The work has no real plot, but is what The Athenaeum described as "a collection of sketches" on its appearance,[6] affectionately delineating people and customs that were already becoming anachronisms.[7] There it is the continuity of the characters involved that provides unity, rather than a linear narrative. Indeed, the perspective moves back and forth in time as past memories are introduced to account for the present. Necessary distancing is provided by the narrator, Mary Smith, whose point of view is that of a younger woman from a very different background simply reporting her experiences. As the daughter of a businessman living in Manchester (which she calls Drumble in the novel) she only visits Cranford occasionally, a device which is made to account for the episodic nature of the narration.
Manchester was now Mrs Gaskell's place of residence after her marriage.[8] The difference between country town and industrial city is as much a function of time as of distance. Many of the personal details and stories, including that of the cow dressed in flannel, are based on remembered fact that had taken place years before. Acknowledging this in a letter to John Ruskin, Mrs Gaskell commented that she had included less than she knew for fear of being thought to exaggerate.[9] The author's preoccupation with class in her fiction is here refracted through the glass of a town out of step with what was developing beyond its parish boundaries. In Cranford "the system that, ushered in by the growing industrial and urban economy, was coming to replace the traditional system of rank", was slower to arrive than the railway.[10]
In the view of Jenny Uglow, the novel chronicles social change, moving from one where consideration of rank was the foremost regulator of behaviour and social relations to a more humane emphasis on responding to individual need. "The small social group begins to encompass those hitherto banned on grounds of class" as the female arbiters of society grow from their initial illusion that their conservative values are effective guardians of gentility to a realisation that "kindness and concern for each other" are a more effective basis of mutual support.[11]
