Unity in Gaskell's North and South

1283 Words6 Pages
North and South is a novel defined by the resolution of binary conflicts: heroine Margaret Hale is presented with a number of divisions of sympathy, between industrialists and the working class, between conflicting views of Mr. Thornton, and even between her conflicting views of her own intelligence.1 In almost all cases, Margaret does not so much choose sides as acknowledge mutually dependent and beneficial relationships. The ending of the novel, in which a proposal to loan money to a newly benevolent Mr. Thornton manifests the confluence of her compassion and her business sense, binds these seemingly dichotomous elements together. However, it also addresses a change of values and reasoning that otherwise would be left hanging by the death of Mr. Hale. Mr. Hale’s decision to leave the church due to “painful, miserable doubts” (35)2 concerning church doctrine constitutes the one event in the novel in which a sympathetic character directly chooses to avoid discourse on a dichotomous relationship: unlike characters confronting issues of labor relations or personal integrity, he refuses to foster discussion or challenge authority figures on these unspecified religious issues. A key insight into Mr. Hale’s reasoning is found during his discussion with Margaret and Higgins, when he states that “your Union in itself would be beautiful, glorious, —it would be Christianity in itself—if it were but for an end which affected the good of all, instead of that of merely one class as opposed to another” (229). This statement directly mirrors the sentiment of Unitarian theology of the 19th century as primarily defined by 18th century scientist and philosopher Joseph Priestley, who famously described the Trinity as foremost of the corruptions of Christianity.3 Elizabeth Gaskell, whose husband and father were Unitarian Ministers, would no doubt have been familiar with Priestley’s
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