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"To begin with, Cranford is possession of the Amazons; all the holders of residences above a certain lease are women." This is one way our guide and narrator, Mary Smith, introduces us to the small English country town of Cranford. Young, modern Mary offers us her Austen-like view of small-town traditions, Victorian prices, decorum, and etiquette. Mary offers us a charming, sometimes softly mocking comedy of manners. The book is filled with identity and of heroes - the most remarkable being Miss Matty, the lovely, timid younger little girl of the old rector, a middle-aged spinster in reduced circumstances after a life lived in the shadow of her indomitable, ingenious sister, Deborah. There are men, too - regardless of the beginning lines: Mr. Holbrook, way back when rejected by Miss Matty's family as an unsuitable suitor (comparison with Jane Austen's Persuasion is amazing); and Peter, Matty's sibling, thrashed by their rector daddy for an unsuitable jape, who ran away to sea and passed on in India. Or did he? This lovely, funny, heartwarming book is some vignettes, sometime entertaining, sometimes deeply moving - and always uplifting. It really is a book about kindness and generosity: We meet up with the delightfully artless maid Martha, who, shockingly, nudges a visitor when they are too poor in assisting themselves to food, yet offers Miss Matty a home when she actually is in need. Over the years the BBC has produced several series about Cranford, predicated on this and other Gaskell catalogs: To many, Dame Judi Dench was the perfect Miss Matty. As Mary says in her parting lines, "We all love Miss Matty, and I in some way think we are all of us better when she actually is near us."
