North and South

“But Margaret was at an age when any apprehension, not absolutely based on knowledge of facts, is easily banished for a time by bright sunny day, or some happy outward circumstance.”

At the beginning of the novel, Margaret’s character is a celebration of youth. Her love of nature and indifference to her parents’ problems symbolize her innocence and a carefree attitude that her protected lifestyle makes possible. She notices her father’s growing malaise, but she lacks to maturity to understand its significance. Nature easily draws her attention away from sadness to merriment, a distraction that signals her ability to avoid life’s difficulties before she moves to Milton.

“I have great faith in the power of will, I think myself I have succeeded pretty well in yours.”

Lennox’s sketch of Margaret reveals his physical attraction to her, especially to her body. The discussion makes her uncomfortable, and she attempts to change the subject, but he persists and deepens the discussion. His words are a foreshadowing of the coming proposal.

“She looked out upon the dark-grey lines of the church towers, square and straight in the centre of the view, cutting against the deep blue transparent depths beyond, into which she gazed, and felt that she might gaze forever, seeing at every moment some farther distance, and yet no sign of God!”

The church is the center of a rural Victorian town, both geographically and symbolically. It is a place of worship and a building for gathering as a community. After Richard renounces his place as the leader of the church, Margaret sees the building differently: It is cold and austere, and she sees no divinity in it.

“A stealthy, creeping, cranching sound among the crisp fallen leaves of the forest, beyond the garden, seemed almost close at hand.”

Gaskell employs alliteration and onomatopoeia to highlight the sights and sounds of Margaret’s last forest walk. What was once a peaceful stroll is now haunted by grief, and the sounds frighten her. The ominous presence foreshadows a calamitous event in the future.

“Here and there a great oblong many-windowed factory stood up, like a hen among her chickens, puffing out black ‘unparliamentary’ smoke, and sufficiently accounting for the cloud which Margaret had taken to foretell rain.”

Milton bears the marks of rapid industrialization. Large factories cloud the skyline, and smokestacks belch pollution into the air. The people move quickly, not stopping for rest or leisure. This environment is a stark contrast to the quiet, agrarian village of Helstone. Gaskell employs figurative language to paint a vivid picture of the scene.

“The heavy smoky air hung about her bedroom, which occupied the long narrow projection at the back of the house.”

The Hales find the weather in Milton disagreeable: Its gloomy nature mimics their mood. The thick smoke chokes the family, including Dixon, like the grief they endure from the loss of their life in Helstone. Just as the disorienting fog obscures Margaret’s vision, her path forward in this alien environment is unclear.

“Your bonny face, my lass, makes the day look brighter.”

Gaskell uses dialect to show the difference between northern and southern England. Margaret notes the difference in the mannerisms of the people of Milton. Their speech is also distinctive. The term “bonny” means beautiful and is used by Scots and other groups residing in the northern areas of the country.

“Loyalty and obedience to wisdom and justice are fine; but it is still finer to defy arbitrary power, unjustly and cruelly used-not on behalf of ourselves, but on behalf of others more helpless.”

After hearing the story of her brother’s brave stand against the tyrannical Captain Reid, his act moves her. She states what she sees is a universal truth: There is no honor in loyalty to a corrupt system. Humans must stand up for injustice even if it costs them their social status or political position. In Frederick’s case, taking a stand almost cost him his life.

“On some future day-in some millennium-in Utopia, this unity may be brought into practice-just as I can fancy a republic the most perfect form of government.”

In his defense of the hierarchy of mill ownership, Thornton compares the way he runs his factory to the governing of a country. He believes a republic is the ideal form of government, and he hopes one day in the distant future, the workers will have more ownership in the industry. However, in using the term “utopia,” which translates to “no place,” Thornton suggests this may never be possible.

“That’s what fold call fine and honourable in a soldier, and why not in a poor weaver chap?”

Higgins educates Margaret on the plight of the working class in Milton. The workers strike to protest insufficient wages and unsafe working conditions. Workers are willing to die for the cause to secure their livelihood and that of their neighbors. Nicholas sees himself as no different than a soldier fighting for his country. Ironically, the enemy Gaskell presents is not a foreign power, but Nicholas’s own country, particularly its ruling classes.

“[B]ut Death had signed her for his own, and if was clear that ere long we would return to take possession.”

Gaskell uses personification to relay the direness of Maria’s condition. Gaskell portrays death as a man taking her as his legal possession. Knowing her time with her mother is short plunges Margaret into sadness. She must also comfort her father in his shock and distress.

“Poor young lady! She’s paid for it dearly if she did.”

As Sarah tends to Margaret’s wound, she relates Margaret’s brash actions to Fanny; they are both unaware that Margaret is conscious enough to hear their conversation. Sarah states Margaret has paid dearly for her hasty reaction with a head wound. However, the meaning is layered: The social ramifications of Margaret’s actions will be far more damaging than the flesh wound.

“Then she knit her brows, and pinched and compressed her lips tight, and carefully unpicked the G.H.”

