Female Strength and Class Antagonism in North and SouthLeitura em 9 minutos

In Elizabeth Gaskell’s social novel North and South, we can identify a strong female protagonist – Margaret Hale –, and a discussion around relevant social and political matters. There is a focus on the issue of industrialization, which was reaching new heights in England throughout the 19th century. In this essay, I chose to unpack two topics that caught my attention the most in this book: female strength and class antagonism.

In starting with the topic of the female strength, I believe that Elizabeth Gaskell writes the main character, Margaret Hale, as a strong woman, one who acts, leads, solves problems and bears others’ burdens, trying to protect them. It is interesting that many of the actions that fall upon Margaret throughout the novel would be expected to be performed by men and not women according to Victorian gender constructs.

At the beginning of the novel, Mr. Hale tells his daughter about his need to leave the church of England. He asks Margaret to tell her mother that the family is moving away to Milton Northern. Since the news are not good, Margaret’s father doesn’t feel comfortable enough to tell Mrs. Hale all about it and leaves the task in the hands of his young daughter. In the following day, not feeling comfortable about the conversation she needed to have with her mother, Margaret breaks the news to Mrs. Hale while her father was not brave enough to do so. As if being her father’s spokesperson was not enough, Margaret also had to take over the arrangements of the move to Milton, since Mr. Hale was too depressed to take care of the preparations and decisions that the situation demanded.

Later in the novel, with the Hales already settled in Milton, Mrs. Hale got really ill and was desperate to see her son, Frederick, one more time before dying, although he had become an exile and it was risky to ask him to come back to England. It then became Margaret’s task to write a letter to her brother asking him to come visit their ill mother. Regardless of the fears that Frederick could be caught, one more time it was Margaret who acted while her father couldn’t do so. By this point, Margaret is becoming used to solve the Hales’ problems since she was the only one around that would take action. Margaret’s position makes me reflect on the role of women in our society nowadays. Among the people I know, women are usually the ones who are called to solve the major problems and are still considered to be “the weaker sex”.

Mr. Hale displays weakness in the face of challenging situations since the beginning of the novel, but after Mrs. Hale death he got worse (something I didn’t even know to be possible). While Margaret had to take care of the bureaucracy around her mother’s funeral by herself, her father and brother were free to both live and express their grief. This part of the novel shows Margaret’s strength in the sense that she prioritizes being a steady presence in her family, subordinating her own feelings to what she regarded as her duty. Besides that, Margaret also displays strength outside her home environment.

In one the most climactic moments in the novel, Margaret acts as a human shield to protect Thornton – the master of Marlborough Mills – from a mob of angry workers that were threatening to use physical violence against him. Margaret tried to protect the gentleman, since she believed that, being a woman, the crowd would not hurt her. By reading the novel, we realize that plan didn’t really work as she expected: she was hit. However, when the workers noticed that they had hurt a woman they felt ashamed and retreated. I find it interesting that according to the conventions of romance and even of the sentimental novel, the reader might be led to expect the opposite, that is, a man being chivalrous and trying to protect a woman from bodily harm. Here, the protagonist believes that since it’s such a taboo to physically hurt a woman, women have more freedom to put themselves into dangerous situations. To Margaret, by acting like that they are able to make a difference on behalf of vulnerable people.

In another emotional and tense moment in the novel, Margaret must deal with the aftermath of Bessy Higgins’s death. One of Bessy’s last wishes was that her father would be kept from drinking. Thus, when her friend passes away, Margaret stands in front of Nicholas Higgins, effectively blocking his passage, to stop him from going to drink. Although Nicholas was distressed by the loss of a child, Margaret managed to persuade him to go to her house for tea instead. Yet again, Margaret used reason and her position as a woman to deescalate a situation, just like when she tried to protect Thornton from the mob. Elizabeth Gaskell writes Margaret as a woman that gets stronger by dealing with the difficult situations she had to face throughout the novel, one who chose to deal with them with a courage that the men around her almost never had.

 

Class Antagonism

In the beginning of North and South, Margaret Hale, a southerner aligned both with the lower gentry and a budding bourgeoisie, expresses a dislike for “shoppy people”. We notice that this class-based prejudice is not only felt by the main character, but a common thread among many characters of the novel. As we read Gaskell’s words, we notice that as Margaret gets to know how everything works in Milton – a Northern industrial city -, how the relationship between employer and employee takes place and the rhythms of their everyday lives, she changes her mind and learns that the relationship between masters and workers needs to improve. Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel seems to argue that the antagonistic nature of the relationship between different classes would improve if they could understand each other better and that would only happen if they managed to have a more personal connection. Margaret’s close contact with the Thorntons and the Higginses provides her with a close look at the relationship between different classes and as she gets more involved in the realities of the North, she begins to wish more and more that the situation between masters and workers was better.

