Gaskell was the daughter of a preacher/tutor/gentleman farmer/keeper of records. She ended up marrying a Unitarian minister and moving from rural Cheshire — the land of Cranford — to the industrial city of Manchester. There she mixed socially with members of parliaments, bankers, and literary figures; while she and her husband also undertook many charitable projects. She published novels in serialized form, and short stories, in a magazine that Charles Dickens ran (1850-59): Household Words. The two of them had conflicts of opinion, but for example I am glad that Dickens suggested North and South as the title instead of Gaskell's suggestion: Margaret Hale.
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| Elizabeth Gaskell, ca. 1860
via Wikimedia Commons |
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North and South begins as the heroine, Margaret Hale, returns to the countryside parsonage where her father and mother are living. As a young girl she had been sent to live with London cousins, and now at the age of around 18 she has not seen her only brother Frederick for years, and has not had the closeness to her parents that she would otherwise have had.
Her father, the minister, begins to have doubts about the Anglican Church. Out of principle, he refuses to rise in the ranks of the Church, even though his family would be richer and his wife could climb back toward the aristocratic lifestyle into which she was born. He goes even further and gives up his work in Helstone (where the parsonage lies), stepping out of the Church entirely soon after his daughter returns to the household.
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| Howard's Lane in Holybourne, where Elizabeth Gaskell bought a house just before she died Photograph by Hugh Chevalier via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 licence |
AS HIS PLACE of self-exile from everyone who knew him before, Mr. Hale chooses Milton, a northern industrial town that is based on real-life 1850s Manchester. By moving so far away, he wants to escape the blame and ignominy that he would face as someone who has 'foolishly' imperiled his financial standing and respectability by offending a major social institution. The wife, despite her long running complaints about Helstone, is aghast; and so is Margaret.
Milton is a grim home. No greenery grows except at the fringes of the expanding city, the streets are bustling, industrial pollution spreads grime through the air and onto the scene, and factory machinery that does the business of the cotton industry renders it, at times, tremendously noisy.
Moreover, the elite of the city are tradesmen, and with her aristocratic background and doubts about the ethics of its trade and industry, Margaret says many rather snobby things that she regrets later. There's no lack of secondhand embarrassment to be had in reading the first parts of the book.
Her father tutors businessmen and businessmen's sons, and the family scrapes together a lower-middle-class living.
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But as an ex-minister's daughter, Margaret begins to find an interest amongst the poor workers. Nicholas Higgins, employed in John Thornton's cotton mill, is a devoted father to Bessy, whom she also comes to like. Through him, she begins to see the troubles of the workers: the alcoholism, the sicknesses caused by their working conditions (Bessy's lungs are terminally destroyed by cotton fluff), and eventually the desperation when they go on strike for higher wages.
The cotton market is no longer as good as it used to be, so the mill-owners cannot afford to raise wages much. But the workers do not know this. They gamble that refusing to work will force their bosses to share more of their profits, which in the past have been great. But the mill-owners are comfortable enough. When the strike prolongs itself, the strikers hunger to the point of starvation, while most owners only give in superficially. But John Thornton is more resolute; he orders replacement labour from Ireland.
Not all striking workers want the strike. There are strong pressures to belong to the Union. If a man refuses to belong, for example, his co-workers are required to ignore him through endless days of repetitive mechanical labour. (By law, even children aged 9 to 13 worked up to nine hours per day until 1844; children aged 12 to 18 were permitted to be put to work for up to 12 hours per day — and this was an improvement from previous conditions — by the Factory Act of 1833.*) Gaskell — I think rightly — brings out the fact that this collective action that does not allow for individual exceptions can tip over into a mob mentality; at the same time, there's the question of how much one really does need to cohere in order to resist the privileged position of the mill-owners.