Fine linens are a part of a bride’s trousseau, or items made and saved to be given as gifts upon marriage. The monogrammed napkins represent Mrs. Thornton’s marriage and are an important symbol of status to her. As she removes the monograms, she submits to the realization that she cannot control Thornton or whom he loves.

“The purse and the gold and the notes is real things; things as can be felt and touched; them’s realities; and eternal life is all talk […].”

Higgins explains his struggles with religion to Richard and Margaret. He sees hypocrisy in the wealthy people of Milton and views them as worshipping money more than a deity. He also shares how workers struggle to pursue faith in God when they cannot feed their families. It is difficult to focus on eternal life when their present circumstances are so perilous.

“[B]ut a sudden remembrance, suggested by something in the arrangement of the room, of a little daughter-dead in infancy-long years ago-that, like a sudden sunbeam, melted the icy crust, behind which there was a real tender woman.”

Mrs. Thornton is softened upon seeing Maria dying in her bed. Gaskell uses the moment to reveal that Mrs. Thornton lost an infant child. Using a simile to convey the effect of the moment, Gaskell reveals a hidden side to Mrs. Thornton. The memory of the lost baby removes her icy façade, allowing her to empathize with Maria’s plight.

“The hard spadework robs their brain of life; the sameness of their toil deadens their imagination; they don’t care to meet or talk over thoughts and speculations, even the weakest, wildest kind, after their work is done; they go home brutishly tired […].”

Margaret describes farm work in the south the same as someone might describe repetitive factory work in the north. Both force humans into monotonous, thoughtless toil robbing them of their creativity and humanity. Margaret’s jaded view of life in the country shows her loss of idealism for life in the south and her character growth since moving to Milton.

“I surely am mistress enough of myself to control this wild, strange, miserable feeling, which tempted me even to betray my own dear Frederick, so that I might but regain his good opinion […].”

This quote illustrates Margaret’s fierce independence. She defies the stereotypical Victorian female trope of a woman in desperate need of a man to make her feel complete. However, her self-determination fails her in her relationship with Thornton. He has a hold on her she cannot quite understand, and the new sensation frightens her.

“Frederick’s worldly position was raised by this marriage on to as high a level as they could desire.”

Gaskell continues the exploration of the theme of social class in Frederick. Having only recently snubbed Thornton for being a merchant, Frederick has now married into a wealthy Spanish merchant family. In contrast to Thornton’s ascendency to a higher social realm through arduous work, Frederick has done nothing to earn his new status. The novel allows him to maintain his privileged life, showing that under capitalism and the Victorian class system, hard work is not always rewarded, while inherited wealth affords an indolent person a comfortable life.

“She was getting surfeited of the eventless ease in which no struggle or endeavor was required. She was afraid lest she should even become sleepily deadened into forgetfulness of anything beyond the life which was lapping her round with luxury.”

Though Margaret finds the pace of life on Harley Street more leisurely and less stressful, after her time in Milton, she sees it as meaningless. Her time in Milton was full of sorrows and anxiety, but she was fully alive and connected to the people around her in sharing in their sufferings. The life of the Shaw-Lennox family is decadent but empty.

“One cannot help admiring him, with a mixture of pity in one’s admiration, something like what one feels for Don Quixote. Such a gentleman as he was too!”

Bell is too blinded by his friendship and admiration of Richard to recognize the error in his judgment to move his family to Milton. Gaskell uses a reference to Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes to compare Richard to the idealistic, if ill-fated, character of Don Quixote. Both novels leave their readers questioning whether the characters are sympathetic or if their idealist actions created more harm than good.

“There was change everywhere; slight, yet pervading all. Households were changed by absence, or death, or marriage, or the natural mutations brought by days and months and years, which carry us on imperceptibly from childhood to youth, and thence through manhood to age, whence we drop like fruit, fully ripe, into the quiet mother earth.”

Margaret’s return to Helstone is not the balm to her weary soul that she thought it would be. She finds the village changed since she left, and at every turn, she is flooded with memories of all she has lost. The only part of Helstone that is unchanged is the natural world. The evolution of her view of her treasured village brings her a revelation about the brevity of her own life.

“I have arrived at the conviction that no mere institutions, however, wise, and however much thought may have been required to organize and arrange them, can attach class to class as they should be attached, unless the working out of such institutions brings the individuals of the different classes into actual personal contact.”

In the year in which his business failed, Thornton learned the valuable lesson of how to treat his workers humanely. He expresses a new vision for how a business should be run for the benefit of both the owners and the workers. The vision extends beyond businesses to all institutions. He has adopted a socialist mentality that he hopes will solve the problems of social class division. This change in perspective is characteristic of the social novels of the Victorian era that promoted equality and workers’ rights.

“We should understand each other better, and I’ll venture to say we should like each other more.”

Thornton speaks of his new enlightened beliefs on how to ethically run a business, but the passage also speaks of the overarching theme of unity in the novel. This passage is particularly relevant to his relationship with Higgins and Margaret. Spending time in earnest conversation with both has led to reconciliation in the relationship.