At a time when England was experiencing tremendous growth and change, Elizabeth Gaskell began her first novel, North and South, highlighting the condition of industrial England. Staggering poverty coupled with immense prosperity offered a duality unmatched by any other time period in England’s economic history. “The whole assemblage of buildings is commonly called Manchester, and contains about four hundred thousand inhabitants, rather more than less” (Broadview 58). Manchester, England, presented the stark contrast between middle and lower classes, as men became not only masters, but masters of men. A natural division between masters and men prevailed and problems began to occur within the class system – “the working people’s quarters are sharply separated from the sections of the city reserved for the middle class; or if this does not succeed, they are concealed with the cloak of charity” (59). As can be expected, upheaval and unrest in the form of strikes and riots became the mainstay, and the people of England were left scratching their heads about how to appropriately deal with the working/lower-class problem. Elizabeth Gaskell lived in Manchester, the heart of the manufacturing district where the majority of strikes were occurring, and it is known that “North and South was her explicit contribution to the discussion of strikes and labor disputes” (Elliot 28). By openly declaring her “sympathy with the working classes, (Gaskell) felt a moral responsibility to alleviate the negative side effects of industrial capitalism and to promote class harmony” (29). If North and South was created to act as Gaskell’s explicit contribution to right the wrongs between classes and to alleviate side effects of capitalism, so too can it be... ... middle of paper ... ...nature. Thornton's love for Margaret Hale induces him to become a better, more affectionate employer, ever more conscious of his social responsibility to his workers. Margaret Hale is associated with the good life as it relates to the principles of truth, justice, and altruism, and she comes to possess a greater degree of individuality. She enters Milton as an independent and autonomous woman and aptly demonstrates the value of women’s mediation between the classes. The relationship of Margaret and Thornton shows that familiarity with the other’s language leads to understanding, which leads to affection and cooperation. In the end, she is able to join her young self with the older and wiser woman she has become through observing and analyzing the behavior of her acquaintances, to form the type of woman needed to successfully face the changes occurring in society.
The book The Classic Slum: Salford Life in the First Quarter of the Century by Robert Roberts gives an honest account of a village in Manchester in the first 25 years of the 20th century. The title is a reference to a description used by Friedrich Engels to describe the area in his book Conditions of the Working Class. The University of Manchester Press first published Roberts' book in the year 1971. The more recent publication by Penguin Books contains 254 pages, including the appendices. The author gives a firsthand description of the extreme poverty that gripped the area in which he grew up. His unique perspective allows him to accurately describe the self-imposed caste system, the causes and effects of widespread poverty, and the impact of World War I as someone who is truly a member of a proletarian family. His main contention is that prior to the War, the working class inhabiting the industrial slums in England "lay outside the mainstream of that society and possessed within their own ranks a system of social stratification that enclosed them in their own provincial social world and gave them little hope of going beyond it. " After the War, the working class found new economic prosperity and a better way of life, never returning to the lifestyle prevalent prior to the War.
Because Frances Anne Kemble was an actress and dramatist, she was unlikely to be involved with events surrounding the well-being of social classes. (Doc. 4). Since Kemble wrote her account of her journey to Manchester as a dramatist, it asserts that her ideas were merely based on what she personally believed opposed to the truth. (Doc. 4). When Tocqueville uses the phrase “nothing to the directing power of society,” he is affirming the imbalance of Manchester’s industries and exhibits his neutral beliefs through his equitable tone. (Doc. 5). The neutral issues of the industrial expansion of Manchester are manifested on the idea between the mutual quarrels over the concerns. The sources contained a mutual bias regarding the affects of industrialization on the city of Manchester.
Margaret is an intelligent, articulate, and ambitious woman who desires to rise up in social status by marrying a man of higher social rank. She attends to those above her, in hopes of elevating her status as she becomes closer to the upper-class. As a minor character, she plays a small yet crucial role in advancing Don John’s plot to slander Hero and spoil her wedding. As a lower-class character, Margaret serves as a foil to the rich girls, particularly Hero, who embodies every attitude and mindset Margaret does not. But she also offers an alternative perspective on the upper-class characters in the play. Because Margaret is victimized because of her social ambitions, punished for wanting to rise above her ...
