Elizabeth Gaskell in Middlemarch: Timothy Cooper, The Judgement of Solomon, and the Woman at the Window

In \u27Silly Novels by Lady Novelists Gaskell and Harriet Martineau were the only living novelists George Eliot praised, and very briefly. George Eliot and Gaskell never met but corresponded, admired each other\u27s work, and in several books George Eliot unconsciously drew on details and characters from Gaskell novels.3 There are three important details in Middlemarch - which Gaskell never read because she died before its publication - deriving from Cousin Phillis, Wives and Daughters, and North and South. Chapter 56 of Middlemarch is a meeting-point for history and the personal life. Caleb Garth\u27s social confidence rings loud as he speaks to the rustic rebels roused to violence by a local agent provocateur hoping to hamper the railway survey: \u27Somebody told you the railway was a bad thing. That was a lie. It may do a bit of harm here and there, and so does the sun in heaven. But the railway\u27s a good thing\u27. He is answered by a voice we have not heard before and will not hear again, that of a farm labourer, Timothy Cooper, whose response is eloquent in personal particulars and political generalization: ‘Aw! good for the big folks to make money out on,\u27 said old Timothy Cooper, who had stayed behind turning his hay while the others had been gone on their spree; - Tn seen lots 0\u27 things turn up sin\u27 I war a young \u27un-the war an\u27 the pe-ace an\u27 the canells [ ... J an\u27 it\u27s been all aloike to the poor mono What\u27s the canells been t\u27 him? They\u27n brought him neyther me-at nor ba-acon, nor wage to lay by, if he didn\u27t save it wi\u27 clemmin\u27 his own inside. Times ha\u27 got wusser for him sin\u27 I war a young un. [ ... J This is the big folks\u27s world, this is. But yo\u27re for the big folks, Muster Garth, yo are.\u27 (Middlemarch, ch. 56