Mrs. Kirkpatrick fondled her hand more perseveringly than ever, hoping thus to express a sufficient amount of sympathy to prevent her from saying anything injudicious. But the caress had become wearisome to Molly, and only irritated her nerves. She took her hand out of Mrs. Kirkpatrick’s, with a slight manifestation of impatience (p. 138).

And in this second example, taken from the first time Molly and Cynthia meet as sisters, the narrative is explicit about the pleasures, as well as the inevitable awkwardness, of new relations:

Molly fell in love with her, so to speak, on the instant. She sat there warming her feet and hands, as much at ease as if she had been there all her life; not particularly attending to her mother—who, all the time, was studying either her or her dress—measuring Molly and Mr. Gibson with grave observant looks as if guessing how she should like them.

“There’s a hot breakfast ready for you in the dining-room, when you are ready for it,” said Mr. Gibson. “I’m sure you must want it after your night journey.” He looked round at his wife, at Cynthia’s mother, but she did not seem inclined to leave the warm room again.

... Cynthia rose and followed Molly upstairs.

“I’m so sorry there isn’t a fire for you,” said Molly, “but—I suppose it wasn’t ordered; and, of course, I don’t give any orders. Here is some hot water, though.”

“Stop a minute,” said Cynthia, getting hold of both Molly’s hands, and looking steadily into her face, but in such a manner that she did not dislike the inspection.

“I think I shall like you. I am so glad! I was afraid I should not. We’re all in a very awkward position together, aren’t we? I like your father’s looks, though” (p. 215).

The particular oddness of Cynthia and her mother’s relationship is here drawn for the first time, made more stark by the warmth of the newly met stepfather and sister; Mrs. Gibson not only does not meet her daughter where she is dropped by the coach, but she forgets to order a fire for her bedroom. Cynthia here alludes quite directly to what the narrative elsewhere works hard to suggest through the details of domestic life: the “very awkward position” they are in as strangers and yet also the nearest of relations. Wives and Daughters, although ostensibly structured around a slowly emerging marriage plot, is in fact an extraordinary depiction of the contours of blended families and, more generally, the rhythms of everyday family and married life.

The description of the other family that is dissected in Wives and Daughters is a more tragic depiction of family life than the (generally) comic presentation of the Gibson family. The family of Hamley Hall, equally divided between its ill and dying members and its hardy and stubborn ones, is subject to what feels like an inevitable series of misfortunes resulting from the clash of cultures and personality types within the family. Mrs. Hamley is an invalid in a literal sense, but one senses too that her sickness is a response to her husband: Her London upbringing and refined tastes are at odds with a loving but nevertheless uneducated and provincial husband. The Hamley’s two sons embody the opposition of their parents: Osborne, the elder, golden son, is poetic and destined for a brilliant career at university, while Roger is considered plodding and more like the father in his physical strength and proclivity for the outdoors. Roger, in fact, personifies the doctrine of “muscular Christianity,” a belief system equating moral and physical fitness that became widely accepted in the 1850s: “ ‘This Mr. Mason told me the tutor said that only half of Roger’s success was owing to his mental powers; the other half was owing to his perfect health, which enabled him to work harder and more continuously than most men without suffering’ ” (p. 365). Gaskell portrays the dangers of determining the life paths of one’s children and of patriarchal dominance; the novel’s most tragic plot traces the ill consequences of a son’s fear of his father’s disapproval. Although overbearing and authoritative, Squire Hamley is undemonstratively loving—a combination the novel suggests is particularly dangerous. His fundamental lack of insight into his own emotions is part of a larger preoccupation of the novel about the mismanagement of one’s inner life. When the Squire is faced with an inconceivable loss, the depiction of the collision between the earlier self—dogmatic and unforgiving—with the new self, which fiercely combines love, regret, and pain, is one of the more harrowing presentations in nineteenth-century literature. If not quite a depiction of redemption, Squire Hamley’s transformation is nevertheless a realistic presentation of the capacity for change.

The novel is fascinated with the intelligent male’s capacity for errors in judgment, as well as the role of social mischance in deciding individuals’ fates.