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63e Congrès de la SAES, 30 mai-1er juin 2024 : Frontières et déplacements

‘Yo’r a Stranger and a Foreigner’: Negotiating the Borders of Englishness in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South

‘Vous êtes pas d’ici, vous’: négocier les frontières de l’Anglicité dans Nord et Sud d’Elizabeth Gaskell
Jeanne Barangé

Résumés

Cet article interroge la pertinence du concept de frontière dans le roman d’Elizabeth Gaskell Nord et Sud qui invite dès son titre à une réflexion sur les divisions géographiques, sociales et culturelles et sur le rôle et la pertinence des frontières, qu’elles soient physiques ou imaginaires. À travers sa représentation dichotomique de l’Angleterre, le roman met en lumière un conflit culturel entre Nord et Sud, imagé par la tension grandissante entre John Thornton et Margaret Hale. Ce conflit a pour enjeu non seulement des questions économiques et sociales, mais aussi la définition de l’identité nationale anglaise et la prévalence de la version la plus authentique de l’Anglicité. À travers l’union de Margaret et John, la description des conséquences d’une compréhension partielle d’autrui et la mise en lumière des dangers liés à un localisme excessif, le roman trace un chemin vers l’unité nationale. La frontière imaginaire entre Nord et Sud est donc déplacée afin d’élargir la définition de l’Anglicité, pour inclure la couleur locale, sans effacer les spécificités culturelles. Gaskell propose une solution à cette tension entre unité nationale — la pierre angulaire de l’Anglicité — et idéaux régionaux apparemment contradictoires qui passe par la reconnaissance de la valeur de l’Autre, un Autre qui prend plusieurs visages dans Nord et Sud.

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  • 1 See for instance W.A. Craik’s Elizabeth Gaskell’s and the English Provincial Novel and Mary Hammond (...)
  • 2 See Susan Johnston’s chapter on North and South in Women and Domestic Experience in Victorian Polit (...)
  • 3 See Julia Sun-Joo Lee’s ‘The Return of the “Unnative:” The Transnational Politics of Elizabeth Gask (...)

1Although Charles Dickens, as Elizabeth Gaskell’s editor, was the one to impose the title North and South, disregarding Gaskell’s original preference for the eponymous title Margaret Hale, Gaskell is widely recognised as an author who has a strong sense of place. From the onset, the author firmly anchors the novel’s plot to the land, with a reference to cardinal points in the title. As a writer of social and industrial fiction, Gaskell’s England is not just the background of her plots, but the very subject of her writings. Previous scholars have indeed focused on the centrality of space and place in North and South, as highlighted, for instance, in Scholl, Morris and Gruver Moore’s recent Place and Progress in the Works of Elizabeth Gaskell, a volume which underlines how Gaskell’s works ‘are about the importance of place itself, and specifically, about the phenomenon of moving between places as a means to progress’ (2). The attachment to place which is manifest in North and South has also been studied through the prism of provincialism and industrialism, with a focus on Milton as representative of both the local and the urban space.1 Furthermore, the question of space is central to discussions on gender, and previous critics have emphasised the novel’s concern, and reassessment, of the separation between private and public spheres.2 These various approaches to space have revealed the underlying issue of borders in the novel, delineating different cultural spaces which are sometimes at odds. Previous scholars have addressed the notion of border in the study of these spaces, especially when discussing the mobile, even transnational, dimensions of the novel3 but the recurring presence of symbolic borders in North and South calls for more precise critical attention.

  • 4 See Veronica Hoyt’s doctoral thesis: One of Us: Constructions of Englishness in the Writing of Eliz (...)

2Indeed, the coordinating conjunction ‘and’ in the title immediately invites the reader to consider ideas of geographical, social, and cultural borders, be they physical or imaginary. Through its dichotomous representation of England, the novel brings to light a cultural ‘battle’ between North and South, which puts forth not only economic and social concerns, but also the definition of national identity. Yet, little attention has been given to the link between place and the construction of national identity in the novel.4 In North and South the focus on the land is indeed also a focus on its people: the novel celebrates community, with its forty mentions of the word ‘England’, indicating a conspicuous concern for national definition.

