North and South Eleanor Pritchard

North and South

Eleanor Pritchard Second Year

North and South was written by Elizabeth Gaskell and published in 1854. She wrote the novel to appease factory owners in her home city of Manchester after her previous novel, Mary Barton, had angered them because it was very negative about industrialisation. The book was written to show the more positive side of the Industrial Revolution. workers believe they are not being paid enough and organise a strike. Margaret, hearing the opinions of both the factory workers and owners, doesn’t know what to think and who to support.

I think Elizabeth Gaskell used the character of Margaret to show different views on the consequences of the The protagonist, Margaret Hale, is a 19-year-old who [A] huge amount of pollution was Industrial Revolution. Margaret is young and inexperienced, so her has lived a sheltered life created by the opinion keeps changing. with her wealthy aunt and cousin in London. factories. This makes the reader’s views change too. When When her cousin marries Margaret has a negative and moves to Corfu, Margaret moves view on industrialisation, it makes the back to her parents’ house in quiet, rural reader have a negative view as well because Helstone. Her father is a clergyman, but the book was intended for middle and he begins to doubt the Church and quits upper class readers during the 1850s when his job. His friend, Mr Bell, provides the book was written, so Margaret had to be him with a tutoring opportunity in the someone they could relate to. This means large manufacturing town of Milton. He that when Margaret thinks about the awful doesn’t have a choice other than to take working conditions and the pollution which this position and move his family from made everyone’s health deteriorate, so is their comfortable, healthy home and the reader. She also thinks about how the environment. They only have £30 a year to factories proved how brilliant the human rent a house with. In Hampshire, they could mind is, and how this created a huge have rented a large, 4-bedroom house with amount of wealth for the economy; when Margaret has positive views like those, so does the reader. The factories created wealth, but most of the money went to the middle class and upper class, who were already rich to begin with, and very little money was given to the factory workers.

Elizabeth Gaskell

a garden, but in Milton that money can only get them a tiny, 3-bedroom house with no garden because Milton was overcrowded. As a result, the cost of living in the city was high. Mr Hale teaches Mr Thornton, the wealthy factory owner, whilst Margaret becomes friends with Bessy Higgins, a factory worker’s daughter. The factory Gaskell also uses description to create opposites. For example, industrial and pre-industrial ways of living. Before the Industrial Revolution, most people lived in the countryside and made a living out of farming. During the Industrial Revolution, many people migrated to large cities and made a living out of working in factories. This created further opposites, such as illness and health. As medication was not very good, people who lived in the countryside were usually healthier than people living in cities. In North and South Bessy Higgins’s sickness is contrasted with Margaret Hale’s good health. This was because a huge amount of pollution was created by the factories, causing fevers and asthma. The pollution was so bad that ‘for several miles before they reached Milton, they saw a deep lead-coloured cloud hanging over the horizon’ and ‘the air had a faint taste and smell of smoke’. Another example of an opposite is North and South. The North of England was more industrialised than the South of the country. Even the weather is described as different; the ‘thin mist’ in Hampshire is contrasted with the ‘thick fog’ of Milton. Also, many people in the South didn’t understand the North’s way of living. Wealth and poverty are contrasted; Mr Thornton was rich and had a healthy and happy adulthood, whereas Bessy Higgins was poor and had an unhealthy and sad life.

I think Elizabeth Gaskell had a balanced view of industrialisation. She was concerned about the human impact and the effect on many people’s health; however, she also saw that it provided job opportunities and faster travel.

I enjoyed everything about this book apart from the paragraph that was written in French because I didn’t understand it.

Book Review Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, Oxford University Press: The World’s Classics