Wives and Daughters, by Elizabeth Gaskell. Part II.

Gaskell’s last novel Wives and Daughters, widely considered her masterpiece, follows the fortunes of two families in the nineteenth century rural England.

The novel looks at the English life in the 1830s through the experiences of Molly Gibson, the daughter of a widowed doctor growing up in the provincial town of Hollingford. When Mr. Gibson decides to marry again, Molly is forced to contend with a pretentious stepmother, but consoled by a close friendship with Cynthia, her new stepsister.

The girls' relations with the local residents, particularly the Squire of Hamley Hall and his family, make for incidents comic, romantic, and tragic, by turns.