3This paper focuses on the notion of Englishness, that is to say, in Paul Langford’s words, ‘those distinctive aspects of national life which have struck either outsiders or insiders or both as characteristic’ (2) of the English nation. I follow Benedict Anderson’s view that the nation is an ‘imagined community’ and a product of modernity. I therefore align myself with constructivist scholars of nationalism, who contend that national identity is the recognition of a commonality between people which did not fundamentally exist before being recognised as such. I agree with the generally accepted view among constructivists that political elites have played a significant role in the construction of national identity and its diffusion, in response to contemporary social and economic needs. However, as I focus on the role of Elizabeth Gaskell, as a female writer, in the construction of English national identity, this paper assumes a ‘bottom-up’ approach, where it investigates the process of definition, representation, and identification to Englishness, as initiated by a part of the population who did not belong to the political elite.

  • 5 Original quote: ‘Un peuple, c’est une population, plus des contours et des conteurs’.

4Borders, whether material or immaterial, always bear meaning. They signal difference with those who stand outside, but they also signal identity—understood here in its original meaning of ‘sameness’—functioning as mirrors and reflecting a commonality between insiders. In Edward Said’s words, ‘no identity can ever exist by itself and without an array of opposites, negatives, oppositions’ (52). The idea of borders is therefore intrinsic and essential to identity—to call a thing is also to call what it is not. Accordingly, one cannot contribute to a conversation about Englishness without speaking about borders—the two are closely intertwined. As defined by Régis Debray, ‘a people is a population plus contours and storytellers’ (63, my translation).5 I will show that North and South is indeed very much concerned with the contours of Englishness, and the cultural unification of the English nation.

  • 6 For more about nations as social constructions, see Anne-Marie Thiesse’s La Création des Identités (...)

5As emphasised by Andrew Abbott, the tracing of borders precedes the meaning assigned to them: ‘Boundaries come first, then entities’ (860). The constructivist idea that nations started existing when they became recognised as such follows the same logic. Naming, in itself, is an act of bordering, and the existence of nations does not precede their naming. In that sense, Englishness only exists because its borders have first been traced artificially.6 The question of borders which is omnipresent in North and South is therefore the question of Englishness itself—defining its borders as a concept is defining its meaning and essential characteristics, and by extension, defining who fits with these characteristics. In the novel, the confrontations between northern and southern ethos force each side to ‘name’ their Englishness, resulting in depictions of English national identity which initially appear to be mutually exclusive. The novel thus problematises the tension that stems from opposing perceptions of the borders of Englishness, giving way to contradictory versions of the same national identity. North and South indeed rather begins as North or South.

6I will first delve into the novel’s representation of England as a land of borders, whose stability relies on a structure of inner binary oppositions. The second part will deal with Gaskell’s destabilisation of regional borders through a depiction of the tension they produce regarding the definition of English national identity. In the final part, I will look at the author’s response to this inner national tension, and her suggestion that Englishness may be found within nuance and plurality, rejecting the pseudo-stability given by artificial borders which only weaken England’s cultural unity.

England, Land of Borders

7In North and South, the borders of England are not only what separates it from the rest of the world, but what structures it from the inside. Through the use of borders, Elizabeth Gaskell depicts England as a country of binaries, on several levels: the novel reveals the borders between rich and poor, old wealth and new wealth, men and women, country and city, northern and southern culture. England is represented as the land of borders, and the geographical border between the North and the South comes to symbolise all others. When Margaret, who grew up in the south of England, first gets to look at the northern cityscape, this is how she describes it:

Heston itself was one long straggling street, running parallel to the seashore. It had a character of its own, as different from the little bathing-places in the south of England as they again from those of the continent. To use a Scotch word, everything looked more ‘purpose-like’. The country carts had more iron, and less wood and leather about the horse-gear . . . . In such towns in the south of England, Margaret had seen the shopmen, when not employed in their business, lounging a little at their doors, enjoying the fresh air, and the look up and down the street. Here, if they had any leisure from customers, they made themselves business in the shop—even, Margaret fancied, to the unnecessary unrolling and re-rolling of ribbons. (68)