Contrastingly, Mrs. Darling, his wife, is portrayed as a romantic, maternal character. She is a “lovely lady”, who had many suitors yet was “won” by Mr. Darling, who got to her first. However, she is a multifaceted character because her mind is described “like the tiny boxes, one within the other, that come from the puzzling East”, suggesting that she is, to some extent, an enigma to the other characters, especially Mr. Darling. As well as this, she exemplifies the characteristics of a “perfect mother”. She puts everything in order, including her children’s minds, which is a metaphor for the morals and ethics that she instils in them. Although ...
Child obesity became a very serious issue that is taking on the health of the nation 's children. It is everyone responsibility to work on preventing and reducing childhood obesity, from the parents who are suppose to care about their children’s health, to the public health representatives, who should care about a future healthy nation, and everyone in between. Every part of society should create a set of lifestyle changes in order to save our kids from obesity. There are many aspects, which have to be changed or improved, including parent’s nutrition education, children’s physical activity and kid’s nutrition in a school and home, food industry and etc.
He walks into the corporation building, and is greeted by a few of his colleagues, also heading to their cubicle. The man groans at his workload then glances around, seeing his supervisor frowning at him. “Oh boy, this isn’t good.” He thinks to himself as the supervisor walks into his boss’ office for the third time this week. His boss walks out a couple minutes later, and heads straight to the man’s cubicle. “Kevin, this is the third time in just this week that you haven’t been following the company’s procedures. Why won’t you just accept your job and do it like everyone else? I once had your job, and look at me! I’m now one of the head honchos of this place. So please stop disobeying, and you might get somewhere, and not fired.” Social class is a problem today, and it was just as big a problem as in the time of Jane Eyre. In Charlotte Brontë’s novel, Jane Eyre, the protagonist deals with the issues of social class during her childhood, her first employment, her time at Moor house and Morton, and when she is reunited with Rochester.
Margaret Hale in Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel North and South exemplifies the new type of woman a mid-nineteenth century woman should emulate. The contemporary woman is capable of balancing being a dutiful, generous, just woman while also satisfying her own passion, intellect, and moral activity. England needs women that can manifest their innate ability to sympathize with a capacity to change and adapt. The progressive world will require the modern woman to redefine the norms of social life.
Through attention to detail, repeated comparison, shifting tone, and dialogue that gives the characters an opportunity to voice their feelings, Elizabeth Gaskell creates a divide between the poor working class and the rich higher class in Mary Barton. Gaskell places emphasis on the differences that separate both classes by describing the lavish, comfortable, and extravagant life that the wealthy enjoy and compares it to the impoverished and miserable life that the poor have to survive through. Though Gaskell displays the inequality that is present between both social classes, she also shows that there are similarities between them. The tone and diction change halfway through the novel to highlight the factors that unify the poor and rich. In the beginning of the story John Barton exclaims that, “The rich know nothing of the trials of the poor…” (11), showing that besides the amount of material possessions that one owns, what divides the two social classes is ability to feel and experience hardship. John Barton views those of the upper class as cold individuals incapable of experiencing pain and sorrow. Gaskell, however proves Barton wrong and demonstrates that though there are various differences that divide the two social classes, they are unified through their ability to feel emotions and to go through times of hardship. Gaskell’s novel reveals the problematic tension between the two social classes, but also offers a solution to this problem in the form of communication, which would allow both sides to speak of their concerns and worries as well as eliminate misunderstandings.
England in the nineteen-thirties was a very bleak and dark time for the working class and unemployed citizens. In The Road to Wigan Pier, George Orwell, describes the overlooked injustices that happened in in Northern British industrial towns. Orwell depicts his experiences and views on social class and English society. The book is an eye-opener to the challenging hardships that many of the working class gentry faced during the years of the depression; Things such as, horrible housing, social injustices, and a lack of consideration from the government. The primary focus of part one, was to inform the middle class people that the unemployed were victims or a corrupt society, government, and economy.