* North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell. Angus Easson, ed. Oxford: 2008. p. 442 (Footnote 134, by Sally Shuttleworth)
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| "Ancoats, Manchester. McConnel + Company's mills, about 1820. From an old water-colour drawing of the period." In: A Century of fine Cotton Spinning, 1790-1913. McConnel + Co. Ltd. Frontispiece. via Wikimedia Commons |
Wrought to a fever pitch by hunger and desperation, and by the arrival of the Irish 'knobsticks' (strike breakers), some striking workers stop waiting for the union bargaining to succeed. They riot and batter down the gate to the mill grounds, intent on taking out their anger on John Thornton and on the Irish workers.
Margaret has become a champion of the well-being of the workers, at least in conversations with Thornton, whom she meets more often because her father is tutoring him. She happens to visit the Thornton household on the day of the riot. Knowing that soldiers are on their way to beat down the workers, she challenges the mill-owner to step out and speak to the rioters to calm them down and prevent a bloodbath. In one of several kitschy scenes, she then rushes out after the grimly obedient Thornton — realizing that she has made a rather stupid challenge — and flings herself onto him as a human shield.
Thornton and a few spectators assume that she accidentally revealed a romantic passion in a (for Victorian times) shockingly public way, whereas it was just a leap of principle because she didn't want him to be injured because of her advice. Someone throws a stone that hits and wounds her instead of its intended target, the crowd is aghast and disperses, and the next day Thornton ill-advisedly proposes marriage.
It ends in awkwardness.
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| "London, a pilgrimage, by Gustave Doré, and Blanchard Jerrold (Grant, London, 1872) : chapter XVIII, Whitechapel and whereabouts. Turn him out! Ratcliff." via Wikimedia Commons |
But the workers (disillusioned by the violence into which their strike has descended) return to their posts, except a few in whom the police are interested. Thornton himself begins to take trouble to become acquainted with the workers. In this he is also inspired by Margaret's friendship with the Higginses; his love still fuels nobler actions.
Of course the book continues, but I'll leave the plot there.
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| "The front facade of 84 Plymouth Grove, once the home of author Elizabeth Gaskell and her husband, the Reverend William Gaskell" by Patyo1994 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 licence |
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Regarding social equality, I think the book could have done better. It seems to me that (despite the exceptions that the author makes for Margaret's 'silly' cousin and aunt) the upper class are presented as far more intrinsically knowledgeable, intellectually inclined, refined, and above all important than the mill workers and their families. Gaskell pays lip-service to the idea, but fails to follow through on the idea, that privilege and accidents of fate account for the differences, not congenital character.
When I read this, for example, I thought disgustedly, 'Oh, for the love of god':
Nicholas wore his usual fustian clothes, but had a bit of black stuff sewn round his hat—a mark of mourning which he had never shown to his daughter Bessy's memory.Also, people in Margaret's life die left and right (mirroring the author's own biography); she doesn't lead an easy existence. But I wish that there had been fewer First World Problems; frankly her moving from Helstone is one example. It is really wrenching to be forced to leave a home that one loves; but, as the rest of the book shows, it could be worse, and I'm uneasy when events are put on a level even though they are really rather different.
I loved rereading the book. At the same time I kept making mental notes about what might have been better and wishing that Gaskell's taste — although there are 'Easter eggs' of plot consistency and foreshadowing sprinkled through the book, and signs of intelligence and knowledge, and originality, that really show how well she thought through her work — had been more sure-footed.
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Cranford (novel) [Wikipedia]
Cranford (TV series) [Wikipedia]
Household Words [Wikipedia]
William Stevenson (Scottish writer) [Wikipedia]
William Gaskell [Wikipedia]
Elizabeth Gaskell [Wikipedia]
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| "The Church of the Holy Rood, Holybourne. This church is of Norman origin, it is next to and above the springs which feed the pond and the Holy Bourne. It is likely to have been a site of water worship before the church was built. The water is supposed to be good for the eyes." by Graham Clutton via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0 licence |
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