North and South is a simple title for a complex book. Dealing with a Hampshire family who move to a Manchester-like place it follows their adjustment to their new surroundings. In particular they must deal with new types of people such as factory workers and owners, while also navigating their own place in this unfamiliar industrial world. In the book many conflicts are set up, such as the men against the masters, which begin relatively simply but develops more complicated subtleties as both the romantic elements and condition of England debates progress. I will be looking at the characters of North and South and at Mrs. Gaskell herself in relation to the original publication of the serialised book.
To be able to gage how complex its range of relations this book deals with it is important to clearly define what genre it belongs to. From this simple beginning of classifying genre it gives us an idea how conflicting the book as a whole is. Gaskell does this by not just writing a ‘condition of England’ novel but also a romance novel (an industrial Pride and Prejudice), a bildungsroman, a ‘protest novel’, a crisis of faith novel, that is studded with hints of overseas adventure- the type that Rudyard Kipling would later write.
Critics who have tried to pigeonhole this book into just one of these names have strained to explain away or water down the other parts that make up the book since each part is important for the book as a whole. If one is taken away the rest is diminished. Philip Davis writes in The Victorians:
‘There are layers upon layers interpenetrating in novels such as North and South: the love story going on within the novel of social concern, but simultaneously the novel of social concern also going on within the love story…in that viable fluidity which was the alternative to revolution in the dynamics of nineteenth-century England.’ (Davis)
Clearly just by trying to describe the type of story this is quickly becomes a problem of navigating relationships in literature. It follows that characters that belong to these different genres will also have complicated relationships within the narrative.
Within it there is south intervening between two types of north, the workers and the owners, and between these two there is a measure sympathy and understanding as well as argument and disagreement. Though North and South deal with a lot of ideas of capital and labor the characters and not only mouthpieces for these ideas. They are characters who believe in these ideas but who have weakness, pride, change of mind and doubt to these ideas.
However these characters have been criticised as being more caricature (how likely is it really that a worker would read Homer in his spare time?) than observant sketch and that throughout the book there is mistake after mistake of technical details. Throughout her writing career Mrs. Gaskell’s realism often gave way to more symbolic writing; so though we would be right in thinking that this realist text has many flaws, in not quite being so real as it would want us to believe, it still retains a high degree of skill in storytelling:
‘It is not the surrounding socio-politico language…but the under language of human relationship that allows Mrs. Gaskell access to her sense of shifting layers and levels, of half-unwitting attractions cutting across the fixity of theoretical principles and social principles’ (Davis)
This comes out in the fact that the characters are not just metaphors. The characters are human beings living within the ideas of the social landscape. Margaret and John are not just south and north in the flesh but also a man and a woman who act on feelings and wishes. They are not just ideas in human shape. Not to say that ideas are not involved. Margaret and John Thornton clash because of their ideas but their ideas are their own.
These people are not simply binary opposites but fully fleshed and realised characters with histories, preferences and dreams. In this way it would be more accurate to call North and South a saga than a condition of England novel for it is more about families with relationships and differences than about picturing a microcosm of England: ‘What at the level of ideas would be a sign of contradiction is here a sign of life.’ (Davis) It does begin with easily definable opposites- north vs. south; a man vs. masters- but as the progress of the story develops it also develops into a more complex range of relations between the opposites.
It does become a lot more about families trying to get along with each other. Rather than social class it has a lot more to say on fathers and mothers, parents and children. It might have been more accurate to call the book Men and Women for that seems to be its primary conflict and as it was Gaskell’s belief that society amounted to a family that title would have been well suited. As one of the characters says:
‘I see two classes dependent on each other in every possible way, yet each evidently regarding the interests of the other as opposed to their own’ (ch. 15)
This seems like a good description of normal family life if I ever heard one. In chapter twenty the Hale family is torn between the individual striker and not wanting to exacerbate the strike much like children torn between two parents. Notice also the need for a powerful man like Thornton to be able to cry to his mother when he needs to, and also the importance of Mr. Hale decisions affecting the rest of the family.