The fictional story of North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell is an engaging story of realism, pastoral dialect and family drama. The protagonist of the story, Margaret Hale is very well educated. She begins her life in South England, in a hamlet called Helstone. She is uprooted by her father, a pastor who by conscience feels he can no longer serve the church of England, to the industrial Northern town of Milton. Margaret’s first impression of the town is negative but over time she learns to empathise with a man named John Thornton, an owner of one of the main factories in Milton. Conflict arises when the two main characters share two different ideals, Thornton thinks he has the right to pay his employees whatever wage he chooses. Whereas Margaret believes the he is morally obligated to pay as
Elizabeth Gaskell was the most established female figure in Victorian British Literature. By the time she blossomed into a literary career, she was thirty-eight years old. Most of her novels centered on the plight of the working people in England struggling to survive and dealing with the social stigma of class and wealth. Even though she received harsh criticism from critics for having sympathy for the poor, it didn’t deter her from a successful writing career, nor deny her talent as a writer. In her last work Wives and Daughters; Gaskell implements her satire writing style to examine social issues in England. In August of 1864, Cornhill Magazine published her first novel called, Wives and Daughters.
The character Nicholas Higgins is an example of a positive working class person during the industrial revolution. Nicholas Higgins is a strong believer that unlike the people from the north, the southerners are a “pack of spiritless, down-trodden men” (Gaskell 133). The possibility of bettering himself unlike the people from the south who don’t know when they are being “put upon” gives him a sense of strength (Gaskell 133) Nicholas takes pride in the fact that he is able to stand up for the things he believes in through striking. The old class system and its beliefs aren’t followed during the industrial revolution. When Margaret Hale attempts to “come and call upon” Nicholas Higgins’s house, he is at first confused and then allows her to visit as a friend (Gaskell 73). Nicholas’s dislike for people from the south is ignored for Margaret Hale and believes that “north and south has both met and made kind o’ friends in the big smokey place”. (Gaskell 73). The angry mob ruins the strike orchestrated by the union and Nicholas Higgins. The strike and angry mob that occurs in the novel is disastrous for Nicholas Higgins and he is unable to get his job back, instead of giving up he tries everything he can for a different job. Higgins believes that he is “sick o’ Milton” and “Milton is sick o’ [him]” when he is unable to find another job and is also looking after John Bouchers eight children. (Gaskell 306) In the beginning, Nicholas Higgins doesn’t have much respect for the factory owners but his respect for the master’s changes through his eventual friendship with John Thornton. Nicholas Higgins’s friendship with John Thornton led him to work “over-hours [one] night, unknown to anyone, to get a neglected piece of work done” because of the problems Thornton was going through (Gaskell 421).
The struggle is real in today’s society and social determinants are the issue. Social determinants and childhood obesity they are also related to political aspects as well. There are key indicators that help explain the areas that could evolve into issues in childhood obesity. The key indicators will also help address issues and give answers to solutions among this healthcare issue. Reaching out to people is one of the best ways to promote awareness in childhood obesity.
In conclusion, “the Road to Wigan Pier” has helped tackle unemployment and poverty rates in Northern England. This report has shown George Orwell political arguments and his rich detailed description of working class lives in 1930s which has helped readers today to understand, and also imagine how Northern England was in the 1930s. In addition, the book allows George Orwell to express his thoughts on the left book club and socialism. Overall, George Orwell created an honest picture of how life was for working class individuals living in Northern England in 1930s.
Childhood obesity is one of the most serious problems in the 21st century. A lot of scientists are studying this problem, as obesity among the children has grown tremendously in the last thirty years. Why is it starting to be a problem? Why are health departments all over the world sounding the alarm? Why is this problem becoming to be global and affecting many low-and middle-income countries, especially urban areas? Recently, forty-two million overweight children were counted all over the world. Nearly thirty-one million of these children are living in developing countries. Should we be concerned about this problem? Definitely, yes, as this problem can cause a world epidemic that can affect and hurt many people’s lives.