la vie en rose

The last 3 Sundays on Masterpiece Theater they've been showing Cranford. I loved it! The story is about an English village in the mid-1800's, just as it's starting to change from the arrival of the railroad. Cranford is based on 3 books by Elizabeth Gaskell, who also wrote North & South and Wives & Daughters. Gaskell was a friend of Charles Dickens and Charlotte Bronte, and her life experience is very different from Jane Austen's. She married a minister, had several children, and spent her time helping the poor. Her stories have all the romantic attachments that we Austen fans expect, but she frames them in the experiences of the day - the labor movement, women's rights, the Industrial Revolution, Victorian values. Her characters go through extreme poverty and grief, but she gives them hope and optimism.

I really liked Cranford, especially that the main characters are spinsters and widows - people who are usually left out of love stories. It was funny, it was sad; I would highly recommend it.