480 Gaskell, Elizabeth
needs of those around you in society, for whom a
person of some authority or means may have or can
accept increased responsibility.
Gaskell reviews “authority” and its uses at every
level of society to tackle the increasingly compli-
cated question of “law and order” in her time and
culture, a relevant question for us today as well. As
the upward mobility of social groups was growing
and the basic foundations of a strict society began to
undergo rapid change during the Industrial Revolu-
tion, Gaskell is thinking about the implications for
the betterment of community and of all people so
that they will be treated fairly under the law and
daily practices of the society. Throughout North and
South she asks her readers to do the same.
Anthony Grasso
pride in North and south
As in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, characters
in North and South suffer from and create problems
for others owing to extreme pride. Early in the
novel Margaret Hale, coming from modest means, is
contrasted with her cousin Edith Shaw, with whom
her parents have sent her to live so that she might
gain the social advantages of meeting well-to-do
young men. After Edith’s marriage to Captain Len-
nox, Margaret returns to rural Helstone and Henry
Lennox, the captain’s brother and a lawyer, proposes
to her. Her response—“I have never thought of you,
but as a friend—I am sure I could never think of
you as anything else”—is abrupt and stings Lennox’s
pride. Lennox disappears from Helstone immedi-
ately, leaving the Hale family in a quandary as to his
abrupt departure.
With the family’s removal to Milton-Northern,
Margaret meets John Thornton, the new mill owner
whose mother is fiercely proud and overly protective
of her son who has single-handedly brought the
family back from financial ruin. Their pride comes
from fierce determination and hard work, but the
struggle to be regarded well in society’s eyes comes
at a cost: Both are stern and suspicious of others’
intentions. As he was leaving for his lesson at the
Hales’ house, Mrs. Thornton says to John “Take care
you don’t get caught by a penniless girl, John.”
Pride that comes from the attempt to “cover”
perceived economic or social wants and setbacks
leads to mistaken judgments of others’ actions and
motives. When John eventually proposes to Mar-
garet, smitten as he is with her difference in back-
ground and demeanor, as well as her fiery spirit, she
rejects him even more strongly than she had done to
Henry Lennox, saying “Your way of speaking shocks
me. It is blasphemous.” She’d disagreed with him on
matters of political economy about the responsibili-
ties of mill owners toward workers.
Major misunderstanding comes when Margaret
is caught at the Thorntons’ during a riot, since a
strike is on at the mills. She has gone to the house
to borrow a water bed, offered by Mrs. Thornton
for her ailing mother to use. John Thornton has
brought in Irish workers to keep his mill going, and
has housed them on the premises. When the strik-
ing laborers hear about it and congregate outside,
Margaret urges him to go down to talk with them,
then runs outside herself, eventually taking a stone
to the head thrown by a rabble-rouser, which was
meant for Thornton. While being cared for in the
Thornton household, she hears servant gossip indi-
cating that she had “thrown herself ” at him. Con-
cern over her own reputation and behavior prevents
Margaret from seeing that the normally stoic John
has been so affected by her strength, forwardness,
and independence, that he drops his normal fierce-
ness of demeanor to reveal his true heart. Her abrupt
dismissal is more a defensive maneuver out of pride,
yet causes greater pain to him than she had meant
or even understood.
Margaret also is the recipient of similar treat-
ment at the hands of the Higgins family, fiercely
proud workers whom she encounters on a walk.
Set in her southern ways Margaret assumes, as the
minister’s daughter and the economic superior of
the workers, that she can “call” on them anytime
for a visit as she did in the rural parish at Helstone.
When she asks where they live and what their
names are, Nicholas responds: “Whatter yo’ asking
for?” Higgins is defensive of having his “betters” visit
his home, not wanting to be dependent on anyone’s
charity.
Interestingly, Higgins the “uneducated” laborer
provides the key to overcoming natural pride and
shattering the accepted boundaries of social class.
When he assumes financial responsibility for a