This paper takes issue with the past feminist interpretations of Cranford as a work of utopia feminism. It is true that Cranford makes many upfront statements that induce both the reader and the critic to regard Cranford as a feminist utopia. Yet, one of the crucial flaws within the feminist criticism advanced by critic, such as Nina Auerback, Rae Rosenthal and others, is its failure to consider the fact that the Amazonian characters are often subjected to mockery in the text and also that the `genuinely feminist` values pointed out by the feminist critics are also embodied by the male characters, Captain Brown and Thomas Holbrook. What the feminist critics should have noticed but failed to do is the playful and mocking attitude of the text toward its central Amazonian characters. The fact that the central female characters, who are supposed to embody and preach `feminist` values, are often held up to ridicule makes one uncomfortable with the feminist critics` premise that the text takes these characters seriously. This paper does not deny that certain positive values are promoted throughout the text; yet it question the necessity for attributing those values to a certain sex alone or a certain brand feminism. What this paper pro-poses instead is to locate the text within what Fredric Jameson in The Political Unconscious called `the second horizon,` that of `the dialogue of class struggle.` Situated within this horizon, the class-oriented nature of Cranford be-comes visible. For instance, the covert commitment of this text to the promo-tion of the right and well-being of the middle classes can be detected when one considers the role assigned to the working classes in the text. The educated workers of Gaskell`s days who started standing up for their own right are not represented in the text; and those who are allowed to appear in the text are `idealized` ones whose loyalty to their mistresses is unquestionable from any standard. For instance, Martha and her fiance are figures from past in the sense that they do not possess high political intelligence and thus have no idea of their long-deprived rights. The text-advocated positive values, especially the familial bond between mistress and maid and the democratic, horizontal relationship that seems to take root among the middle-class ladies in Cranford at the end of the text, can be considered positive only from the perspective of the middle classes. In a way, the vision of these middle classes as represented in the text is not progressive but regressive since it is based on the old humanistic value system of the previous period that finds harsh for its survival the new days of rapid industrialization and money-defined human relationship. The au-thor`s sad awareness of the inviability or the unfitness of the old values is reflected in the text in the form of compromise that her main characters have to make one way or another with the outside world for their survival. Based upon at least, problematic the author`s project of establishing an `ideal` community, feminist or not, in the text.
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