Ruth

In 1853, Elizabeth Gaskell committed an act of quiet revolution: she wrote a novel that asked whether society might forgive a woman for a man's sin. Ruth Hilton, a orphaned seamstress, is seduced by the charming Henry Bellingham and abandoned when her pregnancy becomes impossible to hide. Cast out by the very world that profited from her labor, she is taken in by a Methodist minister and his sister who conceal her shame beneath the polite fiction of widowhood. Ruth rebuilds her life as a governess, her past buried, her character slowly proving itself through quiet goodness. When Bellingham returns, threatening to expose her secret, Gaskell forces her readers to confront an unbearable question: will society extend to this woman the grace it so readily grants to men? The novel sparked outrage upon publication for its daring compassion, but its true power lies in how it makes you care about Ruth before it makes you uncomfortable.