The Ambivalence of the Turban in Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford

Abstract

Abstract:The turban—a long scarf twisted and wrapped around the head—that is simultaneously identified as an Indian, French, and a Turkish headdress in Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford (1853) serves as a metaphor for the hybrid Victorian England, where cultural identities seem slippery and performative. The novel is structured around the young narrator Mary Smith's train journeys between her sick businessman father in the industrialized Drumble and her single elderly female friends in the neighboring village Cranford, where she used to live. The turban, which the narrator despises as an Islamic headgear, is a traveler like herself that moves hither and thither between East and West. It unsettles cultural distinctions by adorning the heads of an Indian servant, England's former queen Adelaide, French artists, and the English serjeant/magician Signor Brunoni.