In her short story

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In her short story “the Half brothers” how does Elizabeth Gaskell manipulate the readers feelings?

        ‘The Half-Brothers” is a story written in the mid-1900’s by a middle-class Victorian writer called Elizabeth Gaskell.  She has a strong moral interest in the difficulties of poor people who lived in abject poverty.  This is what inspired her to write stories such as “The Half-Brothers”. Some of her characters in this short story are described in such a way as to provoke sympathy and admiration for them from the reader.  However other characters have much more depth to them and are more complicated.  The suspense she creates in the particularly dramatic episode set in the Fells in the north of England also manipulates the reader’s feelings.

        The first character we are introduced to is Helen- the narrator’s mother.  She is a very sympathetic character.  Almost immediately the writer starts to gain our pity for Helen.  She was so young when she was first married- “scarcely seventeen” in fact, and her husband was barely “one and twenty”.  Both of these emphasises how very young they were when they entered into such a great commitment of marriage.  Things did not go well for her from the start.  The small farm they rented only brought them into more debt but she defended her first husband by saying “perhaps he was too young and inexperienced”.  No blame is put on anyone for what ahs happened and this helps to show Helen’s peaceful character.  A few sentences in to the story Gaskell includes an extremely long sentence that spans over about 11 lines.  This elicits the reader’s pity for Helen by giving us a sense that all her problems are accumulating.  Helen becomes a widow very early- “a young widow of 20” is how she is described.  This tautology emphasises how very young she is.  Widowhood is more accepted among older people but it is unusual for people so young to be a widow.  She has to undergo all these tragedies all in such a short and concentrated period of time long before she should have to and this again elicits our pity for her.  Helen is described as being a very isolated character and this is continually emphasised by repeating it.  Her living space is described as a ‘lonesome dwelling’ and at the funeral of her youngest daughter “neighbours, my aunt and one far off cousin” were “all the friends they could muster” The pathetic fallacy “dreary winter” reflects what is going in her life.  The harshness of the weather reflects the harshness of the weather reflects the harshness occurring in her life.  Her marriage to Preston is in one sense a good thing as she will now be able to provide for her son, Gregory.  However she does not love Preston.  We pity Helen because she is committing herself to someone she does not want to be with just to support her son.  The quotation “Aunt Fanny heard her cry as if her heart was breaking” reinforces this point.  There is also at least a 20-year age gap between Helen and Preston.  He is old enough to be her father and had known the narrator’s grandfather well.  He was ‘long past forty’ and she had ‘not seen her four and twentieth summer’ suggesting that they are the perfect mismatch for each other, but even so Helen is looking out for the best interest of her child.  In her deathbed tableau there is a sad irony.  One of her first smiles was right before she died and this again emphasises how bad her life was and that she could only smile in death.  The tableau, which is a description of Helen, the sons and Preston all together, is to show a moment of happiness, a glimpse into what could possibly have been a happy marriage.

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        Gaskell also elicits our admiration for Helen to show her as a sympathetic character.  She made an extremely big self-sacrifice, which was basically giving her life to a man she did not love to ensure her son had all the support he needed as “a boy was a great charge to a widowed mother”.  She always looked out for Gregory and “he always had enough, whoever went short.”  This shows how well looked after he was.  She was full of stoicism and was prepared to get through the troubles; she always endured them with a quiet dignity and even mourned ...

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