Author(s): Sinasi AKTAS*
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, categorized as an industrial novel of the Victorian Age, reflects social conditions of the period like social injustices, class division, employer – employee relations and labor – capital issues depending upon the developments of the Industrial Revolution. While dealing with the issues of the period by using several opposites in content like ‘north and south’, ‘employer and employee’, ‘power and poverty’, the novel uses ‘marriage’ as an apparent theme in the narrative. What is more, mutual understanding and reconciliation between the sides, employers and employees, and apparently between the protagonists, Margaret Hale coming from the rural area and Mr. Thornton, the mill owner, are at the forefront as a theme in the novel. The novel uses ‘the hands’ metaphor between the employers and the working class representing reconciliation which is also a mark of Christianity. Moreover, this Christian virtue has overtones of Unitarianism in the process of negotiation, and the attitudes and thoughts of some characters.
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