One of the most important aspects of the book that often gets overlooked is the fact that the whole story is grounded on a father’s doubts. It is interesting why Mr. Hale’s doubts aren’t specified and John Sutherland gives some suggestions as to why this is. Gaskell was writing for a family magazine that avoided controversial topics as directed by Dickens.
“Mrs. Gaskell duly did as tactfully instructed and, in the matter of Mr. Hale’s doubts, alluded to what she meant, rather than plunging into the religious disputes of the 1840s. Intelligent readers would fill in the blanks without difficulty”. P137 (Sutherland)
Elizabeth Gaskell was more interested in a ‘crisis of conscience’ novel than a ‘novel of religious doubt’ that was popular later on in the nineteenth centaury. Mr. Hale’s doubts are not precisely theological but more temporal. As Sutherland notes ‘He cannot accept that the Church of England has any right to compel men’s beliefs…It is coercion, not doubt, which principally agonizes him.” P132 (Sutherland)
The doubts are never explained or wrapped up. To be vague on crucial narrative points, however, is a characteristic Gaskellian trait. Though Mr. Hale could not believe strongly enough with the church he still believed in God, even if He did not endue him ‘over-much wisdom or strength’. At the end of Mr. Hale’s life he says that even if he could have saw the suffering that Margaret would have to endue because of his decision he would have still left the church. His friend Mr. Bell encouraged him by saying that:
‘“He gave you strength enough to do what your conscience told you was right; and I don’t see that we need any higher or holier strength than that; or wisdom either.”’ (ch. XLI)
Before ending with ‘“But what gulls men are.”’
The same could not have been said for Gaskell who wrote with wisdom and was not prone to giving easy answers but preferred deep analysis. What Gaskell does in this ‘problem novel’ is writing about ‘the problem’ without directly naming it but in a way that she does not have to for readers to understand.
The format of the novel itself becomes part of the debate of capital and labor. Though this book has artistic merits it would be wrong to say that it was a work of art. The book was written in a serialised form in Household Words letting Gaskell earn money from her regular contributions. It is because that it has literary merits and that it earns regular money says a lot about the debates going on within her book and in the society she lived in. Gaskell shows that it is possible to synthesize the practical needs of living and the idealism of artistic work.
However it was not without its tensions, as shown in the relationship between Dickens and Gaskell as artist and editor. She was an anti-sensational writer who did not accept his editing (Dickens commented about her non-climatic chapter endings and that she was “compelled to hurry on events with an improbable rapidity”) and she was often late on delivery. Writing in serilised form was a struggle for her. This is only fitting for a woman who took on struggle as her subject of stories.
‘Her aim as a fiction writer to mediate between discourses and to break down barriers of communication between classes and individuals.’ (Davis).
The novelist herself was often self-analytical, divided and restless having typical Victorian conflicts of a mother’s duty and her need for self-expression.
From her letters:
‘One of my mes is, I do believe, a true Christian—(only people call her socialist and communist), another of my mes is a wife and mother, and highly delighted at the delight of everyone else in the house … Now that's my ‘social’ self I suppose. Then again I've another self with a full taste for beauty and convenience who is pleased on its own account. How am I to reconcile all these warring members?’
One way she managed to reconcile herself was to write deceptively complicated books involving many characters also trying to reconcile with themselves. From Victorian society and from her has come this conflicting book of opposites navigating their relationships towards harmony. It seems a struggle worth having.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Winstanley Michael, Ashworth William J, Gunn Simon et al, A Companion to Nineteenth-Century Britain, ed. by Chris Williams, Part III & Part IV (Blackwell publishing Ltd.; TJ international Ltd, Padstow, Cornwell) 2004, 2007.
Davis Philip, The Oxford English Literary History Volume 8 1830-1880 The Victorians, ed by Jonathan Bate (Oxford university press; Regent Typesetting) 2002
Sutherland John, Who betrays Elizabeth Bennet?, (Oxford World Classic) 1999
Uglow Jenny, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
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