8The North is here presented in the first sentence as running parallel to the seashore—it is already so close to the coastal border that it is almost foreign. Margaret’s perception of the ‘character’ of the place confirms this idea: as mentioned in the second sentence, to her, the North is as different from the south of England as it is from other European countries—going there implies crossing a border as wide as the Channel. In fact, in order to describe the North, she feels obligated to use ‘a Scotch word’, implying that the North cannot be described in her own language, as if another, foreign language was needed altogether. In the next few sentences, Margaret proceeds to compare the ways of the North and the South by describing elements of the cityscape which symbolise the deep cultural difference she feels. The North is ‘purpose-like’, busy and active, but uselessly so, as shopmen keep busy by ‘the unnecessary unrolling and re-rolling of ribbons’. In fact, Northerners even ‘make themselves business’, suggesting that their taste and preoccupation with the latter is their defining feature. Even textures are different: the North is characterised by ‘iron’, an allusion to the dominating industries and numerous factories in the North, as opposed to the agricultural South. Iron also denotes a harshness and coldness which is in striking comparison with the South’s more flexible and traditional material, ‘wood and leather’, which appear less threatening and nobler. North and South are indeed not just opposed in their geographies, but also in their economies, their atmospheres, and their cultures.

  • 7 Original quote: ‘Tout individu est très précisément situé dans l’espace. Il appartient à une e (...)

9Because of these numerous oppositions, the North feels like a foreign land to Margaret. This is confirmed by the words of Nicholas, the factory-worker from the North of England who becomes her friend. In the course of the novel, he calls her a ‘foreigner’ three times, suggesting that the relationship between them is felt as a transnational interaction. As Joël Bonnemaison and Luc Cambrézy highlight regarding modern conceptions of space: ‘Any individual is very precisely situated in space. They belong to one entity and not another, they are located in a closed space, a polygon delineated by borders. They are either inside or outside and, almost despite themselves, inscribed in a binary classification of the world’ (8, my translation).7 It is telling that Bonnemaison and Cambrézy’s statement, which was written in relation to borders between different countries, applies to Gaskell’s representation of England. The idea of a binary classification between inside and outside, and the sense of ‘belonging’ which derives from such a binary is indeed very relevant to the regional dynamics described by Gaskell. The division between the North and the South therefore reveals an inner conflict between two regions whose cultural identities are so conflictual that they are akin to two different nations, separated by a border.

10The description of Margaret’s first encounter with the North underlines mostly geographical and cultural differences, but these are not the only borders which Gaskell uses to characterise England. In the following passage, Margaret reflects on her actions after she intervened in the fight between Thornton and his workers in the aftermath of the strike. Fearing an escalation of violence, with the workers determined to stone Thornton, and the soldiers on their way to arrest the labourers, Margaret had wrapped her arms around Thornton to shield him from the stones.

‘. . . It was not fair,’ said she vehemently, ‘that he should stand there—sheltered, awaiting the soldiers, who might catch those poor maddened creatures as in a trap—without an effort on his part, to bring them to reason. And it was worse than unfair for them to set on him as they threatened. I would do it again, let who will say what they like of me. If I saved one blow, one cruel, angry action that might otherwise have been committed, I did a woman’s work. Let them insult my maiden pride as they will—I walk pure before God!’ (236)

11This passage encompasses two other types of division within English society. The first is the one Margaret emphasises when she speaks of unfairness: that between the factory owners, and the workers, reflecting the profound social divisions of Victorian society. The punctuation is helpful to encapsulate the division Margaret represents: Thornton is ‘there—sheltered’, and the soldiers are about to ‘catch those poor maddened creatures as in a trap—’. The first dash is a reminder of Thornton’s social privileges, embodying his physical, grammatical, and symbolic separation from the angry crowd. The second is an image of the ‘trap’ mentioned by Margaret: it stands as a grammatical obstacle, representing Margaret’s perception of the workers with their backs against the wall, set up for their own arrest.

