Margaret Hale as a Walkeᝲ୫Margaret Hale as a Walker

ISHII Marieᛵǽ஖
本論はエリザベス・ギャスケルの『北と南』（1854）におけるヒロイン，
マーガレット・ヘイルの歩く行為が，彼女の肉体と精神に影響を与え，最終的に彼女が移りゆく時代を生き残る女性に変貌するのを後押ししていることを指摘する。親戚の家で青年期を過ごしたマーガレットは，その後両親とともに引越しや帰郷，慰安旅行など様々な理由でイギリス国内を旅する。歩くことが好きなマーガレットは悩みや不安を抱えたとき自然と外の世界に足を向ける。彼女の歩みは当初，楽しかった過去の時代を追い求め
るノスタルジックなものであるが，歩くことをきっかけに出会った人々は彼女を勇気づけ，やがてマーガレットはそれまで知らなかった労働者階級・新興中産階級の世界に新たに関わりを持つようになっていく。本論では作者ギャスケルが歩く行為を女性の精神的，肉体的自立を促す要素として捉えていたことを考察し，旅における女性の主体性を探る。自発的，あるいはやむを得ない彼女の歩きは，結果的に周囲の他の女性よりも彼女に広い活動領域を与え，時代の変化を目撃することを可能にしている。

キーワード：女性，移動性，歩き，慈善活動，コミュニケーション

Margaret Hale in North and South is a walker. Asked by Henry Lennox what she doesin her hometown, Helstone, she states: ‘walk, decidedly. We have no horse, not even forpapa. He walks to the very extremity of his parish. The walks are so beautiful, it would

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No. 46be a shame to drive―almost a shame to ride’ (14). According to Mathieson, ‘walking
experienced a resurgence in popularity, and a positive cultural shift in the perceptionof walking took effect throughout early nineteenth century’ (20). However, the fact that
Margaret’s father does not own a horse connotes their modest livelihood. On returning to
her home, Helstone, which is ‘like a village in one of Tennyson’s poems’ (14) from Aunt
Shaw’s house in London, Margaret appreciates her fascination regarding walking andprefers walking through the New Forest to staying in the parsonage. Tramping alongside
her father, she enjoys the fragrance of the fern crushed by her foot, herbs, and flowers.
She is proud of her forest, mingling with the inhabitants of the village:
She made hearty friends with them; learned and delighted in using their peculiar
words; took up her freedom amongst them; nursed their babies; talked or read withslow distinctness to their old people; carried dainty messes to their sick; resolved
before long to teach at the school where her father went regularly every day as to an
appointed task, but she was continually tempted off to go and see some individual
friend―man, woman, or child―in some cottage in the green shade of the forest.
(19)
Margaret’s walking links to her philanthropic activity, but hers is individual one; she does
not belong to any philanthropic group but performs philanthropic acts by herself. She
helps anybody who needs aid and her movement is beyond the role of the daughter of theclergyman. Gordon and Nair claim that religious and philanthropic activity was central tothe creation of middle-class identity, as was demonstrating one’s good character throughgood works (115). However, Margaret does not care about middle-class identity, willingly
using the peculiar words of the villagers, and assimilating into the community of theforest people. As Lesa Scholl suggests, ‘language is tied to identity, and by speaking
like the other inhabitants, Margaret adapts and begins to belong’ (101). Indeed, walking
about the forest and talking in the same way as the inhabitants allow Margaret to enter
the public sphere in Helstone. Margaret’s walking in spite of the weather is also ascribedto the circumstances that she is tired of hearing her mother’s discontent with her father’ssmall income. When Mrs Hale calls the Gormans respectable coach-builders, Margaret
responds to her mother: ‘how tired I used to be of the drives every day in Aunt Shaw’s
carriage, and how I longed to walk!’ (20). Margaret ‘is so happy out of doors, at her

