How does Elizabeth Gaskell elicit sympathy for Helen, Gregory and even William Preston in the short story 'The Half-Brothers'? Do you find this story sentimental?

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The Half-Brothers                                

Monday 13th October 2003

How does Elizabeth Gaskell elicit sympathy for Helen, Gregory and even William Preston in the short story ‘The Half-Brothers’? Do you find this story sentimental?

This story, The Half-Brothers, written by Elizabeth Gaskell is set in 19th century Cumberland. This story is based on some of things that happened in Mrs Gaskell’s life such as her losing her children. The half brothers are Gregory and his younger brother whose name we never find out. Their mother loses her first husband and she re-marries William Preston. Their mother, Helen, dies in childbirth leaving Gregory to be brought up by his stepfather. Even though he had been badly treated by him, Gregory shows throughout that he is a true Christian.

        Mrs Gaskell in this story makes Helen into a very sympathetic character. The very first sentence ‘My mother was twice married’ is made to make us feel sympathy for her because we know that something bad must have happened in her first marriage but we don’t know what it is until later on in the paragraph. Helen is also made a sympathetic character by Mrs Gaskell listing a series of dreadful events that happened to Helen. Saying how young she is ‘She was barely seventeen’ makes us feel sympathetic for Helen knowing that she is young and helpless. We also begin to think from this that she is too young to be married. The grief occurs when she loses her husband and she is left to look after a young child on her own. She was only just able to walk. We begin to think things are getting better for her when her sister comes to help her. They had a plan. ‘They plotted how to make every penny they could’. Everything goes wrong. ‘The farm on her hands for four years or more by the lease’. We feel sympathy for her knowing that she has too much to cope with on her own. Helen also has ‘pressing debts’ and for the money that she has to pay back she sells what is left of the stock on the farm one by one. Most of the stock had already died by this time. ‘There was another child coming’. This means that she cannot work. Also because she has another child to look after. Helen cannot afford to look after another child. She was ‘sad and sorry’. This alliteration emphasises her despair with the soft sounding ‘s’ on both of the words. She is unable to have help from neighbours because she is on a remote farm and has no neighbours. She only has her sister to help her. ‘A dreary winter she must have had in her lonesome dwelling’ are dragged out to make it seem longer and make us feel sorry for her. These are the emotive words. There is no one for miles around so she cannot go begging for money. She is severely in debt and there is nothing she can do apart from her sister’s help. Sympathy by this time is growing very deep for Helen and then there is one last blow and this is when her little baby daughter is struck ill with scarlet fever and she dies in Helens arms. ‘She did not cry’ this makes us feel that she has had too much stress in her life and that she cannot take any more and she cant cry.

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The death of the baby girl is emphasised by the dialect that is used such as ‘wee lassie’. This emphasises the fact that she is small and the ‘ie’ on the end of ‘lassie’ makes her seem even smaller because lass is just a girl and lassie is a small girl. Helen looks at the girl without shedding a tear. This shows how upset she must be, because she can’t even cry when her daughter dies. This also shows that she is shocked by the amount of tragedy in her life. First her husband dies and leaves her pregnant with ...

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