Elizabeth Gaskell Essay

After Helen died things didn’t get much better. The farm workers started to look down upon him and ‘hardy waited till my father’s back was turned rated the stepson’, even his own brother looks down upon him unintentionally ‘I sometimes repeated the disparaging words I heard†¦ Without fully understanding their meaning’. This makes us feel a lot of sympathy towards Gregory and we feel sorry for him. There seems to be a close link between Gregory life and his Mother life. No matter what happens, they try to make the best of things and get on with it. Preston maintains and feeds his hatred of Gregory instead of repressing it; he ‘cherished his feeling of alienation’ he had from Gregory. He lived the save type of life as her, one of suffering and one full of sorrow, death seems like a better place for him he is along side the one and only person who loved him. Preston holds a grudge on Gregory right from the very start. But we must admire Gregory for not begrudging him or any other person who treats him badly even if they have just been nasty to him, he would ‘do a kind turn for anyone, even if they had been scolding him’. He is parallel to his mother. This helps us to warm to him as a character. Gregory is stoical and endures things with uncomplaining patience which’s helps us to admire him. Gaskell creates a character that speaks highly of Gregory. Nearly every one of the farm workers has a bad thing to say about him apart from old Adam. Gregory is sent out onto the hills as a Shepard with along with Adam who trains him. Adam is the only person apart from Gregory’s mother who has not got a bad word to say about him, but indeed praises him. This is likely to the fact that Adam was ‘almost the first person who had a good opinion of Gregory’ and even told this to his boss, Preston. Later in the story when the narrator goes missing, Gregory goes out in the thick snow to look for his half brother risking in his own life and not even thinking about it. This also seems parallel to Helen who had done similar for Gregory by putting Gregory first and looking out for him without even thinking about it. When Gregory manages to find the narrator, Gaskell makes us feel even more admiration for him. In the freezing snow, he gives his brother the Maud (woollen shawl) that he is wearing so that the narrator can stay just a little bit warmer. This makes us warm to Gregory, because of the fact he is suffering for the sake of his brother. Gaskell evokes admiration from the readers, Gregory died for his brother, and someone he barely knew and did not even complain about it. Gaskell creates a character that many of the readers may take a disliking to and manages to get ambivalent responses from the readers. Preston is described as being ‘an old bachelor†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ long past forty’ and ‘one of the wealthiest farmers thereabouts†. Helen agrees to marry him solely on that the fact that he ‘promised to take good charge of her boy, and let him want for nothing, neither in way of keep nor in education’. This almost seems a purely business agreement. He uses Gregory as an excuse in order to marry Helen. Gaskell makes our response to Preston more complex than any other of the characters; she manages to get a complicated reaction to Preston through a short story. With the other main characters, it is obvious how Gaskell is trying to portray them but it is not obvious in Prestons case. We are suspicious of him at the start. At the start of â€Å"The Half Brothers† Preston is made out to be a horrible man, but by the end of the story our feelings have softened against him. He is very impatient, he does not wait for Helen to love him ‘Perhaps love would have come in time’. Preston begrudges Gregory as child for the attention he receives from Helen. He is jealous of him, and cannot stand Helen loving Gregory more than him. Preston is dehumanised. He does not love Gregory at all, but hates him. But later on we see that Preston is humanised, ‘glad and proud his son was born’. He becomes ‘sorry for his poor wife’s state’, but still blames it on Gregory and holds him responsible for Helens death even though it is his own fault for arguing with her. After Helens death Preston honours the agreement for which they were married under, to look after Gregory. But he makes no attempt to love him, only to give him material things that money can buy, nothing emotional. Even Preston is hurting Gregory’s dog, just because it belongs to Gregory, he has a real dislike to anything that Gregory owns or anything to do with. Even Preston’s own son thinks he is to hard on Gregory ‘I believe that my father cherished his feeling of alienation to my brother as a duty, than strove to repress it’ But towards the end of â€Å"The Half brothers† Gaskell makes us feel differently towards him. There is a sense of deep regret from Preston on his deathbed about the way that he treated Gregory throughout his life â€Å"God forgive me my hardness of heart towards the fatherless child! † After his death he knows that Helen loved Gregory more and so as a sign of repentance had ‘desired that he might lie at the foot of the grave, in which, by his desire, poor Gregory had been laid with our mother. ‘ Preston is very grateful and thankful to Gregory for saving his sons life â€Å"I would have given him half my land†¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦Ã¢â‚¬ ¦ I would have blessed him as my son†. He even tries to be kind to the dog, but it won’t let him near it. Gaskell is very good at creating and holding suspense for long periods of time through the story. At the start of the story, just after Helen’s husband dies suspense starts to build up as we become worried about Helen’s future and continues to hold the suspense until she marries Preston. When the narrators gets lost, the fact that ‘night came on quicker’ makes us feel unnerved that night is overtaking him and that he may get stuck there all night. An eerie atmosphere is created which intensifies the suspense even further ‘some wild boggy moor†¦ ‘ Tautology is used to emphasis how dark it and adds to the suspense ‘noiseless expansion of black darkness’. Gaskell’s use of language also helps to create suspense. ‘Suddenly the air was filled†¦ ‘, suddenly is placed at the beginning of the sentence to show how quickly and unexpectedly the snow fell. We start to become worried for the narrator and the suspense is built up even further by the emotional language used ‘I shouted – terrible, wild shouts for bare life’ and ‘choked with tears†¦ desolate, helpless death I was to die’ – shows how extreme the situation is, how isolated and lonely the narrator must have felt. The narrator starts to give up hope and we start to feel very sorry for him and then just as all hope is gone, lassie comes to his rescue, we now see that he saved and is going to get home safely as he has been found. Just as soon as we feel relief that he has been found, there poses as even bigger problem, instead of one person being lost, there are two – the suspense is deepened even further than before. As the two try to find their way home, it is apparent that they are not going to get home and could die out there. All of this creates suspense and makes the reader want to read on to see if the pair gets home all right. The suspense reaches it climax near the end of the story. When the narrator determined to sleep and doesn’t care if he dies. When the pair realise that they can go no further, they stop as a last resort – they know that they are going to die and sent lassie back to get help. The suspense is mounted to see whether or not lassie can get back to the ranch before the pair die of the cold. Then the narrator ‘fell asleep’. We think is the end, he has fallen asleep he will die. But then a sense of relief comes over us when we find that the narrator has been found just time and survives, but Gregory is not so lucky. Through out the story â€Å"The Half Brothers† Gaskell evokes and manipulates many of our feelings. But some readers, including myself find that some of the story mawkish and trying to push at our emotional buttons in an unsophisticated way. Gaskell style of writing helps to manipulate our feelings. The way she portrays Helen’s and Gregory’s lives makes us feel a lot of sympathy towards them but we admire the way they put up with everything without complaining. She creates a character, which seems to be the bad guy of the story and evokes complex feelings for him from us. Some readers including myself may find that Preston is an horrid man and continue to think the same even when Gaskell tries to soften his image by saying that he has become ‘humanised’, but others may feel that he is a good man at heart and this is portrayed at the end of the story when he is deeply regretful. Gaskell is very good at creating suspense and makes us worried about the characters and makes us want to read on. So overall Gaskell is very good at manipulating our feelings.