12The second division which this passage exemplifies is that of gender. By shielding Thornton, Margaret transgresses traditional gender roles in two different ways. First, it compromises her ‘maiden pride’, since her behaviour unintentionally suggests an attachment between herself and Thornton, leading him to propose to protect her reputation. Second, her intervention reverses gender roles: she is the one coming to Thornton’s rescue and displaying bravery, a behaviour traditionally associated with masculinity. She goes even further by calling her actions, in hindsight, ‘a woman’s work’, clearly contradicting the standards of her time regarding the definition of feminine behaviour. Margaret is indeed neither passive, nor submissive, as would have been expected of a woman in such a situation. The fact her behaviour is commented on and perceived, even by herself, as an irregularity—if not as a transgression—reveals better still the existence of the gender consensus of her time, highlighting another form of division which characterised England in the 19th century.

13As such, England is well and truly depicted by Gaskell as a land of borders on different levels, be they geographical, cultural, social, or gender-related. The differences between North and South embody and reaffirm this idea by giving substance to the dual nature of Englishness. Although the North and the South come to represent two different versions of Englishness, neither of them escape stereotyping.

14Most of the issues previously mentioned, such as that of social divisions or gender, concern England in its entirety, and Gaskell does not seek to locate geographically the source of the issues she comments on, nor does she side with either conception of Englishness. The novel however uses these various divisions to present a reflection on the dangers of fixed conceptions of identity. As I expand on in my second part, Gaskell represents the existence of this double-identity within England as a potential threat to national unity if the two sides do not make room for one another.

Destabilising the Border, Safeguarding Englishness

  • 8 Original quote: ‘La frontière permet de sauvegarder l’exception d’un lieu et à travers lui la singu (...)

15The title of my second part may seem somewhat paradoxical: borders are necessary to identity-building, as the marker of difference between oneself and others. In Debray’s words, ‘the border makes it possible to safeguard the exceptionality of a place and, through it, the singularity of a people’ (33, my translation).8 As previously established, the very idea of Englishness relies on the idea of separation with the foreign. In that sense, the border should not be an obstacle to national unity. However, throughout the novel, Gaskell shows how a symbolic, geographical border may effectively weaken English national identity by transforming Englishness into something of a two-headed creature. After clearly establishing the existence of stereotypical representations of northern and southern England, Gaskell immediately destabilises them by revealing their idealistic and simplistic nature. She does so first and foremost by emphasising the subjectivity of Margaret’s perspective, thereby encouraging the reader to maintain a critical point of view on her representations. Early on in the novel, Margaret describes her home town in the South to Henry Lennox in the following words:

‘There is the church and a few houses near it on the green—cottages, rather—with roses growing all over them’.
‘And flowering all the year round, especially at Christmas—make your picture complete’, said he.
‘No’, replied Margaret, somewhat annoyed, ‘I am not making a picture. I am trying to describe Helstone as it really is. You should not have said that’.
‘I am penitent’, he answered. ‘Only it really sounded like a village in a tale rather than in real life’.
‘And so it is’, replied Margaret, eagerly. ‘. . . Helstone is like a village in a poem—in one of Tennyson’s poems. But I won’t try and describe it any more. You would only laugh at me if I told you what I think of it—what it really is’. (10)

16The subtle shift in the final sentence—from ‘what I think of it’ to ‘what it really is’—is telling of the importance of subjectivity and emotion in the representation of England, and by extension English national identity. Margaret goes from the expression of what she thinks, a personal evaluation, to a statement of authority and pseudo-objectivity, leaving no room for disagreement. The description of Helstone is here reminiscent of traditional, romantic representations of pre-industrialised England, which is confirmed by the allusion to Tennyson, a poet often remembered for his romantic celebrations of a green, unaltered England. Helstone symbolises Margaret’s perception of Englishness, a perception which seems to originate from a combination of her personal attachment to the place and her past readings, emphasising the importance of literature in the shaping of national identity. Here, Margaret refuses to undermine her representation of the hamlet by any admission of the place of subjectivity in the matter, which is why she immediately corrects herself. The fact her representation of Helstone immediately reminds Henry of ‘a village in a tale’ confirms the novel’s destabilisation of all fixed and restrictive representations of England. Gaskell therefore demonstrates that borders are, in themselves, representations, just like the identities they contribute to delineate also rely on representations.

