Ruth is Elizabeth Gaskell's tale of an orphaned girl who falls into the hands of an unscrupulous man and finds herself in the usual predicament that such girls face. What might, in our time, be a difficulty but barely raise an eyebrow, was, in Victorian times, a serious path to ruin for both the girl and her resultant child. Illegitimacy was not just a mistake, it was a sin, and the attitude of society was particularly cruel toward the woman involved, regardless of age, in this case 16, or circumstance, alone in the world and innocently naive. (Sara)