Construction
Austen's legacy
The influence of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice on North and South is frequently noted.[42] From plot points such as Margaret refusing Thornton's first proposal, to the protagonists' character traits, the parallels between the two novels are clear. Margaret and Elizabeth Bennet both share haughty, intelligent, but prejudiced natures, while Thornton is proud, reticent and powerful like Darcy. According to Nils Clausson in "Romancing Manchester: Class, Gender, and the Conflicting Genres of Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South", the "same romance plot - a rich, proud man subdued by a strong-willed, independent and intelligent woman - reappears half a century later [than Pride and Prejudice] in North and South" (3). Clausson asserts that Austen created the prototypical romance which Gaskell "transposed to mid-Victorian Manchester" (3). Combining romance with the conflicting realism of the social problem novel, Gaskell updates and complicates the earlier plot, a point explored at length by Matthew Sussman in "Austen, Gaskell, and the Politics of Domestic Fiction."[43] In The Politics of Stories in Victorian Fiction (1988), Rosemarie Bodenheimer writes that she prefers to study the novel's relationship with Charlotte Brontë's Shirley but sees in the "description of strong domestic qualities" and "social optimism" an industrial Pride and Prejudice.[44] Patricia Ingham also compares North and South to Shirley.[45] Ann Banfield compares North and South to Mansfield Park for two reasons: Margaret Hale, like Fanny Price, is transplanted in a place she conquers, and the novel is built on an opposition of places on a larger scale.[46]
False starts
The novel has three beginnings, two of them illusory: the first is the wedding preparation in London, the second the heroine's return to Helstone and the third (often considered the real start of the story) narrates the departure for Milton in chapter seven.[47] The first chapters, according to Martin Dodsworth, are false leads of what the novel is about rather than the author's clumsiness; they tell the reader what the story is not about. Bodenheimer interprets the early chapters not as false starts but as demonstrating Gaskell's theme of societal and personal "permanent state(s) of change" and integral to the novel.[44] The early chapters in different places have been interpreted as presenting a theme of mobility.[48] In moving from one place to another Margaret better understands herself and the world, advancing Gaskell's intention to place her in the public sphere.
The opening chapters of North and South indicate an apparent novel of manners in the style of Jane Austen,[49] with preparations for the marriage in London of a silly bride and a lively, intelligent heroine; in the country village of Helstone (a fictional place in the English county of Hampshire), a bachelor in search of fortune (Henry Lennox) woos – and is rejected by – Margaret.[47] Deirdre David, in Fictions of Resolution in Three Victorian Novels (1981), suggests that Margaret's abandonment of London society indicates that she is out of place in the south and her adjustment to the north is plausible.[46]
Gaskell's novel of manners has the broader context of an industrial novel about the north-west of England, where young girls (like Bessy) die of "cotton consumption"; capitalists disregard legal obligations, and workers refuse prophylactic facilities, instigate strikes and foment riots.[47] It can be criticised, as by Martin Dodsworth, for giving the love affair precedence over the industrial context and for dwelling on the emotional conflict between Margaret and Thornton. However, North and South is not simply an industrial Pride and Prejudice. Margaret acquires stature and a public role, challenging the Victorian idea of separate spheres.[50] She befriends Bessy Higgins (a young, working-class woman), gradually abandons her aversion to "shoppy people" and, recognising Thornton's qualities, crosses social classes to consider herself "not good enough" for him. Although the novel ends in Harley Street (where it began), Margaret's estrangement from the vain, superficial world of her cousin Edith and Henry Lennox is emphasised by her choice of Thornton and Milton.[51]
Blunders
As the chapter titles "First Impressions", "Mistakes", "Mistakes Cleared Up", "Mischances" and "Atonement" indicate that North and South is peppered with Margaret's blunders and problematic situations with other characters which create misunderstandings. Some of Margaret's blunders stem from ignoring customs, some from not understanding them and still others from rejecting Milton's social customs (such as a frank, familiar handshake). Other characters fail to carry out important actions: Dixon does not tell Margaret that Thornton attended her mother's funeral, and Mr. Bell dies before he can explain to Thornton why Margaret lied. Margaret feels misunderstood, unable to take control of her life and explain a world she does not understand.[52]
