Cranford

Evaluating Miss Matty’s Livelihood Options

Miss Matty and the narrator sit down to plan. Miss Matty’s modest idea is to take a single room, retain necessary furniture, and quietly exist on what remains. The narrator, more ambitious, runs through every accomplishment Miss Matty might teach: music long forgotten, embroidery pattern-tracing nearly useless, fancy work and globes beyond her, spelling idiosyncratic. Miss Matty’s true skills—candle-lighters, knitted garters, and wrapped sewing-silk cards—are hardly marketable. Teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic is also problematic, as her cough interrupts long words and her spelling grows eccentric in formal letters. The narrator concludes there is nothing Miss Matty can teach the rising generation of Cranford except her patience, humility, and quiet contentment, and the question remains unanswered as Martha announces a tearful dinner.

Tea Selling Proposal for Miss Matty

Over the tea-urn that afternoon, a new idea comes to the narrator: Miss Matty could sell tea as an agent for the East India Tea Company. The plan has many advantages—tea is neither greasy nor sticky (qualities Miss Matty cannot endure), requires no shop-window, and is not heavy. The only objection is the buying and selling that trade would entail, and the narrator wonders whether Miss Matty can be persuaded to overcome the sense of degradation. While she is still mulling this over, a clumping on the stairs interrupts her thoughts.

Martha and Jem’s Lodging Proposal

Martha appears at the drawing-room door, dragging in a tall, crimson, perpetually hair-sleeking young man named Jem Hearn. Martha blurts out that Jem wants to marry her off-hand, that they wish to take a lodger to make ends meet, and—most importantly—would Miss Matty consider lodging with them? Jem, flustered and trying to explain that he needs “breathing-time,” stumbles into awkward statements about not wanting common lodgers, but then rallies to address Miss Matty with genuine dignity, expressing his respect for Martha’s kind mistress and offering to keep out of her way as much as possible. Martha, hurt by his earlier hedging, is at last satisfied with this straightforward declaration, and the chapter ends with their earnest proposal hanging in the air.