Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was an English novelist, biographer, and short story writer. Even though a fallen woman would seem a less-than-ideal choice for a Victorian heroine, Elizabeth Gaskell courageously created just such a portrait in Ruth. Overturning the conventional assumption that a woman once seduced is condemned to exclusion from respectable society, Gaskell draws a heroine whose emotional honesty, innate morality, and the love she shares with her illegitimate son are sufficient for redemption.