Ruth

Summary

Ruth is Gaskell's novel about a 'fallen woman', written to challenge the Victorian assumption that an unmarried mother and her child were beyond redemption. Ruth Hilton is a beautiful, innocent orphan of fifteen, apprenticed to a dressmaker, Mrs Mason, in a country town, where she works long hours in a cold workroom. At a ball where she is sent to mend dresses she meets Henry Bellingham, a wealthy, careless young gentleman. Their friendship grows during Sunday walks, and when Mrs Mason sees them together and dismisses her, Ruth, homeless and with nowhere to go, goes away with him to London and then to North Wales. There Bellingham falls seriously ill with fever. His mother arrives, takes control of his nursing, and removes him, leaving Ruth with a banknote and a letter of dismissal. In despair Ruth thinks of drowning herself, but she is prevented by Thurstan Benson, a gentle Dissenting minister with a spinal deformity whom she had met in the village. Benson and his sister Faith take her home to the town of Eccleston, and when they learn she is pregnant they decide, against Benson's conscience, to present her as a young widow, Mrs Denbigh. Their servant Sally grumbles but cuts off Ruth's hair to make her look like a widow. Ruth's son Leonard is born, and she becomes devoted to him and to self-improvement. She is employed as governess to the daughters of Mr Bradshaw, the rich, self-righteous leading member of Benson's chapel. Years later Bellingham, now calling himself Mr Donne, reappears as a parliamentary candidate backed by Bradshaw. He recognizes Ruth and, learning of his son, offers marriage, but she refuses because she no longer respects him and fears his influence on Leonard. Then her secret is revealed. Bradshaw denounces her and the Bensons, and Leonard learns of his illegitimacy and is crushed with shame. Ruth's rehabilitation comes through service. When a typhus epidemic strikes Eccleston, she volunteers as a nurse in the fever hospital, where her courage and tenderness earn the town's gratitude. Hearing that Donne has caught the fever, she nurses him back to health, but she catches the infection herself and dies in delirium. Bradshaw, softened, is reconciled with Benson, and Leonard is taken into the practice of Mr Davis, a kindly surgeon who was himself born outside marriage. The novel closes at Ruth's grave.

Plot or Argument

• The dressmaker's apprentice (Ch. 1–4)

  Ruth works for Mrs Mason, meets Bellingham at a ball and through Sunday walks, and is dismissed when Mrs Mason sees them together.

• Wales and abandonment (Ch. 4–10)

  In Wales, Bellingham falls ill with fever; his mother removes him and abandons Ruth, who contemplates suicide and is rescued by Thurstan Benson.

• Eccleston and the lie (Ch. 11–18)

  The Bensons take Ruth home as the widowed 'Mrs Denbigh'. Leonard is born, and Ruth grows in education and faith.

• Governess to the Bradshaws (Ch. 19–25)

  Ruth teaches the Bradshaw children and befriends Jemima Bradshaw. Bellingham reappears as Mr Donne and proposes marriage, which Ruth refuses.

• Exposure (Ch. 26–30)

  Her history becomes known; Bradshaw expels her from his house and breaks with the Bensons; Leonard is devastated.

• The fever and Ruth's death (Ch. 31–36)

  Ruth nurses typhus patients in the town hospital, then nurses Donne privately, catches the fever and dies. Leonard is apprenticed to the surgeon Mr Davis.

Characters

• Ruth Hilton, heroine

  Orphaned seamstress seduced and abandoned at sixteen, who rebuilds her life as a mother, governess and nurse.

• Henry Bellingham (Mr Donne), seducer

  Selfish young gentleman who abandons Ruth and later returns under another name as a political candidate.

• Thurstan Benson, Dissenting minister

  Kind, physically disabled minister who rescues Ruth and agonizes over the deception he agrees to.

• Faith Benson, Benson's sister

  Practical, warm-hearted woman who devises Ruth's widowhood disguise.

• Sally, the Bensons' servant

  Outspoken, comic old servant who becomes fiercely loyal to Ruth.

• Leonard, Ruth's son

  Ruth's illegitimate son, who suffers when his birth is revealed.

• Mr Bradshaw, wealthy chapel member

  Rigid, self-righteous merchant whose moral certainty is humbled by events.

• Jemima Bradshaw, Bradshaw's daughter

  Passionate young woman who overcomes jealousy of Ruth and becomes her defender.

• Mr Farquhar, Bradshaw's partner

  Steady businessman who eventually marries Jemima.

• Mr Davis, surgeon

  Doctor who sees Ruth's work in the epidemic and takes Leonard as an apprentice.

Lessons

• Redemption without condemnation

  Gaskell insists that Ruth's 'fall' was the product of innocence, poverty and exploitation, and that she can lead a good life. The novel indicts a society that punishes women and children for men's actions.