Other gaffes are due to Margaret's ignorance; accustomed to London's chic salons, she is unaware that she is seen as wearing her shawl "as an empress wears her drapery" and serving tea with "the air of a proud reluctant slave". She receives marriage proposals awkwardly: Henry Lennox's declaration of love is "unpleasant" and makes her uncomfortable, and she feels "offended" and assaulted by John Thornton's proposal. Margaret naively believes that the rioters can be negotiated with and is unaware that she and her brother, Frederick, resemble a loving couple on a train-station platform (O'Farrell, 1997, p. 68). Bodenheimer sees this "mistakenness" as purposeful: "In its every situation, whether industrial politics or emotional life, traditional views and stances break down into confusing new ones, which are rendered in all the pain of mistakenness and conflict that real human change entails".[44] Perhaps this is why Margaret's blunders do not always have negative consequences;[53] when she admits she is disappointed that Thornton has refused to hire Higgins, she is ashamed that he hears her remark. Thornton reconsiders, eventually offering Higgins a job. In the final chapter, she does not seem to realise that a "simple proposition" to bail out the factory (a business arrangement) could hurt Thornton's pride or be seen as shocking from a "lady". Bodenheimer interprets scenes like this as "deep confusion in a time of personal change and revision"[44] which brings the lovers together.[53]
Style and narrative
Narrative techniques
The first description of Marlborough Mills in Chapter XV is through Margaret's eyes and thoughts, and the omniscient narrator delves into the inner thoughts of her main characters and occasionally interjects her observations.[44] Thornton "thought that he disliked seeing one who had mortified him so keenly, but he was mistaken. It was a stinging pleasure to be in the room with her ... But he was no great analyser of his own motives, and was mistaken as I have said". The narrative sometimes slips into free indirect discourse; Mrs. Thornton silently calls Margaret's embroidery of a small piece of cambric "flimsy, useless work" when she visits the Hales.
Bodenheimer believes that the narrator is interested in the psychology of her characters: their inner selves, how their contentious interactions with others subconsciously reveal their beliefs and how the changes they experience reflect their negotiation of the outside world.[44][54] also focuses on Gaskell's depiction of "interiority" (the psychic process), expressed in dreams and trances such as Thornton's dream of Margaret as a temptress or the rioters' "trance of passion". The phrase "as if" appears over 200 times, suggesting Gaskell's reluctance to appear too definitive in her narration: "Bessy, who had sat down on the first chair, as if completely tired out with her walk" and "[Thornton] spoke as if this consequence were so entirely logical".[55] The phrase is primarily used when exploring the characters' sensations and feelings: "As if she felt his look, she turned to him"; "He had shaken off his emotion as if he was ashamed of ever giving way to it", and "She lifted up her head as if she took pride in any delicacy of feeling which Mr. Thornton had shown". Gaskell uses it when exploring the unconscious process that allows Thornton, whose suffering in love disturbs his composure and control of his feelings, to communicate with Higgins: " ... and then the conviction went in, as if by some spell, and touched the latent tenderness of his heart".[56]
Style and language
According to Bodenheimer, North and South's narrative may sometimes appear melodramatic and sentimental ("But, for all that—for all his savage words, he could have thrown himself at her feet, and kissed the hem of her garment" in chapter 29)—particularly in the riot scene—but she sees Gaskell's best writing as "done with the unjudging openness to experience" which the author shares with D. H. Lawrence.[44] Jill L. Matus finds Gaskell's vocabulary "Gothicised" in its descriptions of the characters' agonised inner life—their responses to suffering and pain—which may appear melodramatic out of context. However, "the language of shock and horror is absorbed into the realist texture of the novel's narration" and is consistent with the extreme conditions of the novel's external world.[57]
A number of 19th-century authors were interested in native dialects: Scottish for Sir Walter Scott, Irish for Maria Edgeworth. Gaskell, influenced by her husband's work, did not hesitate to give her Milton workers Mancunian expressions and vocabulary without going as far as Emily Brontë's transcription of Yorkshire pronunciation[58] or Dickens' Yarmouth fishermen in David Copperfield.[59] She developed a reputation for the skilful use of dialect to indicate status, age or intimacy between speakers.[60]
Margaret's adaptation to the culture is demonstrated through language.[61] When her mother reproaches her for using Milton's vulgar provincialisms (such as "slack of work"), Margaret replies that since she lives in an industrial city, she must speak its language when called on to do so.[62] She cites a word which may be vulgar but which she finds expressive ("knobstick") and uses a local term ("redding up" – tidying) to Boucher's small children: "redding up the slatternly room". Gaskell begins each chapter with a poetic quote to accentuate a relevant theme, such as interior conflicts ("My heart revolts within me, and two voices / Make themselves audible within my bosom"—Wallenstein, chapter XVIII), duality ("On earth is known to none / The smile that is not sister to a tear." Elliott, chapter XXI), courtship, duty, suffering, steadfast courage, honesty, time and change.
