Download or read book Elizabeth Gaskell's Use of Color in Her Industrial Novels and Short Stories written by Katherine Ann Wildt and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 1999 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Gaskell's Use of Color in Her Industrial Novels and Short Stories presents Gaskell's incorporation of Ruskin's moral theory of color to set the tone in her tales as she illustrates the dreary, monotonous existence of nineteenth century industrial workers. Wildt demonstrates the use of various shades, tints, and hues of color to set moral tone, express character feelings, and to foreshadow events as Gaskell establishes and sustains mood in her short stories, and to a greater extent, in her industrial novels. She points out the use of color for foreshadowing events, expressing character's feelings in defining character in Mary Barton, North and South, and Ruth. Focusing on Gaskell's repeated use of the storm cloud motif, Wildt notes its presence on physical and emotional levels to illustrate the bleakness of the trapped condition of working women in the mid-nineteenth century, and that it anticipates Ruskin's future use of "The Storm Cloud."