The Individual and the Community in Ruth

Abstracts: Elizabeth Gaskell explored the mutual constitution of individuals and community
in Ruth. The process of self-identity cannot be completed without community for human’s social
attribute. The development of community relied on the reconciliation between communal
principles and individual differences. Feminist ethics of care offered an approach for the self-
identity of the ethical other and the evolution of community. The aesthetic representation of
community in Ruth intended to call on the readers’ imagination of the community, so as to
encourage their reflection of feminine perspective on ethical issues, which was the realistic value
of community fictionization.
Key words: Ruth, community, individuals, Ethics of Care

I INTRODUCTION
W. A. Craik believes that Elizabeth Gaskell is committed to “examining moral values”
(Craik, 2013, p.41) in Ruth. It is attributed to Gaskell’s focus on “fallen woman”. The Victorian
society is extremely strict with “fallen woman”. Though W. R. Greg concludes that some women
lose their virtue out of immoral upbringings, false marriage proposals, romantic love and
economic necessity etc., fallen women are still all massed into one great class---prostitution which
is seen as the great social evil, and are ostracized by the society. Sexual promiscuity, however, for
men is only a “venial and natural” sin, the “common laxity of a man of the world” (Hess, 2006,
p.19). It is due to the hypocritical double standard that Ruth the heroin, seduced and abandoned by
Belingham, becomes the ethical other.
The relation between Ruth as the ethical other and community has been noticed by scholars.
Amanda Anderson suggests that Ruth “argued for the possibilities of redemption in a community
free of prejudice”(Anderson, 1993, p.108). Tim Dolin states that “Ruth is not just the stranger who
challenges the prevailing rules of the closed community... the prevailing values of the national
community and the prevailing discourses of social progress”(Dolin, 2016, p.69). The former
actually points out that the community exerts an influence upon the individual, while the latter
shows that the individual has the power to change the community. However, how individual and
community effects each other remains undiscussed. Following their lead, this essay tries to explore
the development mechanism of individual and community and their mutual relation in Ruth. It is
argued that Ruth’s self-identity parallels with the evolution of community are interwoven. The
process of self-identity cannot be completed without community for human’s social attribute. The
development of community relies on the reconciliation between communal principles and
individual differences. Feminist ethics of care, different from Victorian patriarchal ethics, offered
an approach for both the self-identity of the ethical other and the evolution of community.

