Not that the stories are namby-pamby, or unreal in any sense; they are wholly free from the horrid prudery, the Pharisaical temper, which makes a merit of walking through life in blinkers and refuses to know of anything that can shock the respectable. Mrs. Gaskell was too genuine an artist to fall either into this error or into the error of bad taste and want of reserve. She drew life with utter reverence; she held the highest of all ideals, and she dared to be true.
How tender and womanly and noble, for instance, is her treatment of the difficult subject which forms the _motif_ of "Ruth"! How sorrowfully true to life is the story of the dressmaker's apprentice with no place in which to spend her Sunday afternoons! We seem ourselves to breathe the dreadful "stuffy" atmosphere of the workroom, to feel the dreary monotony of the long day's work. It is so natural that the girl's fancy should be caught by Henry Bellingham, who was courteous to her when she mended the torn dress of his partner at the ball; so inevitable that she should lose her heart to him when she witnessed his gallant rescue of the drowning child. But her fall was not inevitable, and one of the finest bits in the whole novel is the description of Ruth's hesitation in the inn parlour when, finding herself most cruelly and unjustly cast off by her employer, she has just accepted her lover's suggestion that she shall go with him to London, little guessing what the promise involved, yet intuitively feeling that her consent had been unwise.
"Ruth became as hot as she had previously been cold, and went and opened the window, and leant out into the still, sweet evening air. The bush of sweetbriar underneath the window scented the place, and the delicious fragrance reminded her of her old home. I think scents affect and quicken the memory even more than either sights or sounds; for Ruth had instantly before her eyes the little garden beneath the window of her mother's room, with the old man leaning on his stick watching her, just as he had done not three hours before on that very afternoon." She remembers the faithful love of the old labouring man and his wife who had served her parents in their lifetime, and for their sake would help and advise her now. Would it not be better to go to them?