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The Poor Clare is a short story by Eglish Victorian writer Elizabeth Gaskell. First serialised in three installments in 1856 Charles Dickens' popular magazine Household Words, The Poor Clare is a gothic ghost story about a young woman unwittingly cursed by her own grandmother.

Plot
The Poor Clare is narrated by an unnamed young lawyer from London, reflecting on the "extraordinary incidents" which he experienced in his youth.

Chapter One
The story proper begins several decades before. The Starkeys are an English recusant family and the proprietors of Starkey Manor in Lancashire. Squire Starkey, the owner at the start of the 18th century, is a Jacobite who, after growing dissatisfied with the royal court-in-exile in St Germains, returns to Starkey Manor with his Irish wife, their son Patrick Byrne Starke. Accompanying them is their Irish Catholic servant, Madam Starkey's former nurse, Bridget FitzGerald and her daughter Mary, who take up a small cottage in the grounds of the manor. Due to Squire Starkey's increasingly ascetic religious devotion and corresponding disinterest in secular matters and Madam Starkey's yielding nature, Bridget comes to exercise great control over the household. Some years later, due in part to an increasingly frictious relationship with her mother, mary FitzGerald leaves Starkey Manor to take up a position on the Continent. Racked with grief at her daughter's departure, Bridget keeps to her cottage until Madam Starkey brings her a young spaniel, Mignon, who becomes her constant companion. She receives occasional letters from Mary, informing her that she was going to make a good marriage to a gentleman.

Upon the deaths of Squire and Madam Starkey of putrid fever, Bridget is left the cottage. After a long period without word from Mary, Bridget leaves the cottage and travels the Continent in search of her daughter, accompanied by Mignon. Years of unsuccessful search later, she returns suddenly to her cottage. Her unkempt appearance and constant conversation with herself convince many of the locals that she is a witch.

Not long after her return, a hunting party led by Patrick Starkey's guardian Sir Phillip Tempest goes shooting on the manor. One of the party, Mr Gisborne, is in a foul mood, and shoots Mignon when it crosses his path. Distraught that the only remaining creature she loved is now dead, Bridget calls on the saints to curse Mignon's killer, vowing that the creature he loves best will become a terror and be loathed by all. Laughing off the curse, Mr Gisborne follows Bridget to her cottage to compensate her for her loss, but, on seeing her wildly praying before her icon of the Virgin Mary, is frightened and returns to the hunting party in a disturbed frame of mind.

Chapter Two
It is at this point that the Narrator enters the story. The son of a penniless Anglican clergyman, he lives with his uncle in London to be trained in his legal practice. In 1718, an Irish lawyer visits and refers a complicated inheritance case involving some property in Ireland which the Narrator ultimately takes up. He travels first to Kildoon, then after inquiries there and on the Continent, discovers that the heir to the properties is a Bridget FitzGerald. Visiting her at her cottage, the Narrator is struck by her grief at the loss of her daughter, and takes up the task of discovering her whereabouts.

Exhausted from his travels and mental exertion, the Narrator rests for some weeks in Harrogate. There, he becomes interested in a striking young woman and her older companion Mrs Clarke, who he sees on his walks accross the moors. Eventually, he becomes acquainted with the couple, and he falls in love with the young woman, Lucy. One day he visits their cottage to announce to Mrs Clarke his intention to marry Lucy. He is, however, surprised by Mrs Clarke's distressed response, and she tells him that there is a terrible secret which would prevent him from marrying her ward. Pressing the matter, Mrs Clarke eventually relents and tells the Narrator to return the following morning to hear the truth. The next morning, Lucy recounts how two years before, her father, a gentleman officer in the Austrian army, had pronounced that she was the thing he loved most in the world. In the days following, he began accusing her of various mischiefs taking place around his house. Eventually, growing angry with her continued disobedience, he makes to strike her, but stops and cries out "The curse, the curse." Looking in the mirror, Lucy sees to her horror a doppelganger standing behind her: the cause of all the disturbances around the house. After that episode, her father sent her to live in the moors with Mrs Clarke to live a pious life in order to free herself from the curse. Initially sceptical at Lucy's tale, the Narrator's incredulity disappears after he witnesses her demonic double firsthand.

