North and South

Summary

North and South is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, serialized in Charles Dickens's weekly magazine Household Words from September 1854 to January 1855 and published in an expanded two-volume edition by Chapman and Hall in 1855. It contrasts the rural, traditional south of England with the industrial north through the story of Margaret Hale. Margaret, raised largely in London with her wealthy aunt, Mrs. Shaw, returns to her family's parsonage at Helstone in Hampshire, which she loves. Soon afterward her father, Mr. Hale, resigns his position as a clergyman because of religious doubts, and moves the family to Milton, a smoky northern manufacturing town modeled on Manchester, where he works as a private tutor. His most interesting pupil is John Thornton, a self-made cotton-mill owner who lives with his formidable mother. Margaret at first scorns Milton's commercial values and Thornton's attitude toward his workers. She befriends Nicholas Higgins, a union man, and his daughter Bessy, who is dying of a lung disease caused by cotton fluff in the carding-room. During a strike, a crowd attacks Thornton's mill; Margaret shields him and is struck by a stone, and when he proposes the next day she refuses him. Her mother falls fatally ill, and her brother Frederick, exiled after a naval mutiny, returns secretly to see her; to protect him Margaret tells a lie to the police, which Thornton, a magistrate, quietly covers. A desperate striker, John Boucher, takes his own life. After her father and his old friend Mr. Bell die, Margaret returns to London and inherits Mr. Bell's fortune, including the property on which Thornton's mill stands. When the mill fails, she offers him the capital to continue, and the two at last acknowledge their love. Dickens chose the title; Gaskell had preferred to call the book after her heroine. It is now regarded as one of the major Victorian industrial novels.

Plot or Argument

• Chapters I–VI: Helstone

  After her cousin's wedding in London, Margaret returns to Helstone, refuses a proposal from the lawyer Henry Lennox, and learns that her father is leaving the Church.

• Chapters VII–XV: Milton

  The Hales settle in Milton; Margaret meets Thornton and befriends Nicholas and Bessy Higgins, and argues with Thornton about masters and men.

• Chapters XVI–XXVIII: The strike

  A strike leads to an attack on Thornton's mill; Margaret protects him and rejects his proposal; Bessy dies.

• Chapters XXIX–XXXVIII: Lies and losses

  Frederick secretly visits their dying mother; Mrs. Hale dies; Margaret lies to protect Frederick and Thornton saves her from inquiry; Boucher drowns himself, and Higgins comes to work for Thornton.

• Chapters XXXIX–LII: London and reconciliation

  Mr. Hale and Mr. Bell die; Margaret, now an heiress, returns to London; Thornton's mill fails, and her offer of help brings them together.

Characters

• Margaret Hale, protagonist

  Proud, compassionate clergyman's daughter who moves from the rural south to an industrial northern town.

• John Thornton, protagonist

  Self-made master of Marlborough Mills in Milton and a magistrate.

• Mr. Richard Hale, major

  Margaret's gentle father, who leaves the Church of England over matters of conscience.

• Mrs. Hale, major

  Margaret's mother, unhappy in Milton and fatally ill.

• Hannah Thornton, major

  Thornton's strong-willed, devoted mother.

• Nicholas Higgins, major

  Weaver and union man who becomes Margaret's friend.

• Bessy Higgins, major

  His daughter, dying of lung disease from work in a carding-room.

• Frederick Hale, minor

  Margaret's brother, exiled after taking part in a naval mutiny.

• Mr. Bell, minor

  Mr. Hale's old Oxford friend, Margaret's godfather and landlord of Thornton's mill.

• Henry Lennox, minor

  London lawyer who proposes to Margaret early in the novel.

• John Boucher, minor

  Starving striker whose despair ends in suicide.

Lessons

• Masters and men

  Gaskell shows the conflict between mill owners and workers from both sides. Students can examine how understanding grows between Thornton and Higgins.

  • What does Margaret mean when she says the two classes are dependent on each other?
  • How does the relationship between Thornton and Higgins change by the end?

• Pride and prejudice in a new setting

  Margaret and Thornton both misjudge each other at first. The novel traces how first impressions give way to respect.

  • Why does Margaret refuse Thornton's first proposal?
  • What does each learn from the other?

• Conscience and truth

  Mr. Hale leaves the Church for conscience, Frederick defies an unjust captain, and Margaret tells a lie to save her brother. Readers can weigh when principle requires sacrifice.

