Changes: Cranford and North and South

Abstract

Cranford (1851–3) and North and South (1854–5) in many ways represent opposite poles of Gaskell’s achievement. Cranford is a humorous rendering of old-fashioned life in a small rural town: mainly set (there are a few minor inconsistencies in dating) in the 1830s, and glancing back over its characters’ histories as far as the 1780s, it re-creates a quiet and quaint way of genteel life that at first sight may appear static. The action of North and South is undated but evidently meant to be contemporary: it deals with the new industrial town Milton, with the new class groupings of industrial working class and capitalist manufacturer, with the topical issue of strikes. Milton is young, harsh and rapidly changing, its newness emphasised by being experienced through the consciousness of Margaret Hale, an unwilling emigrant from an older way of life. Yet for all the difference in pace, both works are concerned with social change. Life in Cranford is in fact subject to change: personal losses are often the focus of individual episodes, but the picture emerging from the narrative as a whole is of beneficial changes to the community. They differ from the changes in North and South mainly by coming about more gently and gradually.