Despite feminist reassessments to the contrary, the conventional view that Elizabeth Gaskell personified the Victorian feminine ideal is still very much in place today. Challenging that view in an experimental biography, Felicia Bonaparte proposes that there lived in ""Mrs. Gaskell"" another, antithetical self, a daemonic double, that was not an angel in the house but instead a creature born to be a ""gypsy-bachelor."" Bonaparte does not dispute that ""Mrs. Gaskell"" did exist, but she suggests that Gaskell conceived her, as much as any fictional character, out of a desperate need produced by...

Despite feminist reassessments to the contrary, the conventional view that Elizabeth Gaskell personified the Victorian feminine ideal is still very much in place today. Challenging that view in an experimental biography, Felicia Bonaparte proposes that there lived in ""Mrs. Gaskell"" another, antithetical self, a daemonic double, that was not an angel in the house but instead a creature born to be a ""gypsy-bachelor."" Bonaparte does not dispute that ""Mrs. Gaskell"" did exist, but she suggests that Gaskell conceived her, as much as any fictional character, out of a desperate need produced by...