ABSTRACT
Gaskell turned to Sylvia's Lovers after finishing her biography of Charlotte Brontë which had introduced her to the 'great waving hills of the Yorkshire moors which seemed to girdle the world like the great Norse serpent [and] to the ungovernable families who lived therein'. Gaskell's version in Sylvia's Lovers creates a love triangle between the young and pretty only daughter of a farming family on the outskirts of Monkshaven, the handsome, gallant specksioneer Charley Kinraid, and Philip Hepburn, Sylvia's cousin who works in a shop in the centre of Monkshaven and is, in Gaskell's words, a 'plain young man' but favoured by Sylvia's mother as steady and reliable as a possible future husband for Sylvia. Gaskell was a Unitarian and although benevolent and liberal in outlook, Philip's crime of omission in not revealing what has happened to Kinraid, of not speaking truth to witness is to a Unitarian deserving of retribution.
