North and South is a social novel published in 1855 by English author Elizabeth Gaskell. With Wives and Daughters (1866) and Cranford (1853), it is one of her best-known novels and was adapted for television three times (1966, 1975 and 2004). At first, Gaskell wanted the novel to be titled after the heroine, Margaret Hale, but Charles Dickens, the editor of Household Words, the magazine in which the novel was serialised, insisted on North and South.
Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton (1848), focused on relations between employers and workers in Manchester from the perspective of the working poor; North and South uses a protagonist from southern England to show and comment on the perspectives of mill owners and workers in an industrialising city. The novel is set in the fictional industrial town of Milton in the north of England. Forced to leave her home in the unruffled, rural south, Margaret Hale settles with her parents in Milton. She witnesses the ruthless world wrought by the Industrial Revolution, seeing employers and workers clashing in the first strikes. Sympathetic to the needy (whose courage and tenacity she admires and among whom she makes friends), she clashes with John Thornton: a nouveau riche cotton-mill owner who is scornful of his workers. The novel traces her growing understanding of the complexity of labour relations and their influence on well-meaning mill owners and her conflicted relationship with John Thornton. Gaskell based her depiction of Milton on Manchester, where she lived as the wife of a Unitarian minister.
Publication
Serialisation North and South originally appeared in 20 weekly episodes from September 1854 to January 1855 in Household Words, edited by Charles Dickens. During this period Charles Dickens dealt with the same theme in Hard Times (also a social novel), which was published in the same magazine from April to August 1854.
Hard Times, which shows Manchester (the satirical Coketown) in a negative light, challenged Gaskell and made the writing of her own novel more difficult; she had to ascertain that Dickens would not write about a strike. Gaskell found the time and technical constraints of serialised fiction particularly trying. She had planned to write 22 episodes but was "compelled to desperate compression" to limit the story to 20. North and South was less successful than Hard Times. On 14 October 1854, after six weeks, sales dropped so much that Dickens complained about what he called Gaskell's "intractability" because she resisted his demands for concision. He found the story "wearisome to the last degree".
Title The novel's title (imposed by Dickens) focuses on the difference in lifestyle between rural southern England, inhabited by the landed gentry and agricultural workers, and the industrial north, populated by capitalist entrepreneurs and poverty-stricken mill workers; the north–south division was cultural and economic. The story centres on haughty Margaret Hale, who learns to overcome her prejudices against the North in general and charismatic manufacturer John Thornton in particular. Gaskell would have preferred to call the novel Margaret Hale (as she had done in 1848 for her novel Mary Barton), but Dickens prevailed. He wrote in a 26 July 1854 letter that "North South" seemed better, encompassing more and emphasising the opposition between people who are forced by circumstances to meet face-to-face.
Working on the final chapters of the novel in December at Lea Hurst, Florence Nightingale's family home near Matlock in Derbyshire, Gaskell wrote that she would rather call her novel Death and Variations because "there are five dead, each beautifully consistent with the personality of the individual". This remark, although probably a joke, emphasises the importance of death in the story. Death affects Margaret profoundly, gradually encouraging her independence; this allows Gaskell to analyse the character's deep emotions and focus on the social system's harshness in the deaths of Boucher and Bessy.
Book
Chapman & Hall (London) first published the novel in 1855 as two volumes of 25 and 27 chapters each. Chapman & Hall issued a second edition in 1855 due to the presence of two paragraphs from Volume II, Chapter xix in Volume II, Chapter xxii. To align the pagination, the second edition adds an extra paragraph in Volume II, Chapter xxiii. That year, Harper and Brothers published it in New York and Tauchnitz published the more-complete second edition in Leipzig as part of a Collection of English Writers. Many editions were published during Gaskell's lifetime.
The text of the book, particularly the ending, differs significantly from that of the serialised episodes. Gaskell included a brief preface saying that due to the restrictive magazine format, she could not develop the story as she wished: "Various short passages have been inserted, and several new chapters added". She tried to evade the limitations of a serialised novel by elaborating on events after the death of Mr. Hale and adding four chapters: the first and last chapters and two chapters on the visits by Mr. Bell to London and by Margaret and Mr. Bell to Helstone. This edition also adds chapter titles and epigraphs. The preface concludes with a quotation from the conclusion of John Lydgate's Middle-English fable, The Churl and the Bird (spelling modernised).
Loreau and Mrs. H. of Lespine, "with the authorisation of the Author", translated the novel into French using the first revised edition. It was published in Paris by Hachette in 1859, and reprinted at least twice: in 1860 as Marguerite Hale (Nord et Sud) and in 1865 as Nord et Sud.
Plot Nineteen-year-old Margaret Hale has lived for almost 10 years in London with her cousin Edith and her wealthy Aunt Shaw, but when Edith marries Captain Lennox, Margaret happily returns home to the southern village of Helstone. Margaret has refused an offer of marriage from the captain's brother Henry, an up-and-coming barrister. Her life is turned upside down when her father, the local pastor, leaves the Church of England and the rectory of Helstone as a matter of conscience; his intellectual honesty has made him a dissenter. At the suggestion of Mr. Bell, his old friend from Oxford, he settles with his wife and daughter in Milton-Northern (where Mr. Bell was born and owns property). The industrial town in Darkshire (a textile-producing region) manufactures cotton and is in the middle of the Industrial Revolution; masters and workers are clashing in the first organised strikes.
