Recent publications in queer studies point towards several directions, such as the dimension of “anti-social”-ity of “queer”, temporalities of non-normative desires, and geographies of non-Western sexualities. lead many to righteousness, like the stars.” (Daniel 12:3) It’s a compassionate book, and even if the male characters, whose sin is just as great or greater than Ruth’s, get off lightly in terms of earthly consequences, Ruth is clearly the heroine of the story whose life and reputation “ shine like the brightness of the heavens, and. I thought Ruth gave a good picture of Victorian England and its view of sexual sin and its consequences. Gaskell’s sometimes melodramatic and devastating portrayal of sin and its consequences can swing the pendulum back toward a truer vision of our need for repentance, then it’s not a bad antidote for a society bent on denying that sin is sin or need have any negative consequences at all. I suppose that’s the balance we need to strike. Our sin is great, but God’s mercy is greater. Ruth is self-abnegating to the point of being nearly suicidal. I don’t believe we need to live with guilt and shame weighing us down so much that we become like Ruth, some kind of shadow people, who never feel worthy or whole enough to live in the light of God’s forgiveness and grace.

Maybe there’s a balance somewhere in there. Ruth in the book is allowed to repent and to live a reformed life, but the weight of her sin is ever present, and the consequences of her youthful actions are visited on her illegitimate son as he is called upon to suffer for Ruth’s sin. Gaskell shows in Ruth how this judgmental and unforgiving attitude is unfair and limiting, often pushing sinners back into the sin they would choose to leave, if permitted. Not just Ruth herself, but other people in the book judge themselves or others harshly when they perceive that their actions have broken God’s law or the social code of Victorian society.

In Ruth, characters are crushed by their own sin and horrified and judgmental about the sin of others. Adultery, fornication, all the sexual sins as well as greed, jealousy, envy, and conceit are not really SIN, but just a difference of opinion or the way a certain person deals with life. In fact, moderns would go a step further, reclassifying many of the sins that horrified the Victorians and those who came before them as human foibles and minor eccentricities. Modern psychology and evangelical Christianity would say that this is a healthy way to think about the wrongs that we do to one another. Sin is something to be repented, forsaken, and forgotten.

Ruth mrs gaskell