  • Was Margaret right to lie to the police?
  • How do different characters pay for following their consciences?

Context

In the 1840s and 1850s Manchester was the center of the world's cotton industry. Rapid growth brought wealth to mill owners and hard conditions, strikes and disease to workers, and writers began to treat the 'condition of England' question in fiction.

Composition

Gaskell, who lived in Manchester, had depicted workers' hardships in Mary Barton (1848), which some readers thought unfair to employers. Dickens invited her to write a serial for Household Words, where it followed his own industrial novel Hard Times. Pressed for space in the weekly parts, she expanded the later chapters for the 1855 book edition.

Reception

Readers and reviewers admired its balanced treatment of industrial conflict, though Gaskell found the serial format confining. It has remained one of her most read novels, and a 2004 BBC television adaptation brought it a large new audience.

Comparisons

• Pride and Prejudice

  Like Austen's Elizabeth and Darcy, Margaret and Thornton misjudge each other, quarrel over a refused proposal, and come to love each other.

• Hard Times

  Dickens's industrial novel, set in the northern mill town of Coketown, ran in Household Words just before Gaskell's serial.

• Middlemarch

  Eliot's provincial novel also follows an idealistic young woman amid social and economic change.

• Jane Eyre

  Gaskell was Charlotte Brontë's friend and first biographer; both novels follow a principled heroine toward an unequal but loving union.

• Cranford

  Gaskell's gentle sketches of a small Cheshire town show the quieter, older England that Milton is replacing.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Contrasts between Helstone, London and Milton.
• Margaret's and Thornton's changing opinions of each other.
• The debates about masters, men and unions.
• Choices made for conscience' sake.

Key terms and names

Industrial novel

Victorian fiction about factory towns and relations between employers and workers.

Strike

A collective refusal by workers to work until demands are met.

Union

An organization of workers acting together to bargain with employers.

Dissent

Refusal to conform to the established Church of England.

Serial

A story published in installments in a magazine.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Why does Mr. Hale leave Helstone?
2. Comprehension What happens at Marlborough Mills during the strike?
3. Interpretation How does Bessy's illness shape Margaret's view of Milton?
4. Interpretation Why does Thornton protect Margaret after her lie?
5. Big Question Can employers and workers share the same interests?
6. Big Question Is it ever right to tell a lie to protect someone you love?

Faith Connections

• 1 Corinthians 12:26 (Scripture)

  'Whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it': Margaret's sense that masters and workers depend on each other echoes Paul's image of one body.

• Charles Dickens, Hard Times (Great Conversation)

  Dickens's satire of Coketown and Gaskell's realistic Milton offer two contrasting answers to the same industrial question.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Through Margaret and Thornton's slow movement from prejudice to understanding, the novel argues that class conflict can be eased only when people of different stations come to know one another as human beings.

Rhetorical device: antithesis. The title and the structure set the rural South against the industrial North, then show each needing qualities of the other.

Debate: Resolved: Thornton changes more in the course of the novel than Margaret does.

Memory Work

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.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Explain how Gaskell uses the contrast between North and South to develop her characters.

Comparison with Pride and Prejudice: Compare the first proposal scenes in Austen's novel and Gaskell's, and what each heroine's refusal reveals.

Medical Lens

Bessy Higgins is dying of a lung disease caused by cotton dust in the carding-room, which the novel links to employers' reluctance to install ventilating wheels; Mrs. Hale's fatal illness, attended by Dr. Donaldson, and the deaths of Mr. Hale and Mr. Bell bring repeated scenes of grief, and the striker Boucher drowns himself.

• Chapter XIII: Soft Breeze in a Sultry Place

  Bessy describes the fluff that poisoned her lungs and the cost of ventilating wheels.

  Public Health Sanitation
• Chapter XV: Masters and Men

  Dr. Donaldson is called to Mrs. Hale.

  Physicians Doctors Death Dying
• Chapter XXXVI: Union Not Always Strength

  Boucher's body is brought home after he drowns himself.

  Suicide Grief

Creative Prompts

• Fiction

  Write the scene of the riot at Marlborough Mills from the point of view of a striker in the crowd.

• Essay

  Compare how Margaret's view of Milton and Thornton's view of the South change during the novel.

• Classroom

  Hold a mock negotiation between Thornton and Higgins using arguments taken from the novel.

Further Reading

• Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell

• Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth Gaskell

• The Life of Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell

• Elizabeth Gaskell: A Habit of Stories, Jenny Uglow