II SELF-IDENTITY BASED ON THE FAMILIAL COMMUNITY

German sociologist Ferdinand Tönnies holds that “[t]he wills of human beings interact in
many different ways”. The essence of community is that the “relationship itself, and the social
bond that stems from it, may be conceived as having real organic life”. He offers three original
types of community: community by blood, of place and of spirit. （ Tönnies, 2001,p.17,
27）Family, as the living body of kinship, becomes the basic unit of community. Mr. Benson and
Faith formed a familial community as a result of their sibling relationship, but kinship was not
enough to include their old servant Sally in the community. Except for the kinship, the caring
relation was also the essence of familial community.
Ethics of care adopts a relational and context-bound approach in moral judgement and
decision making. Carol Gilligan in In a Different Voice (1982) declares that men tend to have a
justice perspective, which stressed universal moral principles and values rationality, while women
hold a care perspective which emphasizes human relations, context and sensitivity. (Gilligan,
1982, p.18-19) By now it is difficult to accurately define the ethics of care since different realms
such as education and politics have their own version. Yet Held concludes several features of the
theory. “First, its central focus is on the compelling moral salience of attending to and meeting the
needs of the particular others for whom we take responsibility.” It values emotion and “rejects the
view of the dominant moral theories that the more abstract the reasoning about a moral problem
the better”. It pays attention to the traditional private sphere of family and friendship where
relations are noncontractual. Instead of seeing persons as unrelated and equal individuals, the
ethics of care believes people are relational and interdependent. (Held, 2006, p.10-13) Benson’s
deformity out of Sally’s incautious care when she was still young made him the cared-for, the
dependent. Two carers, Faith and Sally, out of love for Benson (for Sally also guilt about her
lapse), sacrificed their marriage and devoted their life to looking after the dependent without
complaint. Sally was not seen as a servant but a part of the family and her feelings were respected
and considered. Miss Benson shared the housework to spare Sally some burden and Benson
supported the family with his pays as a minister. They took care of each other in different ways
and were interdependent. This genuine and close caring relation made a familial community with
no hierarchy but warmth and care. It was in this familial community that Ruth was able to start
self-identity.
The caring relation that Ruth had with the Bensons made her no longer the ethical other but
have basic social relations. “The moral agent is an “encumbered self,” who is always already
embedded in relations with flesh-and-blood others and is partly constituted by these relations”.
(Keller, 1997, p.152 ) Individuals are not atoms independent from society. The break of relations
with others inevitably leads to identity crisis. Criticized by strangers and abandoned by
Belingham, Ruth lost all her social contact, which drove her to despair. She wanted to commit
suicide. Benson happened to encounter Ruth. Knowing what happened to Ruth, Benson did not
judge Ruth from justice perspective according to the patriarchal ethics in Victorian society.
Instead, he showed sympathy to her. Out of moral consciousness, he tried to stop Ruth and
comfort her, but fell in the chase of Ruth. Hearing Benson’s sharp utterance, Ruth returned to help
Benson by instinct. She experienced a kind of epiphany and realized that “she was wanted in the
world” (Gaskell, p.81)，which gave her hope. Ruth suddenly changed from the cared-for to the
carer. Both two roles put Ruth in the caring relation, which made her not an outcast anymore. In
the familial community, members had an influence on each other’s ethical values and emotion was
not rejected in decision making. Faith’s proposal to take Ruth in was out of Benson’s influence
and her female instinct to care. Sally’s agreement was due to her esteem and love for Mr. Benson.
Until they found out that Ruth was kind and innocent, Faith and Sally accepted her as a family
member. The Bensons provided Ruth with physical, emotional and spiritual care. Faith looked
after Ruth gently when Ruth was ill and delivering the baby; Sally persuaded Ruth not to sink into
depression but to take her responsibility; Benson gave her guidance on interpersonal relation and
self-education.In the familial community, “[c]are is both value and practice”(Held, 2005, p.9), and
it created a tolerant ethical context which was the base for Ruth’s self-identity
 “To care for another person, in the most significant sense, is to help him grow and actualize
himself.” （ Mayeroff, 1971, p.1 ） The familial community did help Ruth grow and actualize
herself. Ruth had been grateful for the Bensons’ help and her growth could be noticed in her self-
identity. The source of self-identity includes self and others. It was the warm and stable caring
relation that became the one of the sources of self-identity and enriched her self-definition. When
Mr. Benson said that they saw Ruth as their daughter, Ruth became a member of the familial
community. The union was obvious when Sally as a church-of-England woman stepped into a
Dissenter’s chapel to attend the baptism for Ruth’s boy. “[T]hey were glad she wished to go; they
liked the feeling that all were of one household, and that the interests of one were the interests of
all.”(147) The familial community made Ruth have a sense of belonging which is important for
her self-identity. What’s more, self-identity is “the self as reflexively understood by the person in
terms of her or his biography” （ Giddens, 2006, p.54). With the care and help of the Bensons’,
Ruth could reflect on her own behaviour and realize her responsibility, which made her feel her
self-existence. “Life had become significant and full of duty to her.”() No longer the cared-for, she
began to share the chores, take good care of her baby and learn Latin. She was acquiring self-
affirmation in action.
The familial community based on the caring relation not only provided Ruth with necessary
social contacts, but also assisted her to have self-identity. With a strong spiritual tie, the familial
community could deal with ethical disagreement and the ethical other without falling apart.
However, how would the community of place where the familial community located react to
Ruth’s past? What would happen to Ruth? This would be discussed in the next section.

