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criticism is based on the duchess’s decision to dress in a simple manner and not to wear what the townspeople had expected (“diamonds and a coronet”), which violated the distinction that her title afforded and that the townspeople wished to see maintained; a duchess was the only member of the peerage who might wear a coronet, or small crown. As Lady Harriet, one of the novel’s most astute commentators, remarks to her brother, rank and class are performances: “ ‘We’re a show and a spectacle—it’s like having a pantomime with harlequin and columbine in plain clothes’ ”(pp. 294-295).
    The role of rank and class in the novel cannot be underestimated, as it informs many of the social interactions and machinations. The family at the center of the story, the Gibsons, have what is perhaps the most socially ambiguous position in the novel—an ambiguousness due in no small part to the nebulousness of the medical profession in the early nineteenth century, which included physicians with university degrees, apothecaries (who sold drugs and dispensed medical advice), surgeons (who dealt with the structure of the body), and surgeon-apothecaries. The majority of doctors were educated through apprenticeships, which is the case with Dr. Gibson’s students. The apprenticeship to a surgeon, like all apprenticeships, was a legally binding agreement; it lasted from five to seven years, during which the apprentice exchanged his labor for education and room and board. Dr. Gibson, whose reputation in the neighborhood is held in high esteem primarily because he “attends” at the Towers, was most likely educated in this way, although his Scottish background (Edinburgh then being at the cutting edge of medicine) lends him a more enlightened and prestigious reputation. And yet it would be a mistake to think that medicine afforded someone a high social standing, as it does today, for even among the professions it was the least respected. The process by which the profession’s reputation began to change started with the Medical Registration Act of 1858, which abolished regional licensing and formally installed the hospital as the place for medical training. In Wives and Daughters, the fact that Mr. Gibson occasionally has lunch with Lord Hollingford (the earl’s son) depends entirely upon his personal merit—the two men share an interest in new scientific discovery—and not upon his rank.
    The web of rank and class in Wives and Daughters incorporates a varied cast of people and social positions, including the land agent, the second son, the governess, the barrister, the unmarried but genteel woman, the servant, and the laborer. Roger Hamley, as the second son of Squire Hamley, would not have inherited land or title from his father; the laws of primogeniture ensured that land would not be divided among sons but given in its entirety to the eldest, so it is understood that he will have to make his own way in the world. This gives him an entirely different status from Osborne, his older brother, as Mrs. Gibson is quick to intuit and exploit. Mrs. Gibson, who is known as “Clare” at the Towers because that was her name when she was governess there, changes her social position when she marries Mr. Gibson; her position rises in that, as a governess she would have been a dependent in the house of the Cumnors, but it falls in the sense that she loses that intimate relation and sheds the name of her first husband (a clergyman who was himself a younger son) . As Elizabeth Langland has pointed out, Mrs. Gibson in conventional moral terms seems insensitive and lacking in character, but as the household’s “status manager” she is inordinately successful: “Her masterful negotiations of signifying practices—etiquette (including introductions, visiting, calls, and cuts), dining rituals, household decor, and dress make her a key player in the socially prestigious marriages of Molly and Cynthia, marriages that install them