Elizabeth Gaskell and Industrialization Essay

Two of Elizabeth Gaskells fablesNorth and southwesterly and bloody shame Bartonprovide a critical insight into the authors attempt at probing the issues border industrialization in puritanical England. Apart from the concomitant that both novels feature female characters as protagonists, they in addition highlight the parliamentary lawic struggle amidst rich and poor classes in the face of an emerging industrial society. Without losing track of the flow of the stories plots, Gaskell is adequate to(p) to turn back the vital aspects of industrialization.In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell writes well-nigh the struggles of the urban working class in industrial England, specifically in its northern regions, during the 19th century in contrast to the lifestyles of those who live in the wealthier south. Because the story is shown from the perspective of the heroine, Margaret Hale, Gaskell is able to display the other side of the stereotypes attributed to women during the 19th century. For the most part, women at that fourth dimension were barely able to face their personal stage settings and address them on their own.Margaret Hale, however, defies the notion that women mostly depend on men just to live. She initially resists that belief by rejecting romantic proposalsa move that shows how she is in bid of her lifeand displays it at its highest when she throws her arms around throne Thornton in an movement to protect him from the angry mob. The latter indicates that it is not always women who seek the resistance of men because women can also protect men even at the expense of such women.As Patsy Stoneman indicates in her book Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Hale confronts the fact that men of all classes are governed, in the public sphere, by a masculine code, a code that effectively prevents the characteristic of cutleryness attributed to females (Stoneman, p. 86). Margarets willingness to protect Thornton does not only imbibe the thought that women are tender and should not be harmed. It also presents the thinker that womenespecially those who are considered foreigners to industrial areas such as Miltoncan also learn to sympathize with the throng who are working under poverty.The incident in the story where the workers were in a strike against Thornton, the local mill owner, also underlines the idea that an outsider can relate to the woes and conditions of the workers more than those who are directly involved in the industrial system. Another interesting aspect of Gaskells thematic geographic expedition of industrialization in North and South is how she was able to reunite, in a manner of speaking, the classes considered as polar opposites. As Dorice Williams Elliott observes in her article the novel bases its case for womens mediation between classes on an analogy between marriage and class cooperation (Elliott, p.25). The presence of the outsider, Margaret, in the industrial town makes it manageable for the marriage be tween the classes to commence. Margaret became no less than a person who coat the way for the better understanding between the rich and poor single out although her presence alone did not entirely dissolve the prevalent disparity. Elliotts observation that Margarets mediation led to class cooperation simply reaffirms the idea that class cooperation in itself still presumes differences between social classes.In bloody shame Barton, the disparities between the rich and the poor classes take the shape of the story of a father who seeks to protect his daughter from becoming a fallen woman. handle Margaret Hale in North and South, the story revolves around the life and struggles of bloody shame Barton in Victorian England. John Barton, Marys father, is a millworker who befogged most of the members of his family except Mary. One interesting part of the story is when John shot Henry Carson, the son of a rich mill owner. existence someone who deeply questions the wealth disparities betw een rich and poorlargely because he was chairman at many a Trades Union meeting a friend of delegates, someone who was ambitious of be a delegate himself and a Chartist who was ready to do anything for his order (Gaskell, p. 25)Johns murder of Henry symbolizes how the members of the poor class sometimes grow desperate. The story is ingenious in the sense that it perfectly subsumes the issues surrounding industrialization in Victorian England into the tale of a womans quest for love.Mary Barton is a classic example of how Gaskell effectively writes about the problems caused by industrialization in Victorian England without losing sight of the storys plot. Despite the debates as to whether Gaskells novels genuinely reflect the true spirit of the Victorian English society during the onset of the industrial period, it should be reminded that what her novels do is to give a fictional account of the problems people face when dealing with people from another social class.Susan Morgan wr ites that the criterion of likelihood is an inappropriate attack to Gaskells work (Morgan, p. 44). For example, it may have well been unlikely in Manchester for relations between worker and employer to find solutions through individual friendships (Morgan, p. 44). whatever reasons there may be as to why Gaskell wrote as she did, it is lavish to note that North and South and Mary Barton capture the struggles of fictional characters in the face of industrialization.The novels may be fiction at best, yet the circumstance they suggeststhe epic divide between rich and poorremains as real today as it once was. Works Cited Elliott, Dorice Williams. The Female visitor and the Marriage of Classes in Gaskells North and South. Nineteenth-Century Literature 49. 1 (1994) 21-49. Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. Mary Barton. Ed. Shirley Foster. Oxford Oxford University Press, 2006. Morgan, Susan. Gaskells Heroines and the Power of Time. Pacific Coast Philology 18. 1/2 (1983) 43-51. Stoneman, Pat sy. Elizabeth Gaskell. Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1987.