Not nearly as well-known as North and South or Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell’s Sylvia’s Lovers follows along with Gaskell’s unusual (for Victorian times) featuring of a working-class heroine. Sylvia Robson is the daughter of a relatively prosperous – but by no means wealthy – farmer in northern England. When the novel opens, she is just coming into the bloom of her young womanhood, and her beauty is the talk of her local environs and responsible for enchanting her cousin Philip. Sylvia finds Philip, when she thinks of him at all, an annoyance and a bit of a pedantic.

Aside from Sylvia’s beauty, the other hot topic of conversation is the press gang. Under constant stress from Napoleon, the British Navy has turned to the shameful practice of impressment – rounding up able-bodied civilian men, kidnapping them, and forcing them to serve on Naval ships. No man, save for the very old, the very young, and the clearly disabled, was safe from roaming press gangs – although certain professions, including whalers, were supposed to be exempt from impressment. But “supposed to be” and what really happened were two different things, and the town is waiting with bated breath for the return of the “Greenland whalers” who base there in the winter. When the first ship appears in harbor, the press gang strikes and Charley Kinraid, chief harpooner, is shot and wounded. The town is abuzz with gossip about his heroism, and Sylvia is fascinated by Kinraid.

Kinraid has a reputation: he’s a bit of a womanizer and a heart-breaker. When he starts to court Sylvia – helped along by Farmer Robson’s lively interest in the whaler’s tales – Philip is dismayed. But their courtship is cut short by the press gang. Watching Charley be carried off, Philip promises to tell Sylvia what has happened to the whaler – but he says nothing. Sylvia, believing her fiance drowned, mourns and also grows up and grows more beautiful.

To be sure, it was only to her father and mother that she remained the same as she had been when an awkward lassie of thirteen. Out of the house there were the most contradictory opinions of her, especially if the voices of women were to be listened to. She was ‘an ill-favoured, overgrown thing’; ‘has as bonny as the first rose i’ June, and as sweet i’ her nature as t’ honeysuckle a-climbing round it’; she was ‘a vixen, with a tongue sharp enough to make yer very heart bleed’; she was ‘just a bit o’ sunshine wheriver she went’; she was sulky, lively, witty, silent, affectionate, or cold-hearted, according to the person who spoke about her. In fact, her peculiarity seemed to be this – that every one who knew her talked about her either in praise or blame; in church, or in market, she unconsciously attracted attention; they could not forget her presence, as they could of other girls perhaps more personally attractive. Now all of this was a cause of anxiety to her mother, who began to feel as if she would rather have had her child passed by in silence than so much noticed.

Philip’s decision to conceal Charley’s true fate from Sylvia is a fascinating plot. As a character, he is complicated. His broken promise destroys his life, Sylvia’s life, and several more lives by extension – to share more would be to spoil the plot. His motivations are the central question of the book: is it genuine love? Is it vindictiveness? Is it both? Did Philip truly love Sylvia? Did Charley?

Sylvia is a passive character. While she is operating with very imperfect information – Philip actively conceals Charley’s whereabouts from her and allows her to think he has drowned, on the flimsy basis that he’s probably going to die in some Naval battle or another, anyway – she generally just lets events happen. Now that’s partly a reflection of the realities of life in Victorian times, for a young woman – but several of Gaskell’s other heroines would have been a lot less passive. I can’t see Cynthia Kirkpatrick, for example, just sitting back and letting romantic drama grind her down. Cynthia is in charge of the romantic drama, thank you.

I think it’s Sylvia’s passivity that made this book a bit of a tepid reading experience for me. There’s a lot of dialogue, which makes the reading hard going, and Gaskell tends to veer into melodrama the longer things drag out. But that wouldn’t stand in the way of a really fabulous read if the heroine was a stronger character. Unlike the wonderful Molly and Cynthia of Wives and Daughters, or the strong and principled Margaret of North and South, Sylvia is bland and generally uninteresting. Her defining characteristic is physical beauty, and it’s on that basis – and that alone – she has two men falling at her feet. It’s hard to root for her or even to care, really, about what happens to her. Philip is the most well-rounded character – and it is interesting to consider whether he’s the novel’s hero or villain or anti-hero – and Charley comes across as little more than a plot device. It’s just all – bland.

Elizabeth Gaskell has written some of my favorite novels – Cranford in particular, and Wives and Daughters, both rank near the top of my desert island library list – but this isn’t one of them. If you’re new to Gaskell and want to start someplace, I suggest starting with one of those or with North and South.

Have you read Elizabeth Gaskell? Which of her novels is your favorite?