III DOUBLE CRISIS OF THE COMMUNITY OF PLACE AND SELF-IDENTITY

When taken in by the Bensons, Ruth also entered into Eccleston, an enclosed community of
place. Tönnies regards neighbourhood as intelligible ways of describing community of place. “The
closeness of the dwellings, the common fields, even the way the holdings run alongside each
other, cause the people to meet and get used to each other and to develop intimate acquaintance”.
(Tönnies, 2001, p.27) Raymond Williams presents similar understanding about community as he
regards village as a typical community. He stresses the intimate acquaintance by another term
“knowable community” (Williams, 1973, p.165) in which members have mutual knowledge and
genuine communication. Eccleston was such a knowable community of place where dwellers had
intimate acquaintance. When Mr. Benson and Faith returned from Welsh to Eccleston, “Miss
Benson had resumed every morsel of the briskness which she had rather lost in the middle of the
day; her foot was on her native stones...and she was near her home and among known people Even
Mr. Benson spoke cheerfully, and made many inquiries of him respecting people whose names
were strange to Ruth.”(109) They participated in the maintainance of the knowable community of
place. Ruth was able to enter into Eccleston because her past was unknown to the community and
that she was given a fake identity. To save Ruth and her boy from criticism, Faith and Mr. Benson
kept Ruth’s story secret and lied to others that Ruth was a young widow. Yet it made the knowable
community inoperative and undermined her self-identity.
Secret is unspeakable and unknowable to most people, which posed a threat to knowable
community. Jean-Luc Nancy believes that community is finitude because to share means to
expose. “This exposure, or this exposing-sharing, gives rise, from the outset, to a mutual
interpellation of singularities”.(Nancy, 1991, p.29) There is no genuine communication within
community because one cannot expose everything to others. Thus the community was not
working. Blanchot’s explanation is more intelligible: there is “secrecy at the bottom of communal
communication, a secrecy which remained deeply unavowable and therefore unlikely to be
exposed”(Heffernan, 2013, p.28). Therefore what exists is singularity instead of community. I
don’t think that secrets lead to singularity because secrets do not erase what we have in common.
Ordinary secrets do not have an impact on public life. But some secrets do undermine community.
Ruth’s secret concerns public principles, which would definitely cause disparity within the
community. When Mr. Benson and Faith resorted to lie and secret, they also broke patriarchal
ethical rules and communicative rules. Their acceptance of Ruth meant that they did not judge a
woman only from her one mistake, but it did not mean that they did not approve patriarchal ethical
rules at all. Actually it was because that they believed that Ruth’s previous behaviour was
immoral, they chose to cover up Ruth’s story. But their stand was still not in line with the
mainstream.
The exposure of Ruth’s secret gave rise to the split of the knowable community. When Ruth’s
history was heard by her employer Mr. Bradshaw (also Mr. Benson’s friend), he had a unpleasant
conversation with Mr. Benson. Regardless of his observation of and praise for Ruth, Mr. Bradshaw
held that “fallen women” were morally degraded and that Ruth contaminated his innocent
children. Mr. Benson had a different view: “...not every woman who has fallen is depraved... Is it
not time to change some of our ways of thinking and acting? (282 )”. Mr. Benson and Mr.
Bradshaw showed two ethical perspective in terms of “fallen woman”. The former tended to
employ a relational and context-bound approach while the latter strictly followed moral principles
prevalent in Victorian society and had pure rational analysis. This was actually deep
communication which touched the secrecy at the bottom. Unfortunately, their friendship broke up
due to disparate ethical opinions. Mr. Bradshaw and some friends left the congregation. The
Bensons were estranged by old acquaintances. This was the price they had to pay for their
breaking rules. Without intimate acquaintance, the knowable community of was inoperative.
Though the secret offered protection for Ruth, they also disciplined her and hindered her self-
identity. To ensure the credibility of the lie, Sally cut Ruth’s beautiful long hair and asked her to
wear a widow’s cap. It symbolized that the patriarchal power exerted discipline on female body.
Ruth had to change her appearance so as to meet the standard for widows, which highlighted her
alterity and enhanced her self-denial. She could not even accept others’ compliment. When
Jemima expressed her admiration, Ruth replied that “I would rather not be told if people do think
me pretty”.() Victorian patriarchal ethics had been so powerful that Ruth unconsciously attributed
her past to her appearance to some degree. When the Bradshaws spoke highly of her and intended
to hire her as a governess, Ruth still had doubt about herself. Such self-doubt was a result of her
approval of the patriarchal ethical rules. Yet the more she believed in the rules, the more she would
deny herself. After her past was revealed, her identity crisis was exposed. Ostracized by the the
residents of Eccleston , she became an outcast again. Mr. Bradshaw dismissed her immediately
and nobody wanted her service. Unable to gain any recognition from the community of place,
Ruth was lost in self-negation and could not realize her value as an individual. Even the caring
relation and the familial community did not work at the moment to help her develop self-identity.
The inoperation of the knowable community of place was due to the different perspectives
that the members adopted on “fallen women”. The identity crisis of the individual derived from
the community’s rejection of the individual as well as the individual’s excessive dependence on
the community of place. The community and the individual were in trouble at the same time
because they were interconnected and interacted.

