Short Story: The Squire's Story by Elizabeth Gaskell

I spend so much of my time reading the latest releases that I rarely have time to dip back into the classics. Admittedly, I often find the classics a bit harder to read...the language forces me to think harder and reread sentences more often than in my normal reading. But I do want to read certain authors and Elizabeth Gaskell is an author I have very much wanted to read. So I was excited she was going to be on the classics circuit!

I signed up to read a short story because I know the reality of my time. I didn't realize I would have even less time, though, than I originally thought! So I confess...almost as if this was a class assignment, I chose one of the shorter stories in my book.

And....that was probably not the wisest choice. Because to be completely honest, I have no idea what the point of this short story was.

The story is of the squire who meets a nice man who his daughter ends up eloping with. And not everyone approves of this situation. And then there's a murder! And maybe there's still some money hidden in the house of the murderer. The end.

I felt a bit like the story rambled on introducing a chain of characters and then one quick event and it was over. And that's not really my style.

That doesn't make for a very interesting post so I went back to gather information from the introduction in Gothic Tales the short story collection I bought for this tour. It turns out this is a retelling of a local legend! The Knutsford local legend Edward Higgins. And I found out in this context that Gaskell "borrowed" quite a lot for her stories.

So...this is my first experience with Elizabeth Gaskell, but it's unlikely to be my last. I still want to read Wives and Daughters and North and South. At some point.

A very special thank you to the Classics Circuit for allowing a Classics loser like myself to give it all a try!