ABOUT THE BOOK

When Margaret Hales’ cousin, Edith, marries Captain Lennox, and, her aunt, Mrs Shaw, moves to warmer climates for her health, she returns home from Harley Street to rejoin her parents in Helstone, Hampshire. Enjoying the quieter life of her father’s parish, Margaret thinks that nothing can spoil the peace. However a surprise proposal from Edith’s brother-in-law, barrister Mr Henry Lennox, and a dramatic decision by her father occur on the same day, which change her settled life forever.

Mr Hale has a crisis of faith therefore decides to leave the church to become a tutor in Milton, an industrial town in Northern England. Milton is sooty and noisy, centred around the cotton mills that employ most of its inhabitants. Arriving from a rural idyll in the south, Margaret is initially shocked by the social unrest – especially the workers’ strike - and poverty she finds in her new hometown. Yet as she begins to befriend her neighbours, the Higginses, and her stormy relationship with the mill-owner John Thornton develops, she starts to see Milton in a different light. However, her mother does not react so well to her new life and becomes ill.

As the workers’ strike intensifies, Mrs Hale worsens and the doctor informs Margaret that her mother will not recover. To ease her mother’s pains, she must procure a waterbed from the Thorntons. As she walks to Mr Thornton’s cotton mill and residence, she realises that something is seriously wrong. She is ushered into the Thornton’s house as the workers breakdown the gate and demand to see Mr Thornton, who has employed Irish workers to run the mill while those in Milton strike thus enraging them. As he tries to command their attention, Margaret rushes out to guard him from harm. After this selfless and caring act, Mr Thornton proposes to her only to be turned down.

As Mrs Hale deteriorates and her husband and her loyal servant, Dixon, sit by her side, Margaret arranges for her brother, Frederick, who is in exile after leading a mutiny in the Navy, to visit in secret. On the day Frederick arrives their mother dies. Even as they grieve, the Hales realise how dangerous it is for Frederick to be in England especially with a large bounty out for his arrest. He must return to Spain – and soon. Before he leaves Mr Hale and Margaret persuade him to talk to Mr Lennox about the likelihood of him being acquitted at a Court Marshal.

As Margaret and Frederick spend their last few minutes together before his train to London, Mr Thornton rides by, assuming they are lovers he leaves them in peace doing his best to ignore the injury to his feelings. However the loving goodbye between the siblings is shattered when Leonards, an old acquaintance of Fredrick’s, recognises him. A struggle ensures and Leonards falls, later dying of his injuries. In a bid to keep her brother’s visit and identity a secret, Margaret lies to the police about being at the station when Leonards was pushed and Mr Thornton, a magistrate of the town, does not expose her lie. Embarrassed by her behaviour, she cannot bear to face Mr Thornton or bring herself to explain what happened.

Mr Hale takes up the invitation of Mr Bell, Margaret’s godfather, to visit him in Oxford in an attempt to raise his spirits – while he is there Mr Hale passes away peacefully in his sleep. Left alone in Milton and now an orphan, Margaret is soon joined by her aunt Shaw, who persuades her to come and live with herself, Edith, Captain Lennox and their young family, who have recently returned from Corfu. Edith agrees and enters a life she once knew, but is now very alien to her.
Back in Milton, Mr Thornton’s fortunes crumble as Margaret’s bloom; upon the death of Mr Bell she inherits properties in Milton and an income. Hearing of Mr Thornton’s difficulties, she resolves to help him financially. The pair meet in London and soon realise their true feelings. The book ends end in a proposal, and the promise of a happier future together.

‘Pah! to Dickens. Eat your heart out, Little Nell.
That Elizabeth Gaskell could write a death scene to make your socks melt’
Scotsman

‘Gaskell saw the emotional and economic realities of
ordinary life with a steely honesty’
The Times

‘One of the most perceptive novels of the mid-Victorian era’
Glasgow Herald

‘North and South explores themes that still seem strikingly modern.
One hundred and fifty years after it appeared, the North-South divide -
and the social and economic gulf it implies - remains intact’
Daily Mail

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell (née Stevenson) was born on 29 September 1810 in Chelsea, London. Her father William, was a civil servant. Her mother, Eliza, died on 29 October 1811 and she was brought up by Hannah Lumb, her aunt, in Knutsford, Cheshire, a small town near Manchester which later became the basis for Cranford.

In 1832 she married William Gaskell, who was a Unitarian minister and they settled in the industrial city of Manchester. They had several children: a stillborn daughter in 1833, followed by Marianne (1834), Margaret Emily (1837), known as Meta, Florence Elizabeth (1842), William (1844-1845) and Julia Bradford (1846).

After her only son, William, died of scarlet fever she began to write. Her first novel, Mary Barton, was published anonymously in 1848. It was an immediate success, winning the praise of Charles Dickens and Thomas Carlyle.
Dickens invited her to contribute to his magazine, 'Household Words', where her next major work, Cranford, appeared in 1853. North and South was published the following year. Gaskell’s work brought her many friends, including the novelist Charlotte Brontë. When Charlotte died in 1855, her father, Patrick Brontë, asked Gaskell to write her biography, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857).

Wives and Daughters, Elizabeth’s final novel, was left unfinished when she died suddenly of heart failure on 12 November 1865 in Holybourne, Hampshire, aged 55.