  • Who bears the most responsibility for Ruth's situation?
  • Why does the novel nonetheless have Ruth die?
  • Does Ruth need to be so perfect for the argument to work?

• The ethics of the kind lie

  The Bensons' decision to pass Ruth off as a widow protects her and her child but troubles Benson's conscience. The book explores whether compassionate deception can be justified.

  • Was the lie right? What alternatives existed?
  • How does Bradshaw's reaction to the truth reflect on his own morality?

• Care as vocation

  Ruth's work in the fever hospital turns private shame into public service. Gaskell presents nursing as moral heroism at a time when hospital nursing was still a low-status job.

  • Why does the town's view of Ruth change during the epidemic?
  • How does the novel portray the risks taken by caregivers?

Context

Ruth appeared when the 'fallen woman' was a central Victorian social anxiety, linked to the needlework trades, prostitution and illegitimacy, and when infectious fever was a regular feature of crowded industrial towns. Gaskell, a minister's wife in Manchester, knew such cases at first hand, including a young seamstress she tried to help emigrate.

Composition

Written in 1852 and published by Chapman and Hall in three volumes in January 1853.

Reception

The book scandalized some readers; Gaskell reported that copies were burned and that members of her husband's congregation forbade their wives to read it. Others, including Charlotte Brontë and Florence Nightingale's circle, admired its courage. It is now read as a key text of Victorian social-problem fiction.

Comparisons

• the-scarlet-letter

  Both portray an unmarried mother punished by a religious community while the father evades judgement; Hester's open shame contrasts with Ruth's concealed history.

• david-copperfield

  Dickens's Little Em'ly and Martha are contemporary fallen-woman figures; Dickens and Gaskell shared the cause of rescuing such women.

• effi-briest

  Both trace how a woman's sexual past, once revealed, is used to destroy her social standing and separate her from her child.

• a-christmas-carol

  Both use illness and the threat of death to provoke the conversion of a hard-hearted man, Scrooge and Bradshaw.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Mrs Mason's cold workroom and the ball where Ruth is sent to mend dresses in the opening chapters. Notice how little protection an orphaned apprentice of fifteen has when she meets Henry Bellingham.
• The scene in Wales after Mrs Bellingham removes her son, when Ruth, abandoned with a banknote and a letter, is stopped from drowning herself by Thurstan Benson.
• The Bensons' decision to present Ruth in Eccleston as the widowed Mrs Denbigh, and Sally cutting off Ruth's hair. Watch how this single lie shapes every later chapter.
• Bellingham's return as Mr Donne, the parliamentary candidate, and Ruth's refusal of his offer of marriage for Leonard's sake.
• The typhus epidemic, in which Ruth volunteers in the fever hospital and then nurses Donne. Ask why Gaskell ends Ruth's story through service and death rather than through marriage.

Key terms and names

Mrs Denbigh

The false name and widowhood the Bensons give Ruth when they bring her to Eccleston. Benson agrees to it against his conscience, and its exposure years later is the crisis of the novel.

Dissenting minister

A Protestant pastor outside the Church of England. Thurstan Benson leads a small chapel in Eccleston, and its leading member, Mr Bradshaw, is the man who later condemns Ruth and Benson most harshly.

Eccleston

The manufacturing town where the Bensons live and where Ruth raises Leonard, works as a governess, and finally nurses the town through fever. Its chapel and its election show a whole community's judgments at work.

Mr Bradshaw

The wealthy, self-righteous chapel member who employs Ruth as governess and then denounces her when her past is revealed. His own son's fraud and his softening at the end test his rigid idea of righteousness.

Leonard

Ruth's son, whose existence both shames and redeems her. His crushed reaction to learning he was born outside marriage shows that the town's judgment falls on the child as well as the mother.

The fever hospital

The typhus ward where Ruth volunteers during the Eccleston epidemic. Her courage there earns the gratitude of the town that had shunned her.

Mr Davis

The kindly surgeon who takes Leonard into his practice at the end. He was himself born outside marriage, and his success answers the fear that such a child is ruined for life.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How does Ruth come to leave with Bellingham, and what happens to her in Wales when he falls ill with fever?
2. Comprehension Why do the Bensons decide to present Ruth as the widow Mrs Denbigh, and how does Faith Benson persuade her brother?
3. Comprehension Why does Ruth refuse Mr Donne's offer of marriage when he reappears in Eccleston?
4. Interpretation Thurstan Benson saves Ruth's life and then agrees to a lie to protect her. Is the lie a failure of his faith or an expression of his mercy, and how does Gaskell seem to judge it?
5. Interpretation Mr Bradshaw condemns Ruth for deceit while his own son Richard is committing fraud. What does Gaskell show about Bradshaw's righteousness through this parallel?
6. Interpretation Ruth nurses the man who abandoned her and dies of the fever she catches from him. Is her death a reward, a punishment, or something else?
7. Big Question Can a community uphold a moral standard and still receive back someone who has broken it? What would that require of Eccleston?
8. Big Question Is it ever right to deceive others in order to give a person a second chance?