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father’s side, that she almost danced’ and ‘with the soft violence of the west wind behind
her, as she crossed some heath, she seemed to be borne onwards, as lightly and easily as
the fallen leaf that was wafted along by the autumnal breeze’ (20–21). Scholl points outthat while the image presented by this scene is predominantly pastoral, ‘the violence of
the wind reflects the changing world, and the comparison of Margaret to an easily moved
leaf acts as a reminder that she is designed for mobility, even though she seeks to ignorethat impulse’ (99). Indeed, her walk reveals her restless moving in the changing world.
Furthermore, I suggest that ‘to be born onwards’ reflects her courage and vigour, and‘wafted along by the autumnal breeze’ (21) represents her flexibility.
Her walks in the garden of the parsonage are linked to her hard experiences. When
Henry Lennox, brother-in-law of Edith, visits Helstone, Margaret and Henry Lennox
stroll along the little terrace walk under the south wall in the garden. His sudden proposal
in the garden embarrasses her and she wishes to escape the situation. Despising herself forthe fluttering at her heart, she rejects his proposal, even though she considers him as her
best sympathiser in Aunt Shaw’s family. He responds to her refusal by self-deprecation.
Annoyed by his tone, she feels a little contempt mingled with pain arising from refusinghim. However, her rejection is forecasted in the beginning of the novel, where Margaret
tells Lennox, who regards gardening as ‘a proper employment for young ladies in the
country’, that ‘I don’t know. I am afraid I shan’t like such hard work’ (14). About thisscene, Athmanathan states that while Margaret deliberately offers a misleading insightabout her character to Lennox, ‘her attitude to physical labor in this instance, her words
are more significant in their critique of the ideology of the garden space, especially its
association with traditional gender expectations’ (39).
In informing her mother, Mrs Hale, of their removal to Milton-Northern, Margaret
tempts her mother out into the garden. In contrast with Mr Hale, her father, who is toomuch of a coward to inform his wife of the bad news of the move, Margaret fulfils thehard task. Consoling her mother who cries on the garden bench, Margaret is sorry forher mother. She feels that her mother ought to have been told about their removal and
Mr Hale’s religious dissent much before as Margaret detects Mrs Hale’s jealousy of her
learning of the removal before her. Margaret’s last walk in the garden on the evening
prior to their removal makes her melancholy, though all the packing cases are carried to
the nearest station under her direction. Feeling over-fatigued, she goes along the walkunder the pear-tree wall and remembers her rejection of Lennox’s proposal: ‘Only a

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fortnight ago! And all so changed!’ (54). Her nerves are sensitive by the over-work; evena faint sound over the garden-fence frightens her, and she runs back to the house. It is
not until she enters ‘the drawing-room, with the windows fastened and bolted’ (55) thatshe feels safe. Thus, in North and South, the gardens are not linked to the romantic andpastoral image that was popular among the nineteenth century middle-class people.
Margaret frequently walks in Milton to help her household, taking the place of her
mother, as her mother’s weak health has worsened since their move. To secure a maid
for assisting Dixon, Mrs Hale’s maid, Margaret walks about by herself in the Northernindustrial town. In contrast to her walk in the country like Helstone, the walk in the busy
and bustling place is a difficult experience for her. In London, Margaret used to rebel
against her aunt, Mrs Shaw’s rule that ‘a footman should accompany Edith and Margaret,
if they went beyond Harley Street or the immediate neighbourhood’ (71). In Helstone,
Margaret would often enjoy ‘the free walks and rambles of her forest life’ (71). In Milton,
however, she is not accustomed to walking in the streets with the unfamiliar factory
workers:
Until Margaret had learnt the times of their ingress and egress, she was very
unfortunate in constantly falling in with them. They came rushing along withbald, fearless faces, and loud laughs and jests, particularly aimed at all those who
appeared to be above them in rank or station. The tones of their unrestrained voices,and their carelessness of all common rules of street politeness, frightened Margaret
a little first. (72)
Annoyed with the workmen’s outspokenness, she gets relieved to hear a middle-aged
workman’s humorous remark: ‘your bonny face, my lass, makes the day look brighter’(72). Margaret’s meeting with the man named Higgins and his daughter, Bessy, in thestreet changes her negative image of the Northern industrial town, Milton, into a positive
one. Higgins refers to their meeting as follows: ‘North and South has both met and madekind o’ friends in this big smoky place’ (73). Slackening her pace to walk alongsideof Higgins and Bessy, Margaret learns that Bessy is sick and offers to visit them. In
Helstone, it was an understood convention that when she asked people about the locationof their house, it was to offer her aid to them as a clergyman’s daughter. However, seeing
Higgin’s suspicious response, Margaret is aware of the difference between the culture of30

