Abstract
This essay examines the struggles between the class and territory divisions within England, through Elizabeth Gaskell's novel, "North and South". Gaskell explores this theme through the characterization of the hero and heroine. The author includes ample discussion of symbolism and quotes from the novel.

From the Paper
"Throughout Elizabeth Gaskell's Victorian novel, North and South, the struggle between the class and territory divisions within England is explored with characters that do not develop in large flashes of knowledge, but change and grow slowly over time. This more natural and almost imperceptible transformation occurs as the two main characters learn from their mistakes and mature slowly through their experiences. The heroine of the novel, Margaret Hale, and the hero, Mr. Thornton, learn to appreciate the differences between the Northern and Southern ways of life, and to break down class barriers."

Tags:characterization, class, England, literature, struggle, study, Victorian

Abstract
This study will analyze Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Mary Barton as a portrait of English society during the Industrial Revolution. The study will focus on the significance of the author's descriptions of the social classes, focusing on the members of the working class and their relationship with their employers, the changes which Mary and John Barton undergo as a result of their socioeconomic struggle, and the author's apparent suggested solutions to the injustices of her day, which will be shown to be woefully inadequate and idealistic.

From the Paper
"This study will analyze Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Mary Barton as a portrait of English society during the Industrial Revolution. The study will focus on the significance of the author's descriptions of the social classes, focusing on the members of the working class?and their relationship with their employers, the changes which Mary and John Barton undergo as a result of their socioeconomic struggle, and the author's apparent suggested solutions to the injustices of her day, which will be shown to be woefully inadequate and idealistic.

The heart of the book is the choice the protagonist, Mary Barton, must make between a rich man and a working class man. Of course, that message immediately introduces the restrictions under which women lived in the early Victorian 1840s in Manchester, England, where the story takes place. Rather than ..."

Abstract
This paper discusses how the authors Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell present charity in the Victorian era. In addition to the traditional examples of the wealthy helping the poor, several cases where the poor assist each other can be found in these novels. The contrasting results of these attempts at aid demonstrate the author's opinions of the class structure in the Victorian era.

From the Paper
"The impact of the generosity of the poor towards each other is apparent in Bleak House. Esther and Ada are visited by the overpoweringly charitable Mrs. Pardiggle, who takes them along on her rounds. She walks through the poor neighborhood with a "great show of moral determination" (Dickens 118) and stops first at the home of a brick maker. While her intentions are admirable in trying to help this family, her actual impact is minimal. It is apparent that her only aim at their house is to impress upon them her tirelessness. She emphasizes to everyone she encounters that "I enjoy hard work; and the harder you make mine, the better I like it" (Dickens 121). Her labor is to check in on the poor and frown upon their behaviors, encouraging them to seek her religion, literacy, and ethics. While she means well, advocating that the family seek better living conditions, she overlooks the simplest charity of all; helping the "poor gasping baby by the fire" (Dickens 118), whom she ignores throughout her visit. Ada and Esther are attuned to the languishing child's state, and see it die in its mother's arms just after Mrs. Pardiggle bustles out of the house."

Tags:charity, charles, dickens, elizabeth, era, gaskell, giving, literature, poor, rich, victorian

Abstract
This paper examines how in "North and South", a novel set in England during the late 1840s when the country was experiencing a massive population shift where people left the farms to go work in factories, Victorian author Elizabeth Gaskell uses the symbolism of "railroad time" or universal time, to introduce her readers to some of these changes--in actuality, societal upheavals--that were brought about by humanity's transition from an agrarian-based society to an industrial-biased society. The paper looks at how Gaskell's reference to "railroad time," especially when the reference is juxtaposed with Margaret's life at Helstone, illustrates the impersonal efficiency of an industrial culture based on a clock rather than a calendar.

From the Paper
"Gaskell's "railroad time" refers to more than just train schedules arranged for the public's convenience. Rather, "railroad time" refers to the way our society has changed from following a natural calendar based on the universe's time to following a clock set to an artificially biased universal time. The difference between the two is enormous. The universe's time cannot be sped up or slowed down. This allows for life to follow a certain rhythm. Universal time, however, is set by humanity, and it can be arbitrarily changed to speed up--forcing us to perform at hectic levels unimaginable to our ancestors from two centuries ago. Gaskell saw the beginning of what has become our nanosecond culture of impersonal efficiency where we have ordered our lives around machines. And while conditions for the wage laborers have improved in the industrialized countries since Gaskell's time, we as a people seemed to have lost something in our inherent human nature when the announced time of the sunset is a novelty."

Tags:Helstone, Margaret, Greenwich

Abstract
During the nineteenth century, especially toward its conclusion, women were beginning to break out from their usual molds, and perceptive authors used that fact to create some outstanding dramas and novels. Thomas Hardy was one, having written "Tess of the D'Urbervilles" and Elizabeth Gaskell wrote "Ruth". There are many ways to look at these two novels; however, one interesting link makes them worth investigating. The paper shows that this link is the presence and the absence of a mother figure that might have changed the denouement of both women - a happy, peaceful conclusion for Ruth in her passing, and a tragic one for Tess, hounded by men seeking revenge for her stabbing of her seducer.

From the Paper
"Hardy, a male in the Victorian age where sex was all done behind closed doors and shuttered windows, as if it never existed at all, took umbrage at the mores of men and women whose lives would be shattered by revelations of premarital sex. Ruth had no mother to comfort her during her distress, having been forcibly removed from Mr. Bellingham. There was no mother to run to when it was time for the baby to be born. And yet, near the end of "Tess", when she might have needed her mother more than a bland Alec, her mother was distant, and not at all communicative with those who wanted information about Tess' whereabouts."