Faith Connections

• John 8:1-11 (Scripture)

  Jesus refuses to condemn the woman taken in adultery while telling her to sin no more. Thurstan Benson tries to act on this pattern, while Mr Bradshaw plays the part of the accusers until his own family's sins humble him.

• Luke 7:36-50 (Scripture)

  At the house of Simon the Pharisee, a woman known as a sinner anoints Jesus' feet, and he tells Simon that she who is forgiven much loves much. Ruth's tireless love in the fever hospital is Gaskell's version of this woman's devotion, and Bradshaw's house resembles Simon's.

• Ezekiel 18:20 (Scripture)

  The prophet declares that the son shall not bear the iniquity of the father. Leonard's shame and his later success under Mr Davis dramatize the question of whether a child should carry his parents' guilt.

• Augustine, On Lying (De Mendacio) (Church Fathers)

  Augustine argued that a lie is never permitted, even to save another from harm. His strict position sharpens the dilemma of Benson's decision to call Ruth Mrs Denbigh, which Benson himself later regrets as a sin even though it was done in love.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Ruth fell through ignorance and abandonment, not through hardened vice. Society treats such a woman and her child as beyond redemption, which drives some to despair and death. Yet a person given shelter, education, and the chance to serve can grow into great goodness, as Ruth does in the Bensons' home and in the fever hospital. Therefore Christians should receive the fallen with mercy rather than condemnation, and the lies that respectable society forces on them are a sign that its judgment is too harsh.

Rhetorical device: dramatic irony. In the governess chapters Mr Bradshaw holds up Mrs Denbigh as a model of modest virtue for his daughters, while the reader knows the history he would condemn, so every word of his praise prepares for the force of his denunciation when the secret comes out.

Debate: Resolved: Thurstan Benson was right to present Ruth as a widow.

Writing Prompts

Essay: The Bensons save Ruth with a lie, and the lie nearly destroys them all when it is exposed. Using Benson's struggle over the name Mrs Denbigh, Bradshaw's denunciation, and the ending in the fever hospital, argue what Gaskell finally thinks about the lie: was it necessary, forgivable, or a mistake that the truth would have avoided?

Comparison with The Scarlet Letter: Hester Prynne wears her shame openly on her breast, while Ruth hides hers under the name Mrs Denbigh; both women raise a child born outside marriage and win their communities' respect through service to the sick and poor. Compare the two novels' treatment of public shame and hidden guilt, and argue which offers the truer picture of repentance and restoration.

Medical Lens

Ruth is one of the most important Victorian novels about nursing. Written shortly before Florence Nightingale's Crimean work made hospital nursing respectable, it presents Ruth volunteering in a typhus ward as an act of heroic, quasi-religious service, at a time when hired hospital nurses were often stereotyped as drunken and disreputable. The typhus epidemic in Eccleston reflects the real fevers of crowded industrial towns before germ theory, and the novel registers fear of contagion and the class geography of disease. Bellingham's earlier fever in Wales is nursed by his mother and a hired nurse, a contrast in kinds of care. Ruth's pregnancy and confinement, Benson's spinal deformity, Ruth's suicidal impulse after abandonment, and her final delirium are all treated with sympathy. Mr Davis, the surgeon, represents a humane, practical medicine that judges by conduct, not birth.

• Ch. 5–7

  Bellingham's fever in Wales; his mother takes over the sickroom and excludes Ruth.

  Fever InfectionNursing Caregiving
• Ch. 8

  Abandoned, Ruth runs toward a pool to drown herself and is stopped by Benson.

  SuicideDisability Deformity
• Ch. 14–15

  Ruth's confinement and the birth of Leonard in the Bensons' house.

  Childbirth Maternal
• Ch. 32–33

  Typhus epidemic in Eccleston; Ruth volunteers as matron-nurse in the fever ward of the hospital.

  Plague EpidemicNursing CaregivingPublic Health Sanitation
• Ch. 34–35

  Ruth nurses Donne through the fever, falls ill herself and dies in delirium.

  Fever InfectionDeath Dying
• Ch. 35–36

  Mr Davis the surgeon offers Leonard an apprenticeship, revealing his own illegitimate birth.

  Physicians Doctors

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write Sally's account of the night Ruth's secret becomes known in Eccleston.

• Essay

  Why does Gaskell kill Ruth? Argue whether the ending strengthens or undermines the novel's plea for mercy.

• Classroom

  Compare the novel's typhus ward with historical descriptions of Victorian fever hospitals and discuss what the novelist gets right.

Further Reading

• Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell

• The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell

• Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, Jenny Uglow

• Notes on Nursing, Florence Nightingale

  1859 guide that defined the respectable nurse a few years after Ruth.