Intelligence and Self-Awareness in North and South: A Matter of Sex and Class

Intelligence and Self-Awareness in North and South: A Matter ofSex and Class NANCY D. MANN North and South seems to me to be die most tiieoretically interesting of Elizabeth Gaskell's novels, because it concentrates on a crucial problem for the development of die novel in die nineteentii century, the relationship between abstract intelligence and self-awareness, and the ways in which diis relationship may be affected by factors of sex and class. Margaret Hale differs from other Victorian heroines in having what I may call "abstract" or "objective," as distinct from "personal" or "feminized" intelligence, and bodi writer and heroine violate traditional expectations by dealing widi matters of public interest as well as with what Ian Watt has called die sphere of "private experience." Other Victorian conventions, however, to which Mrs. Gaskell consciously adhered, make this externally-directed intelligence positively incompatible with an equally intelligent self-knowledge. By "objective" or "abstract" intelligence, I mean here die capacity for thinking abstracdy and distinterestedly about political, social, intellectual and religious matters. Margaret Hale is one of the few nineteendi -century heroines who are not only described, but shown as being vitally interested in public questions, and as having and expressing, in equal conversation with men, definite and respect-worthy opinions on these questions. Take, for instance, the first political argument between Margaret and Mr. Thornton. Margaret enters the conversation initially from motives which may be described as emotional and largely personal ; she is "roused by die aspersion on her beloved Soudi," and homeNancy D. Mann received her Ph.D. (1973) from Stanford. She now lives in Boulder, Colorado, where she is writing a book on Victorian fantasy. 24A MATTER OF SEX AND CLASS sickness makes her voice so unsteady as to prevent her from speaking more than a few sentences. But die speech itself shows a blending of social concern which is largely emotional in its orientation— I see men here going about in the streets who look ground down by some pinching sorrow or care—who are not only sufferers but haters. Now, in the South we have our poor, but there is not that terrible expression in their countenances of a sullen sense of injustíce which I see here.1 —with the beginnings of a dieoretical criticism of laissez-faire capitalism : "the gambling spirit of trade." Moreover, the conversation going on around her very shordy lifts her out of her homesick yearning, and involves her in a more general argument: "somehow she was compelled to listen; she could no longer abstract herself in her own thoughts" (p. 124). Her second contribution again has reference to human relationships , but it is now phrased with no reference to specific emotions nor even with any reference to personal observation of specific social groups: Margaret has begun to argue abstracdy about the relations between capital and labor, and her voice is "clear" and "cold." In die next political discussion Margaret takes a somewhat more active part. The argument centers on the question whedier die masters have a right to treat their workmen as children, by refusing to give reasons for their policies and generally exercising the "despotism" which Thornton claims "is the best kind of government for them." Margaret, of course, argues in favor of the "equality of friendship" and "mutual dependence." Masters and workmen, she claims, are obligated, because dieir welfares are interdependent, to a frank exchange of views and advice. The consistendy religious but entirely nonsectarian language which Gaskell makes Margaret use in this scene is one clue to die author's partial identification widi her character: there is no human law to prevent the employers from utterly wastíng or throwing away all their money, if they choose; but that there are 'Elizabeth Gaskell, North and South (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), pp. 122-3. All subsequent page references are to this edition. ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW25 passages in the Bible which would rather imply—to me, at least—that they neglected their duty as stewards if they did so . . . every man has had to stand in an unchrisdan and isolated positíon . . . God has made us so diat we must be mutually dependent, (pp. 165, 169) The other clue, of...