Tags:Bellingham, industrial, revolution, alec

Abstract
This paper investigates the treatment of prostitution in nineteenth-century literature, in particular Elizabeth Gaskell's "Mary Barton", Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" and Emile Zola's "Nana". By closely examining literature from England and France, authored by male and female writers, it attempts to display how cultural differences and gender implications may have an influence on the chosen novelists' treatment of the subject. Areas of interest include: the historical context of nineteenth-century prostitution; the authors' portrayal of prostitution; the response of other characters toward the prostitute and the importance of death as the final outcome.

From the Paper
"The subject of prostitution has had a long-standing fascination for novelists, artists, and historians alike. The idea of a woman using her body as a paid profession has forever caused a great deal of controversy, especially during the nineteenth century, when women were not supposed to display or act upon their sexual desires. It has often been said that during the nineteenth century, prostitution was becoming an increasing problem, although many facts and figures differ from one another considerably, so it would be unhelpful to quote them here. It is useful enough to consider that 'Victorians in the 1840s and 1850s thought that both prostitution and venereal disease were increasing'. "

Tags:death, disease, female, sexuality, venereal

Abstract
This paper discusses how Elizabeth Gaskell reflects the difficulty of urban life for the working class of England in the 1830s through her book, "Mary Barton." It also examines how she reflects these hardships through her characters in the novel.

From the Paper
"While the characters of the novel depict the harsh reality related to the working class in Britain, Gaskell also describes the reality of poverty very vividly with the physical environment. One example of this can be seen when we read about the Davenport's home, where the "window-panes, many of them, were broken and stuffed with rags, which was reason enough for the dusky light that pervaded the place even at midday" (Chapter 6). In addition, the narrator tells us that the smell in their cellar "foetid" (Chapter 6) and within the dark place they saw, "three or four little children rolling on the damp, nay wet brick floor, through which the stagnant, filthy moisture of the street oozed up; the fire-place was empty and black; the wife sat on her husband's lair, and cried in the dark loneliness" (Chapter 6). This is a horrifying account of how people lived."

Tags:Alice, Wilson, trade, union

Abstract
This essay compares the novels of George Elliott, Elizabeth Gaskell and Benjamin Disraeli and their works, respectively: "Felix Holt", set in the coal mining areas of Loamshire, "Mary Barton", in the power looms of Manchester and "Sybil", the collieries and the metal-working foundries of Mowbray. The novels describe the deplorable conditions that existed for the workmen: malnourishment, often starvation, lower wages and death due to preventable and curable diseases.

From the Paper
"From the perspective of workers, the main characters in the novels are Felix Holt (Felix Holt), John Barton (Mary Barton) and Walter Gerard (Sybil). They are honest men, passionate about the rights of workers, and possessed of a charisma that lets others gravitate to them.

"They belong to trade unions and workers movements entrusted with the task of improving working conditions and increasing worker wages. In all three novels, workers seek redress by taking their grievances to the Members of Parliament in London. Each time however, their delegations, met with stonewalling and apathy, return "empty-handed." These frustrations are the forerunners to the riots."

Tags:industrial, revolution, working, trade, union, class, conditions

Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to introduce and discuss two novels as they relate to each other, "Persuasion," by Jane Austen, and "North and South" by Elizabeth Gaskell. Specifically, it discusses the romance between Anne and Captain Wentworth from "Persuasion", and how it relates to the romance between Margaret and Mr. Thornton from "North and South".

From the Paper
""North and South" was written almost fifty years after "Persuasion," and it is interesting to see how the two heroines have many similarities, and yet are very different women. Margaret and Mr. Thornton are also older, but Margaret is from the upper class she learns to move through different classes, and identify with workers and their problems, along with the problems of their managers and mill owners. "I don't mind ironing, or any kind of work, for you and papa. I am myself a born lady through it all, even though it comes to scouring a floor, or washing dishes" (Gaskell 116)."

Tags:naval, captain, Bath, Louisa, unionists

Abstract
This paper argues that in her novel, "Mary Barton", Elizabeth Gaskell is trying to offer knowledge as a solution in reducing class tensions and in giving the rich and the poor a better understanding of each other. The paper uses female characters and their roles in the public domain as a medium for demonstrating this.

From the Paper
"City life in the 19th century ushered in a difficult and conflicted era for women. Torn between the necessity of remaining in the domestic sphere for the sake of the maintenance of a comfortable family life for all, and the new, frequently arising necessity of entering the public sphere, women of lower classes became obligated to undertake the double burden of balancing traditional roles and roles in the workplace and other public venues. Staying home and entering the public domain both offered many consequences, and left women's practical options unclear, and also created an ever-greater rift between their ways of life, and those of wealthier women, who typically remained entirely in the domestic sphere. Elizabeth Gaskell's 1848 novel, Mary Barton, displays the intricacies of a variety of female lives, rich and poor, public and private, under extremely trying and class-dividing circumstances, those of the Industrial Revolution. Gaskell tends to represent women as actively engaging in public urban life out of necessity rather than out of any personal desire to do so, and she uses the idea of balance as an important issue which also relates to class tensions. Mary Barton's message to women is that they must cautiously advance into the public domain, but not neglect the ill effects and the dangers of such a move, and rather be aware of the positive and negative aspects of life in the private and public spheres. This awareness of both sides of an issue is additionally reflected in Gaskell's compromise-centered views on class tensions and reconciliation, which is to do what one must for one's own station in life, but to remain aware of the effects on others of different classes, and to find a balanced "happy medium" in one's actions."

Tags:industrial, 1848, Esther, Jane, Wilson, Carson