she had ever spun for her readers. Mrs. Gaskell had the ability to draw well rounded and complicated characters. The book is reminiscent of other bucolic tragedies of the Victorian era such as Adam Bede by George Eliot and Tess of the D'urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. Mrs. Gaskell's female characters are especially realistic.
Mrs. Gaskell the busy wife of a Unitarian minister in Manchester knew how to spend a fascinating story which will keep you hooked. Gaskell is neglected in many college level English Literature courses. She deserves to be more widely read! Perhaps the recent serialization of Cranford on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre will lead to a revival of interest on Mrs. Gaskell. If you love Victorian English fiction then this book will be a satisfying reading experience. Well recommended!

After discovering the author, Elizabeth Gaskell, I've been collecting as many of her books as possible. I look forward to reading this book.

Unfortunately, all too often we learn from our mistakes after it's too late. Seldom is one fortunate enough to use others' mistakes as a way of preventing unnecessary and often irreversible heartache. It's stories like this that make me see the value of religion and rules or commandments. And if suffering leads to growth, sometimes immaturity is not such a bad thing.

Basically, this is a tragically sad story. The title is Sylvia's Lovers but in my opinion it should have been Philip's Folly. He made a self-serving decision that affected several people's lives and most of all destroyed him and the object of his obsessive love, Sylvia. We all know people whose trajectory of their life was interfered with by others' dishonesty or desire for control with catastrophic results. Betrayal is very difficult to forgive and often establishes lifelong pain.

This is written with a vivid, lively and evocative style, often enlivened by humour. The first volume is lively and brisk in tone, yet overall, this is a tragic tale and the questions that it sets up about unrequited love, honour and duty are finally insoluable in terms of 'this world' which, apart from her natural inclinations as a minister's wife, is no doubt why Gaskell ends by drawing on the next in the final volume.

Set in the whaling town of Monkshaven (actually, Whitby)when conservation was unheard of (preposition, I know!), the story concerns the two admirers of pretty, spirited daughter of the one time whaling Speckioneer turned farmer Daniel Robson, and her two admirers.

One of the two is her unappealing,religious, dutiful, hard-working cousin Philip Hepburn, who becomes a business partner in a haberdasher's. He has 'made an idol' of Sylvia for years, much to her disgust. He idiotically believes he will win Sylvia's heart by teaching her to read and by trying to get her to wear drab colours.

Her preferred admirer is naturally the handsome, swaggering, talkative, dashing Specksioneer (Chief Harpooner) Charley Kinraid, who becomes Sylvia's hero when he is shot defending his crew mates from a press gang raid. He takes to calling on Sylvia's family when he is recovering, and they soon fall in love.

Kinraid has a reputation as a womaniser that has preceeded him, and Philip tries to warn Sylvia against him, but she does not believe him. When by coincidence he sees Kinraid being taken by a press gang on a deserted beach, Kinraid begs him to give the message to Sylvia that she must remain as true to him as he will to her, and that he will return. Philip treacherously decides against passing on a message he considers to be worthless and schemes to marry Sylvia himself.

But Kinraid returns...

I didn't find either the shallow, egotistical, opportunistic Kinraid, who has no human vulnerabilities, or the dismal, self-rightous Philip symapthetic, but I did feel a good deal for poor Sylvia.

Because of Gaskell's Victorian reticence, she clearly cannot go into the question of physical attraction which is the root of the problem here in Sylvia's torn loyalties, and this adds to the confusion of the nature of Sylvia's true feelings for both in the melodramatic denounement.

An interesting read. Most people enjoy the lively, cheerful note of the first volume, where Sylvia and Kinraid are falling in love, to the 'gathering shadows' of the second volume and the outright melodrama of the third. I enjoy a bit of melodrama myself...

Does anyone care to discuss the superficial depiction of Kinraid in this novel by Gaskell? As she was an experienced novelist, this can only have been deliberate, and raises all sorts of fascinating questions; I don't want to write a spoiler, so I will go into no more detail here!