17A mirroring scene appears later in the novel, in which it is this time Thornton’s representation of the North which is questioned, following the same pattern. In this passage, Thornton expresses his pride in the ingenuity of northern men to Mr Hale:

‘And this imagination of power, this practical realisation of a gigantic thought, came out of one man’s brain in our good town. . . . And I’ll be bound to say, we have many among us who . . . could spring into the breach and carry on the war which compels, and shall compel, all material power to yield to science’.
‘Your boast reminds me of the old lines—
“I’ve a hundred captains in England”, he said,
“As good as ever was he”’. . . . 
‘It is no boast of mine’, replied Mr. Thornton; ‘it is plain matter-of-fact. I won’t deny that I am proud of belonging to a town—or perhaps I should rather say a district—the necessities of which give birth to such grandeur of conception’. (97-98)

18Just as Margaret’s representation of Helstone is comparable to ‘a village in one of Tennyson’s poems’, Thornton’s description of the North also appeals to fiction. Mr Hale here reacts to Thornton’s account by alluding to ‘The Ballad of Chevy Chace’, a story about a hunting party of Englishmen on the Anglo-Scottish border which celebrates the bravery of northern men. As Thornton mentions the yielding of material power in the face of Man’s industrious genius, his pride in the North takes on a national dimension and becomes a pride in England, whose power, according to him, comes from northern industries. Mr Hale interprets this as a ‘boast’, but just as Margaret had described her own representation of the South as ‘what it really is’, Thornton similarly replies that ‘it is no boast of [his], it is plain matter-of-fact’.

19Gaskell therefore brings to light existing stereotypes about both regions, emphasising the role of fixed representations in the construction of identities, in that they stabilise something intrinsically elusive. However, Gaskell also simultaneously undermines their efficiency in the quest for national unity, by emphasising the hermetic dimension of both discourses, especially during the numerous scenes of conflict between Margaret and Thornton. Mutual understanding remains impossible as long as both parties mean to circumscribe Englishness to their side of England, effectively excluding one half of the country from the definition.

20This process of border-tracing is in itself deconstructed by Gaskell’s insistence on the role of imagination in the creation of borders. Each side of the country is imagined, often collectively, before the characters get to know and understand the place through their own experiences of the place. In several passages during which they describe their perceptions of the opposite side and its people, the author emphasises the central role of these imagined conceptions. When she begins her travel northwards, Margaret ‘fancie[s]’ (68) the unnecessary toil of northern tradesmen, a fancy which derives from ‘almost a detestation for all she had ever heard of the North of England’ (44, my emphasis). The North is already a tangible place in Margaret’s mind through hearsay. Similarly, when Mrs Thornton warns her son not to ‘get caught by a penniless girl’—in reference to Margaret—she relates this warning to her imagined conception of the South: ‘Miss Hale comes out of the aristocratic counties, where, if all tales be true, rich husbands are reckoned prizes’ (93, my emphasis). The border therefore emerges from the character’s minds before any empirical experience of the place occurs. Furthermore, the author often pairs these acknowledgements of imagined spaces with expressions of emotional intensity. Margaret is ‘roused by the aspersion on her beloved South to a fond vehemence of defence, that brought the colour into her cheeks and the angry tears into her eyes’ (98), a description which emphasises the link between imagination and emotion, and the combination of the two becomes a thorough obstacle to mutual understanding. The country is thus divided by emotional and intellectual constructions, rather than by any sort of tangible geographical reality, which reveals that the border belongs to the realm of imagination before anything else. By depicting the overindulgence in a localism based on imagination and emotion, Gaskell destabilises the legitimacy of this cultural border between North and South in order to find a more stable definition of Englishness.

Englishness: Bridging North and South

21Although Gaskell articulates the difficulty to find a united sense of Englishness in a country symbolically divided in two, the novel does not reject the possibility of finding cultural identity altogether. In the first part of the novel, Gaskell represents the North and the South as typified ideals of Englishness, and the characters’ attachment to these ideals are what keeps them apart. She stages a movement towards national unity by having the protagonists cross the border, quite literally, in order for each of them to revise their exclusive positions. The novel suggests that there might be hope for a united sense of Englishness through both confrontation and connection. These are presented as the means to achieve mutual acceptance—and perhaps even celebration—of the plurality of identities contained within Englishness.

