Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. Ed. Angus Easson. Oxford UP 1973. Oxford World Classic, 1982.
North and South. By Elizabeth Gaskell. Adapt. Sandy Welch. Prod. Kate Bartlett. Dir. Brian Percival. Perf. Daniela Denby-Ashe, Richard Armitage, Sinead Cusack, Leslie Manville, and Tim Pigot-Smith. BBC. 2004. DVD.
A couple of weeks ago, I decided to re-watch the 2004 BBC adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South written by Sandy Welch and starring Daniela Denby-Ashe and Richard Armitage. I thoroughly enjoyed it but found myself just a little troubled by the mood and tone of the television version. Troubled is probably too strong a word to use. It was some years since I had last read the novel, and as I watched the televised version I found myself thinking there’s something here that doesn’t seem totally coherent with my memory of the book. Of course, any adaptation of a prose original is going to differ from its source, so the fact that the mini-series was shorter than the novel in terms of the time demanded to deliver the narrative did not bother me. I realised what concerned me was something about the tone of the adaptation, something about its sense of audience. As I thought about my mild unease, particularly with the last few scenes of the mini-series, I drew the somewhat blindingly obvious conclusion that the mini-series was designed to appeal to a contemporary television audience rather than to nineteenth century readers. However, Welch’s adaptation is subtle and sophisticated, so we don’t feel we are watching something from the Harlequin Channel even though in the screenplay the romance plot is foregrounded somewhat more and treated somewhat differently than in the novel, which I decided to reread.
In his introduction to the novel, Angus Easson discusses Gaskell’s own difficulties with writing for two different genres. He quotes Gaskell as she comments on how the pressures of writing the novel segments for a magazine resulted in a situation where “at last the story is huddled & hurried up” (Gaskell, qtd. Easson, x). The novel appeared first in serial form in Dickens’ Household Words, and even though Dickens had “encouraged . . . [her] to write the novel as a whole” (x) she was still pressured by the time constraints of writing for regular publication dates. In preparing the work for publication as a whole, Gaskell was able to add material, especially to the end of the novel; nevertheless, as Easson points out, the work does remain “somewhat huddled” at the end. Certainly, I found the last few chapters do rather gallop towards the conclusion. In some ways, Welch’s adaptation for television rather lessens this sense of haste in the conclusion.
Another reason for the apparent haste in the last few chapters may well have roots in Gaskell’s focus in the work. Yes, there is a traditional marriage plot that has to be brought to a conclusion; however, the main focus of North and South is social critique.
The novel is set in the mid nineteenth century primarily in Milton, a fictionalized Manchester, though it begins in the Hampshire village of Helston, where the Rector Mr. Hale has decided to renounce his living because he can no longer accept Anglican Doctrine as set out in The Book of Common Prayer1. He has arranged to become a private tutor in Milton. He leaves it to his daughter Margaret to break the news of the planned move to his wife. Margaret has recently returned to Helstone after living with her Aunt Mrs. Shaw and cousin Edith in London. Edith’s marriage to Captain Lennox and planned removal to Corfu with the Army results in Margaret’s return home to the devastating news of her father’s plans. In Milton, Margaret meets not only her father’s most important student John Thornton, owner of Marlborough Mill, but also Bessie Higgins a mill worker suffering from Cotton Lung, and Bessie’s father, Nicholas, a trades unionist.
In Milton, the Hales, especially mother and daughter, experience what we would today describe as extreme culture shock, though Margaret adapts better than her mother. The relationship between Thornton and Margaret Hale forms the basis of a traditional romantic plot that is resolved as we might expect. There are confrontations and misunderstandings along the way and a rather large number of significant deaths, but what is ultimately more interesting is Gaskell’s presentation of the cotton industry and of life in a mill town in the mid-nineteenth century. This was a life with which Gaskell was intimately acquainted, her husband being the Unitarian minister at the Cross Street Chapel in Manchester from 1828-1884.2
By the time of the novel, the Combinations Acts of the early century have been repealed and workers are allowed to form unions, though such organizations are not popular with employers. Thornton brings workers from Ireland to replace striking workers at his mill, and the availability of such “knobsticks” (we’d say scab or blackleg today) may well reflect the need of some Irish to leave their homes in the wake of the potato famine of the 1840s. Conditions in the mills are bad. Thornton, at least, has installed machinery that will remove the cotton dust from the air, but other owners have not. There is little consideration of workers’ health or safety and certainly no social safety net to protect the un or under-employed, to guarantee education for children, or to care for the sick or injured.
The novel appeared only twenty-two years after the passage of the 1832 Reform Bill that got rid of the rotten boroughs and considerably extended the franchise, but not to women, and is set very close to the time when Engels was writing The Condition of the Working Class in England though Engels’ work wasn’t published in English until 1885. The year 1848, only six years prior to the appearance of the first episode of North and South in Household Words, was in continental Europe a year of revolutions and in England the year of one of the great Chartist rallies. At a time when Britain was consolidating empire and Manchester was becoming the industrial heart of that empire, Gaskell draws our attention to the disparity and distrust between the labouring and owning classes and also to the distrust experienced between the professional and landed gentry classes and the entrepreneurial class that was driving the cotton industry.
Gaskell’s novel suggests that the solution to these social problems is greater understanding, communication, and compassion between employer and worker, but she doesn’t suggest much change to the actual social hierarchy. She does appear to criticize a lack of industry and commitment in anyone of whatever class. The highly social life of Margaret’s aunt and cousin Edith in London and on Corfu, their concern with dress and possessions, a concern shared by John Thornton’s sister Fanny, are presented as empty and frivolous. Furthermore, Gaskell suggests that individuals should be steered by a moral compass even if doing what they believe is right sets them at odds with those around them.
She also draws our attention to the situation of women. In some ways, the working class women are shown as having some level of equality with men given that they are able to find work in the mills and therefore earn their own money. The Hales find it difficult to find a maid to help their long-time housekeeper Dixon because women can earn more money in the mills than is offered by domestic service, and despite the harsh working conditions, mill workers are not expected to give the kind of subservience to the mill owners that Mrs. Hale expects from her domestic staff.
Only sixteen years after the publication of North and South, Britain passed its first act legitimizing Trade Unions. For anyone interested in the history of Labour Relations, this novel is highly thought provoking. It is all too easy for us today to assume that because things don’t appear as bad as they were a century and a half or so ago workers can automatically be assured that their work place will be safe and their labour appreciated and appropriately compensated. There are still sweat shops in the world; children still work. Industrial accidents still occur. Some jurisdictions do not guarantee sick pay for workers too ill to show up for work. Misunderstandings between people from different backgrounds still occur. And, of course, people still fall in love. North and South, therefore, remains a highly contemporary novel in its concerns and well worth a reader’s time.
1Priests and deacons in some members of the Anglican Communion are still required to accept the Thirty-Nine Articles and debate over their authority continues as it has since the sixteenth century. For more information, begin with Wikipedia and move on as your interest dictates. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty-nine_Articles, https://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-and-worship/worship-texts-and-resources/book-common-prayer/articles-religion
2You might be interested in the following link especially from paragraph 10 onwards since the article covers some of the background to North and South. http://cross-street-chapel.org.uk/2013/07/a-brief-history-of-cross-street-chapel/
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