Notes on North and South

General notes
 Since Margaret Hale is the main link between the two worlds presented in the novel it is
interesting to see her gradual conversion from a Helstone attitude to the Milton one.
 There is, for example, her response to Mr Bell’s teasing where she claims that she stands for
the progress of commerce.
 Her effort to dissuade Higgins from going to the South for work; her depiction of the dreary,
stale life of the Southen agricultural worker.
 Her walks through Milton become agreeable to her despite her initial shock from the lack of
reserve towards strangers even to those higher in the social scale.
 She even comes to enjoy the technical words employed by the mill owners. She thinks that
‘they talked in desperate earnest – not in the used-up style that wearied her so in the old
London parties’.

Masters and Workmen

 In November 1853 Preston workers went on strike because the mill owners did not give them pay
rise despite their previous promises.
 This, of course, reflects the strike in North and South.
 There was also the issue of misunderstanding from complete lack of communication.
 Newspapers of the time claimed that the mill owners’ unecessary cruelty towards their
workers caused a large part of the general enmity. The same attitude is shown when
Thornton thinks that it is the workers’ fault that they are found in this predicament.

Working-class women
 While North and South is frequently praised for its realism in depicting the strike, which was
based on the Preston labor conflict in 1853-4, it breaks down in the point that women comprised
almost 56% of the factory labour force.
 It has been suggested that this has to do with the idea that a woman’s place is at home and
not at the factory. Thus, the creation of an angry female worker. Margaret, for example,
despite not accepting an image of inferiority, is mainly confined at home. She gains financial
independence but by inheriting money and property.
 Bessie Higgins confirms the image of the ‘innocent’ woman who is harmed by labour.

Class prejudice
 Gaskell reveals her dislike for social stratification by presenting a positive example of class
relationships in Mr Hale’s treatment of Nicholas Higgins. Hale sees the man before he sees the
social position.
 Later in the novel, when Thornton comes to accept his workers as equal human beings he
calls them ‘men’ instead of using the metonymic ‘hands’.

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  Margaret’s relationship with Higgins and Bessy teach her that people are people regardless of
their social status. There is, for example, the scene where Mr Hale, Higgins and Margaret
kneel to pray.

Gender issues
 In Chapter 49 the text deals with the problematic issue of women’s work. Margaret has taken
‘her life into her own hands’ trying to reconcile ‘home duties’ with the ‘development of the
individual’. She also tries to merge ‘obedience to authority’ and ‘freedom in working’.
Gaskell seems unable to sift out confusions and ambitions pertaining this most difficult issue.
Margaret is granted partial freedom to work in the London slums as long as she returns to the
domestic circle in the evening. When she inherits her fortune it is clear that, while she plans to
improve industrial conditions, her future is destined to be in a domestic context.

Christian Service and Female Servitude

 Margaret spends much of her time serving her loved ones out of the goodness of her heart but
this responsibility burdens her more and more and yearns to escape, even for a while, to ‘get
high up … see far away … and take a deep breath of fulness in that air’. Following her mother’s
death she does not even have time to express her grief.

Detailed notes

 When she has returned home while her ‘out-of-doors life was perfect’ she sees that the ‘in-doors
life’ has changed to the worse. Her mother was often ‘discontented with their situation’ and
whenever she urged Mr Hale to seek some other living ‘Margaret saw that her father shrank more
and more’. This points to the further movement of the novel relating to Mr Hale’s spiritual crisis
and their eventual going to Milton.
Interestingly enough, when, in one of their discussions, Mrs Hale mentions theGormans, who are
traders, Margaret says that she doesn’t like ‘shoppy people’ and that she’d rather be with
‘cottagers and labourers’. This should be contrasted with her subsequent change when she will
have come to respect the new rising class of traders and merchants [49-50].
 During the initial shock of moving to Milton she is embarrassed walking through the Crampton
streets. She is afraid of the workers’ ‘bold, fearless faces, and loud laughs and jests, particularly
aimed at all those who appeared to be above them in rank or station. Nevertheless some other
sayings from some of them ‘amused her even while they irritated her’. She also starts to get
pleasure at the girls’ comments on her dress and she kindly replies to their inquiries [110-11].
More importantly, after meeting Higgins, who had made one of the pleasant comments on her
appearance, and Bessy, his daughter, Milton becomes ‘a brighter place to her’ because ‘she had
found a human interest’ [113].
 During one of Thornton’s first visits when he says that he prefers the bustling life of the North
compared to the ‘dull prosperous life’ in the South where one can be ‘clogged with honey and
unable to rise and fly’ Margaret answers back mocking the ‘gambling spirit of trade’ and saying
that the poor of the South do not have ‘that terrible expression in their countenances of a sullen
sense of injustice’ [122-3].