22The border between North and South is progressively overcome through confrontation between the two: in the words of Kathleen Anderson and Kelsey Satalino, ‘Gaskell suggests that the honest revelation of one’s bias is the essential starting point for personal enlightenment, social reconciliation, and by extension, stronger community’ (109). After numerous and seemingly unfruitful debates between Thornton and Margaret regarding the attitude to adopt with the working class, it is Margaret, during the strike, who convinces Thornton to go speak with the strikers ‘as if they were human beings’ (219). Through her recurring questioning of his opinions, Thornton progressively comes to consider his workers differently, his own bias revealed to himself and others in the process. The fact Thornton is increasingly influenced by Margaret’s views indicates that the border he perceived between northern and southern ethos has progressively faded, the author thus demonstrating the value of confrontation in the quest for national unity.

23Similarly, Nicholas abruptly confronts Margaret when she expresses her intention to visit him for charity. As habitual for a woman of her social background at the time, Margaret believes her role towards the poor must be that of a philanthropist. Nicholas is however offended by her offer, taking it as a sign that she considers him not as an individual, but just as a member of the lower class for whom she must do her duty. He replies: ‘I’m none so fond of having strange folk in my house’ (88), thereby placing himself on an equal footing with her and showing her that as the host, he should be the one extending the invitation, and he would be the one doing her a favour, not the opposite. Margaret quickly realises her mistake and Nicholas then invites her himself, the confrontation contributing to her evolution as a character in recognising that her behaviour towards the working-class is as biased as that of the manufacturers she criticises.

24In fact, by the end of the novel, Margaret actually hopes for such confrontation with Thornton as she perceives it as a stepping stone towards reconciliation: ‘I wish I were a man, that I could go and force him to express his disapprobation, and tell him honestly that I knew I deserved it. It seems hard to lose him as a friend just when I had begun to feel his value’ (384). The last words of this quote are quite telling of the novel’s stance: confrontation is a necessary means to reconnect North and South, which does not erase the border, but transforms it into a porous space of exchange. Gaskell thus suggests that the only pathway towards community is to feel the Other’s value and recognise them as a fellow citizen.

25The author however shows that confrontation is, by itself, not enough. Margaret also has to connect with Northerners in order to understand their local attachments, sympathise with the problems they encounter, and be faced with the reality that her perception of the South relied mostly on her social privileges. When she first discusses the condition of the poor with Thornton, this is how she describes them: ‘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 injustice which I see here’ (98). This passage suggests that Margaret feels it is easier to be poor in the south, than in the North. However, when Nicholas shares his intention to move southward, she contradicts her previous statement and actually advises him against it:

‘I owe it to you—since it’s my way of talking that has set you off on this idea—to put it all clear before you. You would not bear the dulness of the life; you don’t know what it is; it would eat you away like rust. Those that have lived there all their lives, are used to soaking in the stagnant waters. They labour on from day to day, in the great solitude of steaming fields—never speaking or lifting up their poor, bent, downcast heads. The hard spadework robs their brain of life; the sameness of their toil deadens their imagination; . . . they go home brutishly tired, poor creatures! caring for nothing but food and rest’. (381)

26Margaret’s description here connotes solitude, exhaustion, the absence of intellectual life, and misery—a much more nuanced representation of her beloved South. The result of her connection with Northerners is thus a more comprehensive idea of England altogether. As efficiently summarised by Nicholas: ‘God help ’em! North an’ South have each getten their own troubles’. (382)

27At the end of the novel, Thornton travels to see Margaret’s childhood home. Mirroring Margaret’s move to the North—which almost resembles an initiation rite—, Thornton’s trip southward symbolises his willingness to cross the imaginary border dividing England and truly experience the South, rather than simply ‘fancy’ it. The location of the final scene confirms all the symbolic weight of places in the novel—during the proposal scene, Margaret and Thornton meet in London, halfway between each other’s homes, symbolising the final reconciliation between North and South, and the hope for a united England. London also represents a place of neutrality, where nuance and pluralism are possible because the Englishness of the capital city is stable enough to sustain it. The novel’s conclusion emphasises the idea that regional identities do not impede the construction of national identity, as both can exist simultaneously. Commenting on the nature of English culture during the 19th century, John Fowles writes: ‘The fact that every Victorian had two minds is the one piece of equipment we must always take with us on our travels back to the nineteenth century’ (319). Fowles here emphasises what he perceives as a typicality of Victorian identity: duality. This idea is also explored by Gaskell in North and South through the depiction of opposite ideals and values presented as a series of binaries. Yet, Gaskell argues that these dual aspects of 19th-century society all constitute Victorian culture. A strong attachment to regional identity, then, does not preclude an attachment to national identity, as long as Englishness is conceived as a multi-faceted concept. Contradictory ideals and values may then coexist within an individual or a community without destabilising their sense of identity. In that sense, duality may be considered not as an obstacle to the construction of Englishness, but as one of its defining characteristics.

