The Old Nurse's Story

“I was just a girl in the village school, when, one day, your grandmother came in to ask the mistress if there was any scholar there who would do for a nurse-maid; and mighty proud I was, I can tell ye, when the mistress called me up, and spoke to my being a good girl at my needle, and a steady, honest girl, and one whose parents were very respectable, though they might be poor.”

Hester continues to establish her respectability with details of her own diligence and honesty, her virtues as a domestic female who is “good at [her] needle,” and the honorable reputation of her parents. She lacks the economic status of the story’s readers, and she occasionally betrays her outsider status by dropping into dialect, but Hester embodies the merits of a middle-class woman.

“To be sure, I had little enough to do with her when she came, for she was never out of her mother’s arms, and slept by her all night long; and proud enough was I sometimes when missis trusted her to me.”

Here, Hester speaks of Rosamond’s mother who demonstrates her maternal affection by caring for her own child around the clock, even while a young nursemaid stands ready to do so. Hester’s pride in being trusted and her readiness to step in to care for the baby at any moment suggest that she also shares that caretaking capacity. Both women’s attitudes contrast to Lord Furnivall’s proud parenting and brutal treatment of his granddaughter, as well as to Miss Grace’s cruelty and Miss Maude’s willingness to live at a distance from the child she dotes on in order to save her reputation.

“She took after her mother, who was a real lady born; a Miss Furnivall, a granddaughter of Lord Furnivall’s, in Northumberland. I believe she had neither brother nor sister, and had been brought up in my lord’s family till she had married your grandfather, who was just a curate, son to a shopkeeper in Carlisle—but a clever, fine gentleman as ever was—and one who was a right-down hard worker in his parish, which was very wide, and scattered all abroad over the Westmoreland Fells.”

Hester connects Rosamond’s mother to the nobility of the Furnivall family, but also sets her apart by her actions, demonstrating the traits Gaskell emphasizes throughout the story as middle-class values. Though her family place might have allowed her to remain comfortably at Furnivall Hall, she chooses to marry a curate whose father was only a shopkeeper. Though Rosamond’s father has none of the status of a titled family, he would have been educated and his position also suggests some religious virtue. Hester affirms these qualities by noting that he was “a clever, fine gentleman as ever was” without the privilege of birth that the Furnivalls enjoy. 

“We had left all signs of a town, or even a village, and were then inside the gates of a large, wild park—not like the parks here in the south, but with rocks, and the noise of running water, and gnarled thorn-trees, and old oaks, all white and peeled with age.”

As Hester and Rosamond arrive at Furnivall Hall, the setting startles Hester and takes on significance. First, the “wild” park is remote from any town or village. Hester knows that her readers “here in the south” will need a description of the wild and rugged terrain around the family manor in the north, where nature displays a lack of cultivation that suggests a less civilized place and people.

“Beyond it, on the same side, was a door; and opposite, on each side of the fire-place, were also doors leading to the east front; but those I never went through as long as I stayed in the house, so I can’t tell you what lay beyond.”

These details of the setting are an instance of Gaskell’s foreshadowing through description. As Hester and Rosamond enter the manor house, readers learn that Hester never went into the east wing while she lived at Furnivall Manor. Before readers know that Miss Maude Furnivall and her child haunt that wing, it’s indicated that it was never part of Hester’s experience there. Hester also contributes to her own authority by refusing to speculate about parts of the house she does not know first-hand. 

“Sitting with her, working at the same great piece of tapestry, was Mrs Stark, her maid and companion, and almost as old as she was. She had lived with Miss Furnivall ever since they both were young, and now she seemed more like a friend than a servant; she looked so cold, and grey, and stony, as if she had never loved or cared for any one; and I don’t suppose she did care for any one, except her mistress; and, owing to the great deafness of the latter, Mrs Stark treated her very much as if she were a child.”

We get as much description of Mrs Stark, the companion, as we do of Miss Furnivall when we meet the two old ladies together. Though we learn that she is a companion and life-long friend, several details in the description of Mrs Stark highlight the contrast she makes with Hester, Rosamond’s mother, and even Dorothy as caretakers and domestic laborers.

