Common criticisms of Cranford maintain that the novel represents no more than Elizabeth Gaskell's nostalgia on good old times.Such evaluation, however, fails to acknowledge the novel's intense engagement with contemporary social issues.This paper intends to analyze Cranford with regards to the issue of Victorian commodity culture.Gaskell's attitudes toward Cranford gentility and outside commodity culture are equally ambivalent: she diagnoses the precariousness of Cranford gentility, but she is confident about its humane values; she identifies the invasion of outside commodityculture into Cranford, yet discerns the diseases of commodity culture, too;consequently, the establishment of an adaptable and benevolent community as hersuggestions to solve the conflicts between Cranford and commodity culture is an amalgam of the positive values in both sides.Focusing on the influences of the Great Exhibition of 1851 on commodity culture and the specific Victorian middle class commodity culture, the introduction part is devoted to an analysis of the social context of the novel.In the first chapter, the precarious gentility of Cranford is analyzed.Thesecond chapter is an analysis of the invasion of outside commodity culture into Cranford.In the third chapter, Gaskell's tentative solutions to resolve the conflicts between Cranford and outside commodity culture are presented and evaluated.
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