Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–1865) is one of the famous English writers, along with Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë. Ruth, published in 1853, outraged Victorian society: it is one of the few works of English-language literature of the 19th century in which the main character is a “fallen woman.” The novel tells the story of the fate of a girl from a poor family who was left an orphan at an early age. She is forced to pay for her love for an aristocrat until the end of her days. Seduced and abandoned, Ruth gives birth to an illegitimate child. She has to go through and overcome a lot in order to atone for her sin and regain the respect of the inhabitants of a small provincial town.