Cranford

Jessie’s Devotion

Miss Jessie bears with her sister’s pain and self-reproaches with absolute tenderness, and the Captain matches her with placid devotion. The narrator forgives Miss Jessie her tuneless singing and youthful dress on seeing her at home, and perceives that the Captain’s Brutus wig and padded, threadbare coat are unconscious survivals of his military youth. A man of infinite barrack-acquired resources, he blackens his own boots and saves the little maid-servant every labour he can, knowing his daughter’s illness makes the household hard.

The Wooden Fire-Shovel

Seeking reconciliation after the dispute over Dr Johnson, the Captain presents Miss Jenkyns with a wooden fire-shovel of his own making, having heard her complain of the grating of an iron one. She receives it with cool, formal thanks and bids the narrator store it in the lumber-room, feeling that nothing from a man who preferred Mr Boz to Dr Johnson could be less jarring than iron. The episode underscores the unresolved tension beneath their civility.

Letters from Cranford

After leaving Cranford for Drumble, the narrator receives letters from three correspondents. Miss Pole writes chiefly of crochet commissions, ending each item of news with a fresh errand. Miss Matty Jenkyns writes kindly and rambles into opinions, only to retract them after consulting her sister Deborah. Miss Jenkyns herself writes in stately Johnsonian sentences, modelled, the narrator suspects, on the Hebrew prophetess; she wears a cravat and jockey-cap bonnet and holds that women are superior, not merely equal, to men.