That afternoon, the Narrator is informed by a letter from Sir Phillip that Mary Fitzgerald had a child with Mr Gisborne. Piecing together the clues, he realises that Lucy is the child and therefore the granddaughter of Bridget and heir to the Irish estates. Furthermore, he and Mrs Clarke realise that Bridget had unwittingly caused Lucy's condition when she cursed mr Gisborne, not knowing that he was the father of her own granddaughter. Still in love with Lucy, the Narrator and his uncle throw all their energy into attempting to undo the curse. Revisiting Bridget's cottage in an attempt to get to the root of the curse, the Narrator informs her of the unintended consequences of her words, sending her into a paroxysm of guilt and grief. The following day, the Narrator again visits Bridget, who appears to have been attempting to exorcise the demon she had sent upon her granddaughter. By the next morning, Bridget has vanished from the cottage, with the curse still not lifted.

Chapter Three
With Bridget gone, the narrator runs out of leads relating to the curse, and settles into despondency in his uncle's chambers in London. One night some months later, they are visited by Father Bernard, a Catholic priest from Lancashire, who explains that he brings information about Bridget Fitzgerald. Father Bernard knew Bridget from when he was chaplain to the Starkey household. When on a recent sojourn in Antwerp, he happened upon her outside a church and conducted an exorcism on her to allow her to make confession. After hearing of her grave misdeeds, he instructed her to acts of charity as penance, and as a result, Bridget joined the Antwerp convent of Poor Clares, taking the name Sister Magdalen.

At a loss of what to do with himself, the Narrator travels to Antwerp, and stays there despite the growing political instability. Despite Father Bernard's entreaties to leave, the Narrator stays on. Active rebellion breaks out amongst the Flemish against their Austrian rulers. Caught up in a skirmish, the Narrator sees Poor Clare nuns rushing to assist the wounded despite the heavy gunfire. By coincidence, Mr Gisborne, leader of the Austrian garrison, is set upon by the rebels, but is saved by Sister Magdalen, who recognises him, and takes him to her cell to tend to his wounds. Days after the battle, the sound of a bell tolling can be heard coming from the convent; a bell that will only be rung when a nun is starving to death. Despite the war-induced famine, the people of Antwerp, including the Narrator, rush to the convent to assist. On reaching Sister Magdalen's cell, they find Mr Gisborne, having been nursed back to health by his curser. Rushing onwards, the crowd comes to the convent's chaopel, and sees Sister Magdalen lying on a bier having just received absolution. With her dying breath, she whispers, "The curse is lifted."

Publication History
Gaskell's short story was first published in serialized form in 1856 in Charles Dickens' popular weekly magazine Household Words. The three chapters appeared on the 13, 20, and 27 of December of that year. Gaskell had previously used the magazine to serialize her much longer works, Cranford and North and South in 1851-3 and 1855 respectively. It later appeared in Round the Sofa and Other Tales, an anthology by Gaskell which used an elaborate framing device to link the many different stories. In most publications of The Poor Clare since then, whilst the text from Round the Sofa has been used, the framing device has been omitted.

Themes
Religion is an important theme in The Poor Clare. Roman Catholicism, largely illegal in England at the time during which the novel is set, features prominently, with most characters being Catholics. The "otherness" of the Catholic faith in England, emphasised by Bridget's patently Catholic devotions to the Virgin Mary and the saints add to her mysterious nature. A. W. Ward, in speaking on the setting for the story, noted that Lancashire had a "...considerable Roman Catholic element," and that "No setting could, therefore, have been more appropriately chosen for a story in which faith and superstition, bitter hatred and passionate devotion, are the "anthetically mix'd" ingredients." Most of the sympathetic characters, Bridget, the Starkey family, Sir Phillip, who saves Bridget from the local Protestants who would have burned her for a witch, and, presumably, Lucy herself, are all catholic. The Poor Clare convent is presented as being beyond rebuke, and Father Bernard is even referred to as "a good and wise man". This is especially striking considering Gaskell's strict Unitarian faith and general dislike towards Catholics and the Irish. Gaskell's Unitarianism is reflected in the moral rationalism she employs in her treatment of "evil" throughout the story.

Despite the male narrator, feminism is another theme in The Poor Clare. Bridget is a powerful woman who confronts the patriarchal establishment through her own powers. She has a "strong will" and "strong nature", which enable her to exert control over not just her employers the Starkey family, but the rest of the local population as well. A single woman the entire story, Bridget's later joining of the Poor Clares further subverts the expectations of women at the time. The service-centred life of a convent independent of male control stands in stark contrast to the motherhood and wifehood-oriented role expected of women in Gaskell's time.