Post #2: Southern Sympathy and Industrial Love

Margaret, when rebuking Mr. Thornton’s offer of marriage, points out that putting herself between he and the angry workers assembled before his home was in no way a sign of any particular attachment to him. Rather, she asserts that “ ‘any woman, worthy of the name of woman, would come forward to shield, with her reverenced helplessness, a man in danger from the violence of numbers (195).” It was not love for him in particular, but rather sympathy with his situation, which Margaret offers as the motivation for her act. Seeing anyone else in that situation would have elicited the same response from her. In this way, Margaret would seem to validate what Audrey Jaffe contends about the presence of sympathy of in the Victorian novel, that it is accompanied by a spectacle, a visual scene in which a character, as well as the reader, is shown the suffering object of sympathy. “Victorian representations of sympathy,” Jaffe states, “are, as sympathy was for [Adam] Smith, specular, crucially involving the way capitalist social relations transform subjects into spectators of and objects for one another (8).” Margaret, witnessing the crowd of angry workers forming before Mr. Thornton, responds to this scene and not to Mr. Thornton in particular, displays the link between visual spectacle and sympathy which Jaffe articulates. Mr. Thornton seems sympathetic to Margaret because he is presented to her in a sympathetic scene as he stands before the crowd hurling anger at him. Margaret has sympathy for the spectacle, not love for Mr. Thornton.

Yet, this connection between spectacle and sympathy is severed as certain points in the novel, such as in Nicholas Higgins’ account of the interaction between union and non-union workers in the mills. According to Nicholas, “If a man doesn’t belong to th’ Union, them as works next looms has orders not to speak to him… try living a year or two among them as looks away if yo’ look at them; try working within two yards o’ crowds of men, who, yo’ know, have a grinding grudge at yo’ in their hearts- to whom if yo’ say yo’r glad, not an eye brightens, nor a lip moves, -to whom if your heart’s heavy, yo’ can never say nought… (232).” Among the workers, there exists a suspension of sympathy, an interruption of the kind of reaction which Margaret displayed when faced with sympathetic scene. It is clear that the workers still see the non-union members in their suffering, but the response to this spectacle of sympathy is withheld. The question, of course, is what makes this interruption possible?

The answer would seem to come from a surprising source: Mr. Thornton. After his proposal is rejected, Mr. Thornton resolves to bring a fruit basket to Margaret’s ailing mother. When he arrives, the text points out that “he never looked at her [Margaret]; and yet, the careful avoidance of his eyes betokened that in some way he knew exactly where, if they fell by chance, they would rest on her (239).” Margaret is known, but not seen. Most importantly, Mr. Thornton, in not looking at Margaret along with the rest of the family scene, separates her from the scene of sympathy built around Mrs. Hale’s suffering. Margaret is thus excluded from Mr. Thornton’s sympathy. Yet, this is not out of any hatred for Margaret; the novel takes pains to establish the fact that, even after his rejection, Mr. Thornton is in love with Margaret. It would seem that it is because of, not in spite of, this love that Mr. Thronton does not include Margaret in his sympathy.

It would seem to be love, then, that the novel is proposing as the way in which the scene of sympathy is held at bay. Strange as it may sound, love, it seems, is the force which allows the union members to withhold sympathy. When Nicholas says that “I take up John Boucher’s cause, as lives next door but one, wi’ a sickly wife, and eight childer, none on ‘em factory age,” one expects the common sympathetic story of a good man burdened with bad circumstances, yet he continues “and I don’t take up his cause only, though he’s a poor good-for-nought, as can only manage two looms at a time, but I take up th’ cause o’ justice (134).” The wording here is instructive; Nicholas qualifies his interest beyond Boucher with “though,” as if implying that it is Boucher’s personal faults, not his situation, that justifies his concern. Nicholas rejects Boucher’s scene of sympathy, opting to side with him even while acknowledging his flaws. In short, it is out of love.

This, I think, brings up an interesting distinction between Helstone and Milton. Much of both Mr. Hale’s and Margaret’s activity in Helstone, visiting the aged and infirm, centered on sympathy. In Milton, on the other hand, there seems to be more of an emphasis on love, such as the love which holds the union together. This is not to say that there is not love in Helstone, or that there is not sympathy in Milton, but rather that the principle governing social activity differs between the two.