Studies in the Novel

Abstract:

In Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1855), male protagonist John Thornton, a supposed master of industry, is truly industry’s victimized object. Critics have covered the Victorian drive for noble self-sacrifice, particularly in female characters, but this article claims that Gaskell critiques a masochistic work ethic that arises out of the mixture of industrialism with Protestantism and produces a bourgeois masculinity so masochistic it is nearly suicidal. Gaskell’s novel unmasks this deceptively simple system of “self-denial,” which promises working men reciprocity for their deferred pleasure but fails to deliver. Denial of the body to perfect the soul is a system that works well enough for the rich, Gaskell shows, since the rich body is neither starving nor healthily reproductive. Self-denial, then, becomes a position of privilege rather than of self-improvement. Ultimately, Gaskell rejects the unfeeling masochism of this industrial code of masculinity in favor of the pains of love and vulnerability.