28To conclude, Gaskell’s approach is an invitation to consider the ‘and’ in the title no longer as a border between different regions but as a bridge. The novel means to displace the border between North and South, so as to include all of England within its bounds. Through this process, the author enlarges the definition of Englishness, allowing for the inclusion and celebration of local colour. The resolution offered by the novel seems somewhat idealistic but the striving for an ideal of reconciliation is representative of the Victorian concern with national definition, especially in the context of a rapidly changing society, and the confrontation with other national identities across the Empire. In Gaskell’s version of Englishness the North and the South of England stand as two sides of the same coin, and the novel celebrates their complementarity. In this sense, duality becomes fully integrated into Englishness, turning what appeared as a potential threat into a stable component of the ‘English character’.

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Bibliographie

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Notes

1 See for instance W.A. Craik’s Elizabeth Gaskell’s and the English Provincial Novel and Mary Hammond’sWayward Orphans and Lonesome Places: The Regional Reception of Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton and North and South’, for a focus on provincialism. For more on North and South as an ‘industrial novel, see Catherine Gallagher's The Industrial Reformation of English Fiction and Josephine M. Guy's The Victorian Social-Problem Novel.

2 See Susan Johnston’s chapter on North and South in Women and Domestic Experience in Victorian Political Fiction, and Barbara Leah Harman’s chapter on North and South in The Feminine Political Novel in Victorian England.

3 See Julia Sun-Joo Lee’s ‘The Return of the “Unnative:” The Transnational Politics of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South’, Abigail Dennis’s ‘Mobile Narrative, Spatial Mediation, and Gaskell’s Urban Rustics in North and South’ and Lindsay Wilhelm’s ‘“Looking South:” Envisioning the European South in North and South’.

4 See Veronica Hoyt’s doctoral thesis: One of Us: Constructions of Englishness in the Writing of Elizabeth Gaskell.

5 Original quote: ‘Un peuple, c’est une population, plus des contours et des conteurs’.

6 For more about nations as social constructions, see Anne-Marie Thiesse’s La Création des Identités Nationales, Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities, or Ernest Gellner’s Nations and Nationalism.

7 Original quote: ‘Tout individu est très précisément situé dans l’espace. Il appartient à une entité et pas à une autre, repéré dans un espace clos, un polygone fermé par des frontières. Il est dedans ou dehors et presque malgré lui, inscrit dans une classification binaire du monde’.

8 Original quote: ‘La frontière permet de sauvegarder l’exception d’un lieu et à travers lui la singularité d’un peuple’.

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Jeanne Barangé, « ‘Yo’r a Stranger and a Foreigner’: Negotiating the Borders of Englishness in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South »Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens [En ligne], 101 Printemps | 2025, mis en ligne le 08 avril 2025, consulté le 14 juin 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/cve/16136 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/13qt9

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Jeanne Barangé

Jeanne Barangé is a fourth-year PhD student of British literature at Bordeaux Montaigne University. Her thesis is supervised by Professor Nathalie Jaëck and focuses on the notion of Englishness, more particularly the construction and representation of English national identity in the works of female writers of the 19th century—Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot.
Jeanne Barangé est agrégée d’anglais et doctorante contractuelle en quatrième année à l’Université Bordeaux Montaigne. Sa thèse, dirigée par Nathalie Jaëck, porte sur la notion d’Englishness et la construction du sentiment national dans les œuvres d’autrices du XIXe siècle : Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Elizabeth Gaskell et George Eliot.

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