In the novel, John Thornton is introduced as a representative of nineteenth-century economic liberalism. He believes that through hard work everybody can rise to the top just as he did. Thornton refuses to acknowledge that the opportunities that he had during his life may not be reachable to everyone. This situation can also be linked to contemporary reality. Many wealthy and successful people adhere to meritocratic discourse. Along with that, Thornton’s mother shares many ideas with her son about Milton. She refers to the striking millworkers as “a pack of ungrateful hounds” (GASKELL, 1993, 108), and she doesn’t really think of them as people. Mrs. Thornton doesn’t consider that the workers also have feelings, worries and families to support. For her, they are just supposed to do as they are told, with no right to complain about anything and they should be thankful for what they already have. In the novel, the masters wouldn’t even call their workers “men”, they would refer to them as “hands”.

However, this lack of understanding is not exclusive to the upper classes. The workers involved in the strike could also disregard other people’s subjectivities in order to achieve their goal. John Boucher was a man with six children and a very sick wife to support and he claims that, “Yo’ may be kind hearts, each separate; but once banded together, yo’ve no more pity for a man than a wild hunger-maddened wolf.” (GASKELL, 1993, 145). Boucher believed that when put together, the members of the strike would have no pity for a man in his situation and would keep putting pressure on him to take part in the movement. By pushing Boucher to desperation, they certainly contributed to his early death.

Eventually, Thornton gives in and develops a business relationship with Higgins. While Thornton listens to the worker’s ideas on how to improve the mill, Higgins keeps his boss informed of the thoughts and doings of the workers in general, proving that Margaret’s idea of open communication was actually the solution. Later, John Thornton realizes that the relationship between the two classes doesn’t have to be a battle and that it is possible for them to work complementing each other. After all, the workers were just as human as their masters. By that point in the novel, Thornton stops referring to his workers as “hands”.

At the end of North and South, Marlborough Mills had failed, but Thornton’s mind has shifted. John Thornton hoped that his next industrial enterprise – whenever it might come – would be based on a respectful relationship with his workers. He was a smart entrepreneur, so he did not believe that the strikes would cease, but now he believed that having personal contact with his workers would help to make negotiation possible. At this point, Thornton’s behavior towards his workers is no longer based on antagonism. Now, his view of the workers along with his own character have changed.

Margaret Hale also undergoes great change throughout the novel. Her actions and attitude show how far she has come from her prejudice against ‘shoppy people’ and how much she helps such people in the end. If it wasn’t for Margaret and Higgins, John Thornton wouldn’t understand the value of communication and the benefits it could bring to both mill-owners and workmen. Without her, Marlborough Mills would never be saved. To conclude, I believe that North and South made me think about the context of what was happening in an industrial town in the north of England during the 19th century and how a relationship such as Thornton’s and Higgins’s, one that was once considered to be antagonistic, could end up in a friendship. Besides that, what impressed me the most while reading the book was how a novel from more than a hundred years ago can still be aligned with problems we are facing as a society today.

 

References

CHILDERS, Joseph W. Industrial culture and the Victorian novel. In: DAVID, Deirdre (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 77-96.

CHILDERS, Joseph W. Victorian Theories of the Novel. In: BRANTLINGER, Patrick; THEASING, William B. (Eds.). A Companion to the Victorian Novel. Hoboken: Blackwell, 2002, pp. 406-423.

FLINT, Kate. The Victorian novel and its readers. In: DAVID, Deirdre (Ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Victorian Novel. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, pp. 17-36.

GALLAGHER, Catherine. The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction: Social Discourse and Narrative Form 1832-1867. Chicago: University of Chicago University Press, 1985.

GASKELL, Elizabeth. North and South. Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1993. [1854].

NJAU, Barbara. “Elizabeth Gaskell’s ‘North and South’ Summary: Plot, Context, Characters & Themes”. YouTube: First Rate Tutors, 2020. 27:22 min. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrWSlTyFtbE.

PATTERSON-WHITE, Sarah. “North and South Themes.” LitCharts. LitCharts LLC, 2019. Accessed on: May 20th, 2023. Available at: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/north-and-south/themes.