Reading Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell made me laugh. It is a great satire of the social customs of the Victorian English gentry (or at least of the women). Gaskell is able to poke fun at their imitative manners and general quirks while still creating sympathetic characters. The story focuses on the lives of five or six older women who make up the self-defined high society of Cranford. They have developed a set of very artificial protocols governing visits and other such society interactions. In the end these just end up making life more stressful and inconvenient than it needs to be.

It is a very easy read. The sixteen chapters contain eight almost separate stories. The format is due to the novel being developed for inclusion in a magazine published by Dickens. It is considered one of Gaskell's best novels and evidences her ability as a story teller. Charlotte Bronte said about it: “I find it pleasurable reading: graphic, pithy, penetrating, shrewd, yet kind and indulgent.”