ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores an early literary account of a stepmother that was given by Elizabeth Gaskell in her last and unfinished novel, Wives and Daughters. Gaskell's experience of the death of her mother and the false relationship with her stepmother led her to be an ever-present and deeply concerned mother to her own children. Gaskell skilfully wove into her novel the largely unconscious anxiety about the power and meaning of sex and sexual desire for a pre-pubescent child as it witnesses the excitement engendered by a parent forming a new marriage. The author suggests that the belief that one's parent's second marriage is a mistake carries a lot more meaning than the word implies. The premature messages about adult sexual desire that are forced upon children whose parents separate have other consequences as well.