IV THE CONSTRUCTION OF SPIRITUAL COMMUNITY AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF

SELF-IDENTITY
Elizabeth Gaskell seems to prefer a context-bound approach in moral judgement as she states
that ‘I am more and more convinced that where every possible individual circumstance varies so
completely all one can do is to judge for oneself and take especial care not to judge other[s] or for
others’ (Qtd Stoneman, 2006, p. 69). Similarly, Gilligan maintains that “[s]ince ‘the mysterious
complexity of our life’ cannot be ‘laced up in formulas,’ moral judgment cannot be bound by
‘general rules’ but must instead be informed ‘by a life vivid and intense enough to have created a
wide, fellow-feeling with all that is human’.”(Gilligan, 1982, p.130) It does not meant that
universal rules need to be abandoned. What is stressed that context, sensibility and relation should
be taken into consideration. In the novel, the context-bound approach helped Ruth stop self-
negation and find her personal value. Witnessing Ruth’s good quality, people in Eccleston changed
their perspective and reached agreement again, which made the community of place develop into a
spiritual community.
After Ruth’s past was uncovered, Benson helped Ruth to see herself from a context-bound
perspective. He told Ruth that they(he and Faith) loved Ruth , which enabled Ruth to know that
she still had basic and important social relations. In terms of recognition from others, Benson
continued that “the world is not everything; nor is the want of men’s good opinion and esteem the
highest need which man has.”() He hoped Ruth to understand that she should not regard others’
comments as the only resource of self-identity thought they were important. He also emphasized
Ruth’s primary duty as mother at that moment and made her to realize her unique value. Thus,
Ruth was able to stop denying herself and redefine herself based on the current situation. Unable
to get a decent job, she chose to be a sick nurse, a newly rising professional job for female which
was not seen as decent as the already tried employment such as governess or dressmaker. But the
job got her to know different meanings of life and became a significant form for her self-identity.
Work as the basic social activities for individuals provided us with opportunities to realize social
and individual values and to gain social recognition. As a sick nurse, Ruth could step out of
domestic sphere and have contact with more groups. During her work, Ruth continued to be a
carer. “[T]he ethics of care stresses the moral force of the responsibility to respond to the needs of
the dependent.”(Held, 2006, p.10) “When it was a lessening of pain to have the touch careful and
delicate, and the ministration performed with gradual skill, Ruth thought of her charge not
herself.”() Ruth “found a use for all her powers”, which was actually her self-affirmation. Further
more, her gained recognition from others through her professional ethics. In a sense, Ruth
challenged the standard that women in Victorian ear should be the angel in the house and
presented that women could pursue their value in the traditional public sphere.
Ruth constantly changed people’s stereotyped judgement on “fallen women” and prompted
them to adopt a care perspective, so as to mend the split within the community and to promote its
reconstruction. When the plague swept over the town, Ruth volunteered to be a matron in the
fever-ward. “Like any extreme situation, dreaded illnesses bring out both people's worst and best.”
(Sontag, 1978. p.40) Her moral integrity was finally known by the public. When the crowd talked
about what Ruth did in the fever-ward, her past was mentioned again. But they eventually chose to
judge based on the current context and showed admiration to Ruth. Ruth was no longer the eternal
ethical other. The tension between Mr. Benson and Mr. Bradshaw was relieved and the crack
within the community of place was bridged.
That the typhus fever swept made a special ethical context. In this context, Ruth gained the
collective recognition from the residents of Eccleston due to her moral integrity. An imagined
ethical community was being constructed. According to Benedict Anderson “all communities
larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined.
Communities are to be distinguished, not by their falsity/genuineness, but by the style in which
