Brought up in the small Cheshire town of Knutsford, later recreated as ‘Cranford’ in the short novel of that title, Elizabeth Stevenson married the Unitarian minister William Gaskell when she was in her early twenties and moved with him to the rapidly expanding industrial city of Manchester. Much of her fiction, most notably the aptly titled North and South, drew on her knowledge of the industrialized north of England and the cultural divide which separated it from the south. The heroine of North and South is Margaret Hale, transplanted from the idyllic surroundings of Helstone in the south to the grim, northern city of Milton-Northern (Manchester in all but name) when her father, a church minister, decides to move. There she finds herself drawn into the conflict between the workers, with whose plight she sympathizes, and the mill owners, as represented by the powerful personality of John Thornton. Matters are only complicated by Thornton’s growing feelings for Margaret and by her own dawning realization that, although she dislikes his attitude towards his workers and although she rejects his early proposal of marriage, she loves him. Mrs. Gaskell had already created a portrait of Manchester life and tackled themes of industrial strife and unrest in her first novel, Mary Barton. In later novels such as Sylvia’s Lovers and the posthumously published Wives and Daughters she produced plots which explored relationships complicated by misunderstandings and the clash between beliefs and desire. North and South works so successfully because it combines Elizabeth Gaskell’s social concerns and her wish to use fiction to draw attention to poverty and injustice with her interest in the personal trials and tribulations of her central characters. The novel is a triumph both as a social document and as a story of two people struggling to overcome their differences and acknowledge their love.

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