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the North and South. As Scholl states, from this moment, Margaret is able to act as ‘amediatory force between the two cultures’ and that ‘it is first necessary, though, for her
not only to learn the language and cultural forms of the North, but to incorporate them tosome degree in her cultural repertoire’ (100).
Margaret’s first visit to the Higginses is accidentally followed by her visiting
register offices. On arriving at Bessy’s house, Margaret’s act of helping Bessy to drink
a cup of water and lifting Bessy’s hair from off her temples and bathing them withwater is that of a nurse, ingrained in her by her philanthropic movement at the forest in
Helstone. Margaret sympathises with Bessy, who is suffering from consumption causedby her work in the spinning mill and who is consequently disappointed with her present
and future life. Margaret consoles her, encouraging her to think about God. However,
Higgins, doubting religion, criticises Margaret for affecting her daughter with religion.
However, he realises that Margaret’s visit is not caused by her motive of performing aphilanthropic act but due to her love for Bessy. His criticism does not prevent Margaret
from visiting them; however, she does not visit them as a daughter of an ex-clergyman
but as Bessy’s closest friend. As Dorice Williams Elliott argues, it is significant that
Margaret meets and visits a house in a working-class neighbourhood ‘on her own accord’(33). She continues that when she visits the Higginses, ‘she does not come as an envoy ofthe landed gentry or of the church, as a Lady Bountiful would; neither does she visit as
an emissary for a philanthropic association’ (33). Margaret is amused to tell Bessy about
the landscape of Helstone, her beloved home, and learns from her that the factory people
work in a harsh environment. Knowing that Bessy is 19 years old, the same age as hers,
Margaret is distressed to recognise the contrast between them due to their birthplace.
According to Carolyn Lambert, Bessy works as the role of a double for Margaret: ‘her
journey towards death mirrors Margaret’s journey towards maturity, and it is the linkwith Bessy and her family that acts as the catalyst for changing Margaret’s perceptions,values, and assessment of the world around her’ (56). Margaret’s friendly intercoursewith Bessy and Higgins helps her learn about the lives of the working class and the people
in the North beyond the boundaries between their classes.
Another important visit of Margaret in Milton is to call on Mrs Thornton, themother of the mill owner, Mr Thornton, in return for her call to the Hales. Margaret
and her father walk approximately two miles from their house in Crampton Crescent
to Marlborough Street. The Thorntons live in the same site as Mr Thornton’s factory.

