In writing about Charlotte Bronte, who became her life-long friend, and whom she greatly admired but whose novels she did not entirely like, Elizabeth Gaskell portrays the struggle of a woman artist for whom she had, until her late marriage, "foreseen the single life".

In writing about Charlotte Bronte, who became her life-long friend, and whom she greatly admired but whose novels she did not entirely like, Elizabeth Gaskell portrays the struggle of a woman artist for whom she had, until her late marriage, "foreseen the single life".