“And old James called up Dorothy, his wife, to bid us welcome; and both he and she were so hospitable and kind, that by and by Miss Rosamond and me felt quite at home; and by the time tea was over, she was sitting on Dorothy’s knee, and chattering away as fast as her little tongue could go. I soon found out that Dorothy was from Westmoreland, and that bound her and me.”

This meeting with Dorothy and James represents the first time that Rosamond and Hester feel comfortable in their grand and cold new home. Dorothy’s physical affection for Rosamond immediately reaps the effect of the child’s confidence to start “chattering away” with her, and Hester finds a fellow countrywoman in Dorothy. Though they are all servants, Gaskell paints this scenario as one of middle-class domestic affection and comfort.

“Well! I told you I had a brave heart; and I thought it was rather pleasant to have that grand music rolling about the house, let who would be the player; for now it rose above the great gusts of wind, and wailed and triumphed just like a living creature, and then it fell to a softness most complete; only it was always music, and tunes, so it was nonsense to call it the wind I thought at first, that it might be Miss Furnivall who played, unknown to Agnes.”

As an appropriate musical listener, Hester finds even the mysterious tunes edifying and emotionally recuperative. She notices the variety of the tunes and attaches emotional states to them. She is a contrast here to the old lord who never softens even though he devotes years to acquiring and learning to play music.

“As long as it was dry we climbed up the steep brows, behind the house, and went up on the Fells, which were bleak, and bare enough, and there we ran races in the fresh, sharp air; and once we came down by a new path that took us past the two old, gnarled holly-trees, which grew about half-way down by the east side of the house.”

This passage accomplishes two points for the writer. First, readers see that both Hester and Rosamond are healthy, hearty young females. Second, they get introduced to the holly trees which play a role in the gothic elements of the story.

“‘Now, you are a naughty little girl, and telling stories,’ said I. ‘What would your good mamma, that is in heaven, and never told a story in her life, say to her little Rosamond, if she heard her—and I dare say she does—telling stories!’”

When Rosamond first tells Hester that she has seen the specter child, readers see Hester speak her first stern words to her charge. The scolding stands out as unusual. Hester’s skepticism about Rosamond seeing something that does not fit Hester’s experience (of the single set of footsteps in the snow) helps to establish her rational attitude.

“She said she had heard the tale from old neighbours, that were alive when she was first married; when folks used to come to the hall sometimes, before it had got such a bad name on the country side: it might not be true, or it might, what she had been told.”

Because Hester first hears the story of Miss Maude Furnivall’s scandalous marriage and the Lord’s cruelty, she is able to introduce it through layers of narrative distance that create some distance between her and scandal. Readers know that Hester has already come to trust Dorothy when she tells the story. Dorothy qualifies her tale as if she knows it might be uncomfortable for a young woman to hear or hard to believe, even though she learns it first-hand “from old neighbours, that were alive” when the events took place.

“He could play on nearly every instrument that ever was heard of: and it was a strange thing it did not soften him; but he was a fierce, dour, old man, and had broken his poor wife’s heart with his cruelty, they said. He was mad after music, and would pay any money for it.”

Unlike Hester, who finds the mysterious organ music emotionally appealing and sustaining, the lord fails to glean much emotional benefit from his love of music. He remains hard and cruel to his wife (and later to his daughters). Though he greedily acquires music like he would any material possession, his exposure to culture cannot teach him to be a more tolerant, less “fierce” and “dour” old man.

“[O]n the morrow of that wild and fearful night, the shepherds, coming down the Fell-side, found Miss Made sitting, all crazy and smiling, under the holly-trees, nursing a dead child,—with a terrible mark on its right shoulder. ‘But that was not what killed it,’ said; ‘it was the frost and the cold;—every wild creature was in its hole, and every beast in its fold,—while the child and its mother were turned out to wander on the Fells!”

This brief scene offers one of the most gothic moments in the story. The wild weather and the dead child reinforce the intense grief of proud Maude Furnivall. The shepherds who witness her frantic wailing and her attachment to the dead child at the holy trees echo the shepherd Hester encounters on her frantic search for Rosamond.