North and South 479and judgments made, and how ethical or moral are
they really? Questions are raised on all social and
religious fronts about how prejudice, custom, and
erroneous human judgments affect the interpreta-
tion of laws and the carriage of justice throughout
society.
Early in the novel we are faced with Mr. Hale’s
scrupulous examination of “The Thirty-Nine Arti-
cles” doctrine, stating tenets of faith to which all
followers in the Church of England must adhere.
When he has difficulty accepting some points of
church authority, recently reinterpreted, Mr. Hale
questions his own integrity and the justice of
continuing in the ministry. Conscious of the great
changes and possible hardships such a choice will
mean for his family, he concludes as a matter of
conscience that, since he can’t obey all the beliefs, he
cannot remain as a practicing minister. This decision
sets in motion the Hales’ move from Helstone in
the south of England to Milton-Northern, a large
industrial city in the north. While it may seem a
small matter by today’s standards, Mr. Hale’s prin-
ciple and adherence to the justice of earning a living
falsely leads him to sacrifice a livelihood no one
would have questioned.
Frederick, whom readers discover only when
Mrs. Hale becomes terminally ill, has been forced
to live in Spain owing to his role in a professed
mutiny aboard an English naval vessel on which
he had served. The captain, obviously unbalanced,
took beatings and punishments of the men and
boys aboard to awful degrees. When the pleading
of Frederick and other officers was not heard, they
arranged a boat and decided to remove the captain
with provisions, so as not to cause him harm but to
correct what was a horrible situation. For that action,
since the captain was eventually rescued, Frederick
would return to England under pain of death if
caught, because this action was treated as a “mutiny.”
Gaskell questions the justice of laws in the naval
code that clearly protect an incompetent leader who
continually abuses power, over those who seek to
redress the wrong and ensure the protection of lives
essential to the safety of the entire vessel and crew.
Frederick’s clandestine return to visit his dying
mother, precipitated by Margaret’s letter to him,
causes another crisis and issue. Needing to spirit
Fred out of the country after he spends some time
with his mother, Margaret is seen with him at night
at the railway station by John Thornton, whom
she had earlier rejected as a suitor, complicating
the social stigma. Fred is also recognized there by
a former acquaintance, Leonards; in the ensuing
struggle to escape and board the awaiting train, Fred
inadvertently causes the drunken Leonards to fall,
causing his ultimate death. Margaret, questioned
by the police as a witness in the hearing, must lie
to protect her brother’s life until she is certain that
he is safely out of England. Two issues emerge: (1)
the justice of the law that condemned Frederick for
doing what was right to protect younger men and
those under his care; and (2) the right of people to
judge Margaret to be a “loose” woman, which John
Thornton and his mother did, because she was seen
walking at night in public with a man who was
not her husband. Again, Gaskell questions how
our flawed and often prejudicial human judgment
affects the way in which laws are carried out, the role
of conscience, and the importance of civil disobedi-
ence in opposing unjust laws.
Throughout this interesting novel, Gaskell
examines how people live and how society’s institu-
tions function through a lens of justice, pointing out
how fragile even the law is, let alone the weight of
“tradition” that many social customs have accumu-
lated, owing to the limitations of human knowledge
and judgment. Ultimately, Gaskell promotes mutual
human respect and interaction between and among
all groups, rather than reliance upon hastily formed
judgments, to ensure the understanding of the other
as the way to realize the ideal of just treatment
for every member of the society. One key example
occurs after the strike. One of the main organizers,
Nicholas Higgins, who has two daughters to sup-
port, also assumes responsibility for a widow and
her five children, orphaned by their father who died
by his own hand, despairing of being able to support
his family. When no one will hire Higgins, because
of his union connections, Margaret encourages John
Thornton to overcome his lofty principles, to sac-
rifice “face” or honor, as Higgins himself had done
by waiting for five hours in the damp, cold weather
to ask Thornton for the job. There is real justice in
sacrificing abstract “principles” to help the pressing