Classic Serial: Ruth
Radio 4
There is much more to Mrs Gaskell than Cranford, thank goodness. Charlotte Brontë loved Mrs Gaskell’s company and conversation. She struck her as “kind, clever, animated and unaffected”. Arthur Hugh Clough, who met her in 1849, somewhat ungallantly said she was “neither young (past 30) nor beautiful” and very retiring, but quite capable of talking “when she likes – a good deal of the clergyman’s wife about her” – a clue taken up by Lord David Cecil who thought her novels were “David Copperfield and Barchester Towers written by a minister’s wife in her drawing room”.
But the really important thing about Mrs Gaskell is that she wrote with the best intentions. And her heart was in the right place. Mary Barton, North and South, Wives and Daughters are unambiguously written from a clear and committed perspective. Ruth, published in 1853, is no exception.
The stock subject of the “fallen woman” is treated from the victim’s point of view. Ruth is left penniless as a teenager and works for a pittance as a seamstress for the harsh and merciless Mrs Mason. The term “seamstress” would have rung alarm bells for Victorian readers. It was a euphemism for a prostitute. And the trade was endemic in Victorian England. Charles Dickens’ readers would know what Uncle Ralph Nickleby meant when he recommended young Kate be a seamstress: “Dress-makers in London, as I need not remind you” he tells Mrs Nickleby, “who are so well acquainted with all matters in the ordinary routine of life, make large fortunes, keep equipages, and become persons of great wealth and fortune”. Dressmakers’ shops were notorious as pick-up places.
Inevitably, innocent young Ruth is seduced by rich young bounder Bellingham, who abandons her in remote Wales immediately he learns of her pregnancy. In the depths of her despair, she is befriended by a big-hearted dissenting minister, Benson, and she lives safely with his family miles away from the scene of her disgrace as a governess under an assumed name. But chance plays a cruel trick. The bounder reappears as an aspiring parliamentarian.
The novel positively blossoms in this new radio version as the story, stripped of its prosy packaging, is cut to the bone. Consequently, the narrative dramatically unwinds. The story is carried forward frequently in a mode highly suited to radio drama, as we overhear what characters are thinking, stage by stage. Ruth is finely played by Laura Rees, seducer Bellingham by Rory Kinnear and the virtuous Benson by Anton Lesser. Ruth’s scream of anguished despair and Benson’s earnest response made a fine climax to the first episode. In my view, this drama series, produced by Richard Blake and directed by Ellen Dryden, is actually better than the original novel. And that’s more than can be said of BBC 1’s version of Cranford. l
Robert Giddings