Background to the novel

The first installment of North and South appeared in Dickens’ Household Words on 2 September 1854 but it was not a success in serial form, sales of the magazine dropped and Mrs Gaskell fell behind with episodes. However she battled on, even persuading Dickens to extent the serial from twenty to twenty-two installments.

The final installment appeared on 27 January 1855. Dickens wrote to congratulate her and even added £50 to the £250 due as a peace offering.

When the novel appeared in volume form, she expanded the last few chapters and added a preface stating that because of restrictions of the magazine format the ‘author found it impossible to develop the story in the manner originally intended’.

AUTHOR INTERVIEW

Extract from Elizabeth Gaskell’s letter to her friend Emily:

‘I’ve got to (with Margaret – I’m off at her following your letter) when they’ve quarreled, silently, after the lie and she knows she loves him, and he is trying not to love her; and Frederick is gone back to Spain and Mrs Hale is dead and Mr Bell has come to stay with the Hales, and Mr Thornton ought to be developing himself – and Mr Hale ought to die – and if I could get over this next piece I could swim through the London life beautifully into sunset glory of the last scene. But hitherto Thornton is good; and I’m afraid of a touch marring him; and I want to keep his character consistent with itself, and large and strong and tender, and yet a master. That’s my next puzzle. I am enough on not to hurry’ (L321)

Elizabeth Gaskell began to feel that the story was not good enough and not her own. She told Dickens:

‘I dare say I shall like my story, when I am a little further from it; at present I can only feel depressed about it, I meant it to have been so much better.’

Later on, she softened towards the novel realising that the time restraints and other pressures of writing for a serial might have in fact been useful to the story’s development:

‘Now I am not sure if, when the barrier gives way between 2 such characters as Mr Thornton and Margaret it would not go all smash in a moment,  - and I don’t feel certain that I dislike the end as it now stands.’

Extracts from Elizabeth Gaskell by Jenny Uglow (Faber, 1993), p.366 - 368

STARTING POINTS FOR YOUR DISCUSSION

1. Why do Margaret’s parents allow her to shoulder such heavy burdens – her father’s crisis of faith and her mother’s illness – at such a young age?
   
   
2. Why does Margaret not tell her mother and father about Mr Lennox and Mr Thornton’s proposals? Why does she have to wait to be asked directly by her father?
   
   
3. ‘North and South explores themes that still seem strikingly modern’ Daily Mail.  Do you think that the attitudes expressed in the novel about the north and south divide are relevant today?
   
   
4. Why is Margaret prejudiced against the industrialists of the time? How important is social class to the novel?
   
   
5. Who is the better Mother – Mrs Hale, Mrs Thornton or Mrs Shaw?
   
   
6. The scene where Margaret stands between Mr Thornton and the striking workers is a turning point in the tale. What motivates Margaret’s to put herself in this vulnerable - both emotionally and physically - situation?
   
   
7. Margaret is a strong female heroine. Do you think this is unusual in a Victorian novel? Why does Elizabeth Gaskell contrast Margaret so dramatically with the other girls of her age in the book for example Edith, Fanny and Bessy?
   
   
8. The original title of the book was Margaret Hale and it was only under pressure from her publishers that Gaskell changed the title to North and South. Do you think this was the right decision to make? Do you think you would read the novel differently if it had its original title?
   
   
9. Elizabeth Gaskell describes Mr Thornton as ‘large and strong and tender, and yet a master’. Do you agree with her description? Can you be tender and a master? Does Mr Thornton prove this?
   
   
10. Was Margaret right to lie to the police officer? Do you think she should have told Mr Thornton the truth straight away?
    
    
11. Look at Margaret’s relationship with the Higginses and compare it to Mr Thornton’s relationship to them. What are the differences and the similarities? Who gains the most from the connection – Margaret, Mr Thornton or the Higgins?
    
    
12. Both Margaret and Thornton know that their families will not approve of the marriage. Are they right to marry? Can they be happy?

OTHER BOOKS BY ELIZABETH GASKELL

Mary Barton (1848)
Cranford (1851-3)
Ruth (1853)
North and South (1854-5)
Sylvia's Lovers (1863)
Cousin Phillis (1864)
Wives and Daughters: An Everyday Story (1865)

The Moorland Cottage (1850)
The Old Nurse's Story (1852)
Lizzie Leigh (1855)
My Lady Ludlow (1859)
Round the Sofa (1859)
Lois the Witch (1861)
A Dark Night's Work (1863)

SHORT STORIES (partial)

Libbie Marsh's Three Eras (1847)
Christmas Storms and Sunshine (1848)
The Squire's Story (1853)
Half a Life-time Ago (1855)
An Accursed Race (1855)
The Poor Clare (1856)
"The Manchester Marriage" (1858), a chapter of A House to Let, co-written with Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, and Adelaide Anne Procter
The Half-brothers (1859)
The Grey Woman (1861)

NON-FICTION

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Hard Times ~ Charles Dickens
Tess of the d’Urbervilles ~ Thomas Hardy (link to reading guide)
The Mill on the Floss ~ George Eliot
Pride and Prejudice ~ Jane Austen
Elizabeth Gaskell ~ Jenny Uglow (Faber, 1993)

Also:
BBC series of North and South (2004) featured Daniela Denby-Ashe and Richard Armitage.

ADDITIONAL ONLINE RESOURCES

The Gaskell Society

The Gaskell Web

Wikipedia