Women's Work and the Industrial Context in Elizabeth Gaskell's Fallen Woman Novel Ruth

Ruth has received a mixed critical response over the years: applauded for the bravery with which Gaskell targets the hypocrisy of her society towards fallen women, but falling short of a full defence of its heroine by having her story end in an early death. What distinguishes Ruth from many retellings of the ubiquitous fallen woman narrative is the redemptive arc Gaskell offers Ruth as her societal value is restored, even heightened, by the end of the novel, which is here enlightened by a reading of Ruth as an industrial novel. The tragedy of Ruth—a ‘fallen woman’ who at different points is a seamstress, governess, and nurse—is partly owing to the vulnerability in which her first employment in the textile industry places her; her subsequent moral redemption is then aided by certain distinctive affordances of the industrial context, including an increasing recognition of the broader value of women's labour. By attending to Ruth 's qualities as an industrial novel, this chapter suggests that Gaskell gives us her most heartening vision of the industrial environment as a place capable of inspiring broader-minded, more forgiving attitudes to sexual morality.