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Coming to the end of the long dead wall, they see a factory lodge door. Admitted by thelodge-keeper, they enter the great yard and walk about seeing the offices for businessand ‘an immense many-windowed mill’. They feel annoyed with the resonance of ‘thecontinual clank of machinery and the long groaning roar of the steam-engine’ (111).
They arrive at ‘a handsome stone-coped house blackened by the smoke, which had been
built some fifty or sixty years’ (111). Margaret, who loves the country life, wonders why
people who can afford to live in such a good house, and keep it in such perfect order,
do not prefer a dwelling in a quiet country or even a suburb. Ushered to the drawing
room, she feels as if it had never been entered by anybody for a thousand years. The
centre of the carpet is covered by linen and each chair and sofa is covered by netting
or knitting to protect them from dirt. In the middle of the room, a large circular table isplaced under the chandelier, with books arranged on the table at regular intervals. Suchan atmosphere of the drawing room is maintained by Mrs Thornton’s ‘care and labour,
but not care and labour to procure ease, to help on habits of tranquil home employment’(112). It reveals Mrs Thornton’s rigidness, coolness, and a careful sense of economy, as
Mr Thornton suggests to the Hales that she is ‘a woman of strong power and firm resolve’(85). Margaret feels unpleasant and uncomfortable in the drawing room. According toDavidoff and Hall, this cold drawing room is far from the middle-class ideal, for ‘warm
colours and textures gave a domestic cosiness and rich feeling, physical warmth wasprovided by―heavy curtains, carpets and upholstered furniture’ (380). Mrs Thornton’s
drawing room contrasts itself with that of the Hales, which is comfortable enough tofascinate Mr Thornton. Mrs Thornton does not sympathise with Mrs Hale’s not visiting
her on account of her illness. She complains about Mr Thornton studying classics under
the guidance of Mr Hale, stating the following: ‘Classics may do very well for men who
loiter away their lives in the country or in colleges; but Milton men ought to have theirthoughts and powers absorbed in the work of today’ (113). Insisting that the manufacturers
will lose flexibility if do not engage in spheres other than business, Margaret does notagree with Mrs Thornton’s opinion. Thus, Margaret takes part in the community of the
manufacturer’s family in place of her mother.
When she wants to change her distressed state of mind after hearing Mrs Hale’s
serious health condition from the doctor, Margaret plans to walk to the field:
The length of a street―yes, the air of a Milton Street―cheered her young blood32

Margaret Hale as a Walke

before she reached her first turning. Her step grew lighter, her lip redder. She began
to take notice, instead of having her thoughts turned so exclusively inward. (131)This reveals that Margaret is used to walking in Milton, the industrial town; however, shedislikes the prospect of the long walk through the street where men loiter slovenly, girls
laugh or speak loudly, and decides to visit Bessy instead, thinking that ‘it would not be sorefreshing as a quiet country walk, but still it would perhaps be doing the kinder thing’(131). Regarding a country walk as impossible in Milton, the practical Margaret thinksthat visiting her sick friend is good for her as well as for herself. Margaret first learnsof the occurrence of a strike from Bessy, who explains the circumstances reluctantly,
with Higgins expressing his anger at the masters such as Mr Thornton for reducing theworkers’ wages. She perceives that both masters and workers have a hard time during
the strike. Margaret, who is ignorant of the circumstances regarding a strike, learns therelationship between people’s lives and a strike. Her walk is linked to the problems faced
while modernising England in the Victorian era.
Margaret’s errand to borrow a water-bed for her mother from Mrs Thornton falls
on the day when the rioters proceed to Marlborough Street. Earlier, she hears Higgins’sreference of 700 workmen marching into Marlborough Mills as they are angry at Mr
Thornton’s employment of Irish workers. As she is too absorbed in her thought that
she might become motherless before long, she fails to notice that ‘there is a restless,oppressive sense of irritation abroad among the people; a thunderous atmosphere, morally
as well as physically, around her’ (170). Indeed, her faculty of observation is weakened
due to her distress, but she approaches Marlborough Street hearing the workers’ low
distant roar and a myriad of fierce indignant voices. Entering the house, Margaret findsthat the women are gathered round the windows of the drawing room, fascinated to lookon the scene that terrifies them due to the workers’ angry voices and the sounds of themaddened crowd’s dashing themselves against the great gates of the mill as if they were‘battering-rams’ (172). Mrs Thornton shows her terror and her fingers tremble in shutting
the windows; perceiving this, Margaret assists her in her task. While Mrs Thornton
retreats to the back room with Fanny, her daughter who shows signs of fainting, Margaret
stands at the window nearest to the factory and rejects Mr Thornton’s suggestion thatshe should go upstairs. As she ‘had always dreaded lest her courage should fail her
in any emergency, and she should be proved to be, what she dreaded lest she was―a

