How Elizabeth Gaskell Manipulates the Readers Feelings in The Half Brot

How Elizabeth Gaskell Manipulates the Readers Feelings in The Half Brothers 'The Half-Brothers" is a story written in the mid-1900's by a middle-class Victorian writer called Elizabeth Gaskell. She has a strong moral interest in the difficulties of poor people who lived in abject poverty. This is what inspired her to write stories such as "The Half-Brothers". Some of her characters in this short story are described in such a way as to provoke sympathy and admiration for them from the reader. However other characters have much more depth to them and are more complicated. The suspense she creates in the particularly dramatic episode set in the Fells in the north of England also manipulates the reader's feelings. The first character we are introduced to is Helen- the narrator's mother. She is a very sympathetic character. Almost immediately the writer starts to gain our pity for Helen. She was so young when she was first married- "scarcely seventeen" in fact, and her husband was barely "one and twenty". Both of these emphasises how very young they were when they entered into such a great commitment of marriage. Things did not go well for her from the start. The small farm they rented only brought them into more debt but she defended her first husband by saying "perhaps he was too young and inexperienced". No blame is put on anyone for what ahs happened and this helps to show Helen's peaceful character. A few sentences in to the story Gaskell includes an extremely long sentence that spans over about 11 lines. This elicits the reader's pity for Helen by giving us a sense that all her problems are accumulating. Helen becomes a widow very early- "a young widow of 20" is how she is described. This tautology em... ...is life if sleep does successfully 'steal' over him. A tautology 'deadly fatal' is once again used to emphasise how grave the situation has become. They have run out of ideas of how to be saved their 'only' chance is in Lassie. The suspense then ends at what seems to be a blackout. We find out about Gregory's death a few lines later with "a look passed from one to another." I felt Elizabeth Gaskell manipulated my feelings very well in a wide variety of ways. I thought Helen and Gregory were the type of people who we would like to aspire to. I had a lot of mixed feelings towards Preston, as he was very a complicated character. I thought his character was described very well but also very originally. However, I cannot come to a conclusion on how I feel towards him. I thought the fells episode was quite exciting and suspense was built up very well in it.