Social conditions
Context
Gaskell lived during the period of upheaval which followed the Industrial Revolution, and was aware of the difficult conditions of daily life[63] and the health problems suffered by the workers of Manchester.[64] North and South has been interpreted by Roberto Dainotto as "a kind of apocalyptic journey into the inferno of the changing times—modern poverty, rage, desperation, militant trade unionism and class antagonism".[65] The strike described in North and South resembles the Preston strike, which occurred the year before the novel was published.[66] The strike's slogan was "ten per cent and no surrender", and it was led by George Cowell and Mortimer Grimshaw. Lasting nearly seven months (from September 1853 to April 1854), it was ultimately unsuccessful.[67]
The strike is described in detail, with intelligent leaders like Higgins, the desperate violence and savagery of the rioters, and the reactions of both sides. Through the eyes of Margaret, a horrified, compassionate outsider, Gaskell illustrates the social misery of the slums[68] Margaret visits, misery occasionally documented in parliamentary papers (blue books) with suggestive illustrations which resulted in the Factory Act of 1833.[69]
Gaskell uses a cause of conflict between masters and workers (the installation of ventilators in the carding rooms) to illustrate the greed of one and the ignorance of the other, making social progress difficult, and calls attention to anti-Irish prejudice in a city where the Irish are a small minority.[70] She exposes the beliefs and reasoning of manufacturers in Thornton's defence of a theory approaching social Darwinism: capitalism as naturally (almost physically) obeying immutable laws, a relentless race to progress in which humanity is sacrificed; the weak die, whether they are masters or workers. Mrs. Thornton expresses the middle-class view of the working class as "a pack of ungrateful hounds".
Gaskell's position
North and South belongs to the canon of "condition of England" novels (also known as social-problem, industrial or social novels) which analyse Victorian social realities, offering "first-hand detailed observations of industrialism, urbanism, class, and gender conflicts".[71][72] It attempts to answer questions posed by contemporary changes[73] positioning itself between the individual worker freedom championed by John Stuart Mill (author of The Claims of Labor, published in the Edinburgh Review in 1845) and developed by Thornton in Chapter 15 and the responsibility of employers to their employees promoted by John Ruskin and Arthur Helps.[74] It represents a certain paternalism, challenging the cutoff between public and private spheres, freedom and responsibility, workplace and family life, trying to define a balance in relations between employers and workers.[75] Through Margaret and her father, Gaskell criticises the autocratic model which infantilises workers and is defended by Thornton (who does not feel accountable to his workers for his actions or decisions). She advocates for an authority which takes into account the needs of workers, a social and economic contract as advocated by John Locke in Two Treatises of Government, where masters and workers are in solidarity. After the strike, Thornton finally acknowledges that "new forms of negotiation between management and labor are part of modern life";[76] the strike, which ruined him, was "respectable" because the workers depend on him for money and he depends on them to manufacture his product.[77]
In the class struggle which victimises some (such as Boucher and Bessy), Gaskell does not offer definitive conflict resolution:[78] Thornton's hope for strikes, for instance, is that they no longer be "bitter and venomous". He and Higgins reach a level of understanding beyond a "cash nexus" through Margaret's "ongoing involvement in the process of social change" by urging communication between masters and workers.[79] If the holders of economic power agree to talk to their workers, to consider them as human beings (not tools of production), it may not eliminate social conflicts but will reduce their brutality.[80] The protagonists experience personal transformations which unite them in the end,[44] what Stoneman calls a "balanced emancipation".[81]
According to Catherine Barnes Stevenson, Gaskell may have found women doing factory work problematic; she often referred to "masters and men" and used one dying factory worker (Bessy) to represent women workers, who constituted more than half the factory workers at the time.[82] Stevenson wrote that Gaskell's relative silence on female factory workers may reflect her struggle with the "triumph of the domestic ideology" by the middle class of the mid-1800s. Gaskell hints at the difficulties families such as the Hales have keeping female domestic workers (like Dixon) in their proper – subordinate – place and becoming like members of the family (blurring class differences), a scenario facing industrial workers as well.[73]
