Molly's new stepmother will prove a trial in her life (and in Molly's father's life as well, for that matter, although he's better able to deal with the disappointment, mostly by immersing himself further in his medical practice). It might have been a good idea to get to know her better before proposing. Gibson's concerns, so he turns around and promptly proposes marriage to an attractive local widow (who has a daughter Molly's age), thinking a new mum for Molly is the ticket. Gibson intercepts the young man's letter confessing his love and promptly ships Molly off to visit another local family and sends the young man away. When Molly is a teenager one of her father's medical students, who boards with the Gibsons, falls in love with her. These childhood scenes set the stage and introduce us to many of the characters who will play significant roles later on in the story. This visit won't turn out the way young Molly expected.
We meet Molly and her father when she's an innocent 12 year old girl, about to spend the day visiting the estate of the local gentry, Lord and Lady Cumnor, so excited she can hardly sleep the night before. The novel centers around Molly Gibson, the quiet and somewhat passive, but deeply sensitive, daughter of a widowed country doctor. This 1865 novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, who also wrote the lovely North and South, is a pleasant but rather leisurely and lengthy tale of the personalities that inhabit an English country town in about the 1830's.
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