Elizabeth Gaskell and Industrialization Essay Example for Free

Elizabeth Gaskell and Industrialization EssayTwo of Elizabeth Gaskells unexampleds northwesterly and randomness and bloody shame Bartonprovide a critical insight into the authors attempt at probing the issues surrounding industrialization in Victorian England. Apart from the fact that both novels feature womanly characters as protagonists, they as well highlight the stratumic struggle betwixt rich and poor classes in the panorama of an emerging industrial society. Without losing track of the flow of the stories plots, Gaskell is able to incorporate the vital aspects of industrialization. In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell writes virtually the struggles of the urban working class in industrial England, specifically in its northern regions, during the 19th hundred in contrast to the lifestyles of those who live in the wealthier south. Because the story is shown from the perspective of the heroine, Marg art Hale, Gaskell is able to display the other facial expression of the stereotypes attributed to wo workforce during the 19th century. For the most part, women at that time were barely able to face their psycheal circumstances and treat them on their own.Margaret Hale, however, defies the notion that women largely depend on men just to live. She initially resists that belief by rejecting romantic proposalsa move that shows how she is in control of her lifeand displays it at its highest when she throws her arms around basin Thornton in an effort to protect him from the angry mob. The latter indicates that it is not always women who seek the protection of men because women can also protect men even at the expense of such women.As sap 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 tenderness attributed to females (Stoneman, p. 86). Margarets willingness to protect Thornton does not exclusively imbibe the thought that women are tender and should not be harmed. It also presents the idea that womenespecially those who are considered outsiders to industrial areas such as Miltoncan also learn to sympathize with the people who are working under poverty.The incident in the story where the workers were in a strike against Thornton, the local loaf 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 exploration 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 in the midst of classes on an analogy between marriage and class cooperation (Elliott, p.25). The posture of the outsider, Margaret, in the industrial town m akes it possible for the marriage between the classes to commence. Margaret became no less than a person who paved the way for the better understanding between the rich and poor divide although her presence merely 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 Mary 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 meet a fallen woman. Like Margaret Hale in North and South, the story revolves around the life and struggles of Mary Barton in Victorian England. posterior Barton, Marys father, is a millworker who lost most of the members of his family except Mary. integrity interesting part of the story is when John shot Henry Carson, the son of a rich mill owner.Being someone who deeply questions the wealth d isparities between rich and poorlargely because he was moderate at many a Trades Union meeting a friend of delegates, someone who was ambitious of being 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 trustworthy nature 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 soci al class.Susan Morgan writes that the criterion of likelihood is an inappropriate approach to Gaskells work (Morgan, p. 44). For example, it may have well been unlikely in Manchester for dealings 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 enough 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 person 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 agent of Time. Pacific Coast Philology 18. 1 /2 (1983) 43-51. Stoneman, Patsy. Elizabeth Gaskell. Bloomington Indiana University Press, 1987.