Margaret initially finds the bustling, smoky town of Milton harsh and strange, and she is upset by its poverty. Mr. Hale (in reduced financial circumstances) works as a tutor; one of his pupils is the wealthy and influential manufacturer John Thornton, master of Marlborough Mills. From the outset, Margaret and Thornton are at odds with each other; she sees him as coarse and unfeeling, and he sees her as haughty. He is attracted to her beauty and self-assurance, however, and she begins to admire how he has risen from poverty.
During the 18 months she spends in Milton, Margaret gradually learns to appreciate the city and its hard-working people, especially Nicholas Higgins (a union representative) and his daughter Bessy, whom she befriends. Bessy is ill with byssinosis from inhaling cotton dust, which eventually kills her.
A workers' strike ensues. An outraged mob of workers breaks into Thornton's compound, where he has his home and his factory, after he imports Irish workers as replacements. Thornton sends for soldiers, but before they arrive, Margaret begs him to talk to the mob to try to avoid bloodshed. When he appears to be in danger, Margaret rushes out and shields him; she is struck by a stone. The mob disperses, and Thornton carries the unconscious Margaret indoors.
Thornton proposes; Margaret declines, unprepared for his unexpected declaration of love and offended by assumptions that her action in front of the mob meant that she cares for him. Thornton's mother, wary of Margaret's haughty ways, is galled by Margaret's rejection of her son.
Margaret's brother Frederick (who lives in exile as he is wanted for his part in a naval mutiny) secretly visits their dying mother. Thornton sees Margaret and Frederick together and assumes that he is her lover. Leonards, Frederick's shipmate, later recognises Frederick at the train station. They argue; Frederick pushes Leonards away, and Leonards dies shortly afterwards. When the police question Margaret about the scuffle, she lies and says she was not present. Thornton knows that Margaret lied, but in his capacity as magistrate, declares the case closed to save her from possible perjury. Margaret is humbled by his deed on her behalf; she no longer merely looks down on Thornton as a hard master, but begins to recognise the depth of his character.
Higgins, at Margaret's behest, approaches Thornton for a job and eventually obtains one. Thornton and Higgins learn to appreciate and understand each other.
Mr. Hale visits his oldest friend, Mr Bell, in Oxford. He dies there, and Margaret returns to live in London with Aunt Shaw. She visits Helstone with Mr. Bell and asks him to tell Thornton about Frederick, but Mr Bell dies before he can do so. He leaves Margaret a legacy which includes Marlborough Mills and the Thornton house.
Thornton faces bankruptcy, due to market fluctuations and the strike. He learns the truth about Margaret's brother from Higgins and comes to London to settle his business affairs with Margaret, who is his new landlord. When Margaret offers to lend Thornton some of her money, he realises that her feelings towards him have changed, and he again proposes marriage. Since she has learned to love him, she accepts.
Characters Margaret Hale: The protagonist, she is proud and spirited and very fond of her parents (especially her father). She is 18 years old at the start of the story, before she returns to Helstone, and has been living mainly with her aunt (Mrs. Shaw) and her cousin Edith in London since she was nine years old. John Thornton: Owner of a local mill, a friend and student of Margaret's father and Margaret's love interest. Nicholas Higgins: An industrial worker whom Margaret befriends. He has two daughters, Bessy and Mary. Hannah Thornton: John Thornton's mother, who reveres her son and dislikes Margaret (especially after Margaret rejects his proposal). Fanny Thornton: John's younger sister. Bessy Higgins: Nicholas Higgins' daughter, who is fatally ill from working in the mills. Mary Higgins: Nicholas Higgins' youngest daughter. John Boucher: A worker and the father of six children, who has conflicted emotions during the strike. Richard Hale: Margaret's father, a dissenter who leaves his vicarage in Helstone to work as a private tutor in Milton. Maria Hale: Margaret's mother, from a respectable London family. At Milton she often complains that the air as too damp and "relaxing", and not good for her health. Dixon: Servant of the Hales, who served Maria Hale before her marriage and is devoted to her. Dixon disapproves of Richard Hale (who is socially inferior to Maria), and regards her mistress's marriage as her social downfall. Mr. Bell: Old friend of Richard Hale and godfather of Margaret. Mrs. Shaw: Margaret's aunt, Edith's mother, and Maria Hale's sister. The widow of General Shaw, she lives in Harley Street in London. Although she is well-off compared to Maria, she believes herself less fortunate since she did not marry for love. Edith: Margaret's pretty cousin, who is intellectually inferior to her, shallow, innocent, and spoiled like a child, but not malicious and sees Margaret as a beloved sister. She marries Captain Lennox early in the story.