Blog #1: Why Listen If You Can't Hear

The use of dialogue or other forms of multi-voiced discourse in North and South makes apparent one of the morals that Mrs. Gaskell is trying to hand down through her novel—explicitly, that being a master over industrial laborers does necessitate that one rule blindly over those lower in the social hierarchy, but rather that a respectful community should be formed between the classes. Throughout the novel, we see Thornton evolve in his understanding of the relationship between himself and his laborers. In “Masters and Men,” Thornton espouses his form of harsh governance over his workers, a “wise despotism” that will allow him to decide what is best for him and for those who work for him: “I will use my best discretion…to make wise laws and come to just decisions in the conduct of my business…I will neither be forced to give my reasons, nor flinch from what I have once declared to be my resolution. Let them turn out!” (120). Margaret pushes back against him in this exchange, reminding Mr. Thornton that, though there be no earthly rules requiring him to treat his employees kindly, there are religious responsibilities that mandate that he care for those who are beneath him (118). Because of Thornton’s admiration and respect for Margaret, he is willing to listen to her voice in this scene, and ultimately, inspired by her example, he befriends Mr. Higgins and experiences the benefits of a relationship between masters and men in which both sides actually listen to the other’s voices: “The advantages were mutual: we were both unconsciously and consciously teaching each other…Such intercourse is the very bread of life” (431-32). Rather than a single voice dictating what is right and wrong, Margaret (and Gaskell) proposes and Thornton comes to learn that there can be a healthy exchange of ideas between the rulers and the ruled.

While the article on “The Employer and Employed” in Northern Star takes the format of a conversation between Mr. Smith and Old Robin, it is obvious that Mr. Smith is merely a foil who gives Robin reason to speak his cause, and ultimately Smith is so easily drawn to Robin’s opinions that it seems that Smith really not need be present at all in the story (of course, one cannot really complain of a flatly drawn character in a propagandistic periodical article). It seems unlikely that Old Robin is going to take any nourishment from the “bread of life” that Thornton sees developing in his connection to Higgins and others among his men. Old Robin holds that “it’s not necessity—its [sic] avarice and love of gain” (14) and that “one would think that operatives live like princes, and that they held out for seventeen weeks for wages that the maisters couldn’t afford to give” (15). Old Robin could be speaking directly to Thornton’s reasons why he could not give into the demands of his men before the strike. And while Thornton is more willing to see the men on egalitarian terms by the end of the novel, this only changes the way he views the men, not the way he sees his business situation as a whole, so at the conclusion of the novel Thornton cannot say that his change in perspective will stop future strikes, but only “that they may render strikes not the bitter, venomous sources of hatred that they have hitherto been” (432). If we return to the quote from page 120, it looks as though Thornton would now let his workers know his reasons, but would still let the workers strike before changing his own mind. Gaskell’s novel may open up a space for dialogues between masters and men, but the question of how much this really matters remains if neither side can fully trust in what the other says in this conversation, and if neither side can be swayed from their opinion in spite of hearing other voices.