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 As for Thornton when he speaks about his life and how he came to his fortune through hard work
he comments that he does not feel sorry for the workmen, who Margaret feels pity for, since
their condition is ‘the natural punishment of dishonestly-enjoyed pleasure’ and he ‘simply look[s]
with contempt for their poorness of character’ [126]. This, of course, will change after getting
acquainted with Higgins. Having learned that Higgins has been waiting to see him for five hours
and having collected evidence on his character he is convinced that his story is true and ‘the
conviction went in, as if by some spell, and touched the latent tenderness of his heart’. Higgins
calls it ‘a soft place’ in his heart.
Later Thornton decides to build a dining room for ‘the men’ – he has stopped referring to them as
‘hands’ by now – following Higgins’ suggestion. By now it is obvious that, having come to know
them, he is capable of appreciating their personalities, ‘their sense of humour’ and even ‘their
racy mode of expression’ [446].
 As for the difference in the decoration of houses when Thornton visits the Hales he feels the
contrast between his home where there was ‘no sign of feminine habitation, except in the one
spot that [his] mother sate’ and the Hales’ drawing-room which ‘was twice – twenty times as
nice’ but ‘not one quarter as comfortable’ [119].
When Mrs Thornton visits the Hales she finds that ‘the room altogether was full of knick-knacks
which must take a long time to dust’ something which she thought was a waste of time and
money [139].
When Margaret and her father pay back the visit to the Thorntons and they find themselves in the
drawing-room they feel as if ‘no one had been in it since the day when the furniture was bagged
up with as much care as if the house was to be overwhelmed with lava, and discovered a
thousand years hence’. Wherever Margaret looked ‘there was evidence of care and labour, but
not care and labour to procure ease, to help on habits of tranquil home employement [but] solely
to ornament, and then to preserve ornament from dirt or destruction’ [158].
Later when they revisit it on the occasion of the dinner party, ‘every corner seemed filled up
with ornament, until it became a weariness to the eye’ [213].
 In the strike theme Thornton, while speaking with the Hales, he says that the masters do not
have to explain their decisions concerning the trade. When asked by Margaret why the masters do
not do this he asks her if she gives her servants reasons for her expenditure [164].
Margaret laters makes the important comment that there must be understanding and
communication between the two parties because their lives are ‘constantly and intimately
interwoven’[169]. This lack of communication is emphasised when she speaks with Higgins about
the strike and tells him that the masters may not be able to give them a pay rise due to the ‘tate
of trade’ he says that all this is ‘humbug’ or a sort of ‘black bug-boo’ [183].
Thornton’s comment that ‘he had head as well as hands, while [the workers] had only hands
[196] will be reverted when he will come to appreciate Higgins’ ideas concerning some aspects of
the work.
 Margaret’s comment after the dinner party at Thornton’s she ‘was much interested by what the
gentlemen were talking about, although [she] did not understand half of it’ [221] and that ‘the
ladies were so dull’ shows the attraction of busy, purposeful life, which should be the case for all
men. The exclusion of women from such life and their confinement to the domestic shpere makes
them dull and uninteresting.

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 In Chapter 22 the description of the strikers crashing down the door is fraught with sexual and
animalistic behaviour: ‘the unseen maddened crowd made battering-rams of their bodies … till
their great beats made the strong gates quiver’. When they have crashed the gate and are
confronted by Thornton ‘they set up a yell’ which could not be called ‘human’ but ‘the demoniac
desire of some terrible wild beast for the food that is witheld from his ravening’.
 When Thornton and Mr Hale have come closer to each other and Mr Hale feels that he can
unburden his heart more easily to him than to Margaret, Gaskell comments that in Thornton ‘Man
of action as he was, busy in the world’s great battle, there was a deeper religion binding him to
God in his heart, in spite of his strong wilfulness, through all his mistakes, than Mr Hale had ever
dreamed’ [348]. This explains Thornton’s slow transformation into a more considerate and
compasionate person.
 After Mr Thornton’s visit Margaret, having realised that he thinks of Frederick as some lover,
feels miserable and thinks she will ‘live to be an old woman … sit[ting] over the fire, and looking
into the embers … the life that might have been’. However, the most important thing is that she
admits having made a mistake but ‘it has come upon [her] little by little’ not knowing ‘where it
began’ [401].

Margaret’s return to Helstone and her realisation of change and its necessity or inevitability
 Visiting the parsonage she finds it ‘altered, both inside and out’ and the pain she had anticipated
was less. The garden ‘so daintly prim’ before ‘was strawed with children’s things’. Leaving the
parsonage ‘she was unwilling to go out as she had proposed to do … among the woods and fields
so close to the house of her childhood’. She has realised that ‘this visit to Helstone had not been
… exactly what she had expected’. She sees ‘change everywhere … pervading all’. The
households ‘were changed by absence, or death, or marriage, or the natural mutations … which
carry us on imperceptibly from childhood to youth’. Revisiting it the next day she has realised
that she herself changes ‘perpetually – now this, now that - … suddenly discovering that the
reality is far more beautiful than [she] had imagined’.
All this episode should be seen as having paved the way for her reconciliation with Thornton.

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