they are imagined.” (Anderson, 2006, p.6) In Eccleston, the typhus fever put everyone in the same
condition to some degree. They did not necessarily know each other, but had the same fear for
illness and the same hope for life. They also faced the same ethical problem---how to appraise
Ruth. Although there were differences in belief, class and economic status, they shared the same
memory of Ruth selfless and brave behavior in the hospital and the same care perspective. The
imagined community was eventually concrete in Ruth funeral. “From the pulpit, Mr. Benson saw
one and all---the well-filled Bradshaw pew---all in deep mourning, Mr. Bradshaw conspicuously
so...---the Farquhars---the many strangers---the still more numerous poor---one or two wild-
looking outcasts, who stood far off, but wiped silently and continually.” ( 最 后 一 章 ) This
common empathy created emotional bond and indicated shared ethical standard.
The imagination of community did not stop as the novel ended. Instead, it continued when
readers read the novel. Anderson suggested that the novel and the newspaper “provided the
technical means for 're-presenting’ the kind of imagined community that is the nation”(Anderson,
2006, p.25). All characters and their acts were embedded in the minds of the omniscient readers.
The author thus conjured up an imagined world in his readers' minds. Readers had no idea of what
they were up to at any one time. But they had “complete confidence in their steady, anonymous,
simultaneous activity”(Anderson, 2006, p.26)---reading Ruth. And it conjured up an imagined
community “embracing characters, author and readers, moving onward through caiendrical
time”(Anderson, 2006, p.27). Readers had the common reaction: why did Ruth have to die? Why
did she die after taking care of the seducer Belingham in the inn instead of patients in the fever
ward? Some critics believes Ruth’s death implies the author’s “fundamental ambivalence” about
woman’s value of maternal devotion being mixed with sexuality(Spencer, 1993,p. 65), which
causes the blame that Gaskell still could not escape the Victorian tradition of giving fallen women
a sad ending to warn her contemporary. She is then utilitarian to let Ruth die (Chen, 2014, p.134)
and unable to betray her moral education as a middle-class Victorian wife. D’Albertis maintains
the heroin’s death exalted “Ruth’s infinite moral superiority”(D’Albertis, 1997, p. 98). Schor
suggests that “Ruth’s death may be an attempt to murder the fiction itself”, “a slap in the face of
her readers, shocking readers out of complacency, to remind them of the excessively plotted lives
women lead”(Schor ,1992, p.73, 75). I agree Schor that Gaskell wanted to shock the readers. But I
think that the author is more ambitious. Ruth’s death could shock readers and evoke their moral
feeling to the largest extent. When readers join the characters as well as the author for the
mourning out of sympathy or sorrow or aggrievedness, an imagined ethical community would
have been conjured up. Reader would have the same caring perspective which has been ignored.
Ruth’s self-identity was enhanced because she was accepted by the spiritual community. It
was possible then for community to avoid the absolute sameness and to embrace disparity.
Meanwhile, Ruth’s acts changed people’s stereotyped opinions towards “fallen woman” and
promoted the development of community of place into the spiritual community. Thus the form of
social life can be changed by individuals.

V CONCLUSION
In terms of the relation between the community and the individual, Josephine M. Guy
illustrates “that social life may only be transformed by changes within the behaviours of
individuals- that sociability depends upon individuals becoming more moral (that is, less selfish
and less materialistic).” (Guy 1996, p.201) Ruth belonged to this kind of individuals. Yet Ruth’s
would not grow without the community. The individual and the community interacted and
interconnected. In Ruth, Gaskell paid attention to the special individuals--- “fallen women”. She
advocated a caring perspective in ethical judgement which not only could help their development
of self-identity but also could increase the inclusiveness of the community. Moral progress was
made in the novel when people stopped labeling “fallen women” as morally depraved, but moral
progress in reality was what the author wished.

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