Explication de texte North and South Elizabeth Gaskell

« Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South, 1855 The industrial revolution was one of the biggest cataclysms in European history.

Between 1790 and 1850, the countryside of England rapidly depopulated.

Huge masses of people ooded into cities for factory work, living cheek-by-jowl in unhygienic slums.

In Britain, the government could barely keep up with the spirit of laissez-faire capitalism.

There were almost no restrictions on child labour, working hours, or safety in the workplace. And, if progressive legislation was proposed, newly emboldened capitalists often resisted it as an imposition on their freedom – and their pro ts.

The social disruption caused by industrialisation was a nightmare for many poor and working-class people but an immense opportunity for novelists.

The stories of their inhabitants, lurid with poverty and related social ills (such as child death, disease, and alcoholism), were begging to be told.

Many authors rmly believed in the novel’s power to raise consciousness and foster political change by documenting these unsightly realities. And this is particularly true of Elizabeth Gaskell, author of the novel North And South. Born in London, Elizabeth Gaskell was a middle-class English novelist whose works offered an overview of the Victorian era, a period characterized by the impact of the consequences of the Industrial Revolution, which brought about massive socio-economic change in 19th-century English society. North and South is Elizabeth Gaskell's fourth novel and second in the "industrial" genre. Published in 1855, it had previously appeared in twenty weekly installments in Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words. In North and South, Gaskell explores the daily life of an industrial town and the con icts between workers and manufacturers. This work takes up the codes of Victorian literature: the old-fashioned charm of the English countryside, the hushed atmosphere of good society and the British phlegm so characteristic of the characters of these authors. The heroine is Margaret Hale, daughter of a rural Southern clergyman who leaves the Church of England for reasons of conscience and takes his wife and daughter to the industrial town of Milton in Darkshire, based purely on the city of Manchester, where she is offered a job as a private tutor.

Beautiful, intelligent and cultured, but also proud and reserved, Margaret is horri ed to discover the harsh, brutal world of the Industrial Revolution, where bosses and workers clash in the rst organized strikes. In our passage, we have a meeting between Mrs.

Thornton, mother of one of the city's leading manufacturers, John Thornon, and Mr.

Hale with Margaret. The sequence opens with the arrival of Mrs.

Thornton, and then begins a discussion between the 3 characters that will continue throughout the passage.

The discussion revolves mainly around John Thorton and working-class labor. This is followed by a debate on what workers can and cannot afford to do. Our extract ends with an embarrassing moment with a jealous mother, overprotective of her son. fi fl fl fi fl fi fi Through this excerpt from the novel, we'll see that it's interesting to ask ourselves, How this passage from Elizabeth Gaskell's industrial novel North and South depicts socio-economic differences, as well as the in uence of the Victorian era, in the way the characters behave. TRANSITION : The Victorian era is very much present in Elizabeth Gaskell's work, but also throughout our passage, whether through subtle or obvious details, we recognize this imprint. Not least through the character of Mrs.

Thornton, who responds to the codes of this historical era. I- Mrs Thornton, a women from the North of England, a woman who responds to Victorian codes A.

An Idle woman - Mrs Thornton, strong and powerful Woman, very arrogant and proud, personi es strong and spirit of females in the Victorian era. We can see this in several details, right from the start of our reading in line 1.

Indeed, Hannah, as she is known, arrives in the scene wearing a "handsome black silk ».

His appearance, described in the opening lines of the text, underlines the Victorian period in which we nd ourselves.

One of the characteristics of this period is darkness. - Hannah is seen as a woman of character, sure of her choices and convinced.

She's not afraid to disagree with Mr.

Hale about his leisure, especially "classic literature ». - His lines usually start with a negative, illustrating his tough character. TRANSITION :Through the character of Hannah, Elizabeth Gaskell conveys this "tough" image of women in the context in which she lives, depicting a reality through the singular feminine characteristics of the time.

But the author wishes to present this woman from another angle, a relatively detestable one, but one that ts her character well.

It's the role of the overprotective mother. B.

An overbearing mother - The text gives us an uneasy feeling when reading Hannah's lines.

Indeed, each of her sentences is underlined by the presence of her son: John.

Her rst line begins with "My son" on line 10, showing that her son belongs to her by placing possessive articles.

She also wants to show in this same passage that she knows him perfectly, and that he's still connected to her, as evidenced by the triple use of the rst person singular between lines 10 and 12.

We also nd this turn of phrase at the end of our extract when she says "this wonderful son of mine ». - This mother likes to have control over her son, especially when it comes to his leisure fi fi fi fi activities.

She likes to give her opinion, as shown by her use of the word groups "my judgement", line 16, and "my opinion", line 19.

Her son is omnipresent in her thoughts, but she never fails to mention herself when she talks about him. fi fi.... »