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coward’ (173), Margaret seems to challenge Mrs Thornton through this action as thelatter insisted on one occasion that ‘if you live in Milton, you must learn to have a brave
heart’ (116). In contrast to Mrs Thornton, who is unable to go out of the back room due
to Fanny, Margaret shows her courage. Margaret persuades Mr Thornton to speak withthe workers and to go out of the drawing room. Accompanying Mr Thornton downstairs
quickly to fasten the door, Margaret goes back to ‘her place by the farthest window’ (175).
Opening the window to look on him in the step, ‘Margaret tore her bonnet off’ (176) tohear him, however, she can hear nothing because of noise but finds the crowd raging
worse than ever. According to Simon Morgan, ‘“tearing off her bonnet” reveals that
Margaret abandons the passive, decorative femininity’ (185). On seeing some young men
preparing to throw their wooden clogs as missiles towards Mr Thornton, Margaret leaves
the window; she rushes out of the room, down the stairs, and throws the door open wide.
She ‘was there―in face of that angry sea of men, her eyes smiting them flaming arrowsof reproach―she stood between them and their enemy’ (176). Her quick recognition ofdanger for Mr Thornton’s life prompts her to go out to help him with instinctive courage.
Morgan argues that ‘Margaret’s abandonment of her position at the window, with its
connotations of sexual purity, links to a symbolical “fallen woman”’ (186). Indeed,
Margaret goes out of Mrs Thornton’s drawing room, a secure place, into the perilous
place outside of the house to protect Mr Thornton from the raging rioters. However, I
would like to highlight her philanthropic nature to help people in trouble and her innate
courage awakened in the emergency, regardless of her own danger. Margaret’s action ofprotecting Mr Thornton by throwing her arms around him on seeing a pebble fly towards
him is brought about by a ‘humanitarian motive’ (84), as argued by Stoneman. Rejecting
Mr Thornton’s proposal after the riot, Margaret insists that she owes her action to women’snature: ‘any women, worthy of the name of women, would come forward to shield, withher reverenced helplessness, a man in danger from the violence of numbers’ (193). It istrue that, as Morgan suggests, ‘Mr Thornton’s masculinity is questioned’ (185), but moresignificantly, I think, Margaret’s courage is challenged in the riot scene. According to
Stoneman, ‘Margaret’s intervention in the riot is as unacceptable as a caring act as it is an
act of sexual provocation; both are inappropriate to a scene defined in terms of warfare’(90). However, Margaret’s intervention in the industrial riot leads to her ‘involvement in
the public sphere’ (42), as Athmanathan argues. I agree with Athmanathan, for Margaret
acts as a negotiator with the rioters by telling them that they shall have ‘relief’ from their34

Margaret Hale as a Walke‘complaints’ if they ‘go peaceably’ (177). After being asked by one of rioters whether the
Irish workers will go back, Mr Thornton’s denial to this demand enrages the workmen.
Moreover, Margaret’s fainting by the attack with a pebble thrown by a worker and her
blood on her forehead make the rioters regain their reason and retrograde towards thegate before the arrival of the soldiers. Although Morgan argues that ‘Gaskell is clearly
criticising the chivalric model of female influence in making Margaret feel guilty about
the violence she has unwittingly encouraged’ (185), Margaret’s reckless intervention
helps save not only the life of Mr Thornton, but also the lives of the rioters. While
Margaret was supposed to have a brisk walk on an errand to Marlborough Street, she isinvolved in serious problems caused due to industrialisation between the manufacturers
and the workmen in the North.
Margaret’s walking is related to death, especially the death of her beloved people.
The news of Bessy’s death is conveyed to her by Mary, Bessy’s sister. As Margaret has
never seen a dead person up to that point, she hesitates to go to see the lifeless Bessy;
however, finally, she plucks up her courage to go to see Bessy. Walking swiftly to thehouse of the Higginses, Margaret goes into ‘the quiet presence of the dead’ (215). The
soft smile of eternal rest upon Bessy’s face gives Margaret a sense of deep calm. Higgins
is deeply shocked by Bessy’s death and intends to go out to drink. When Mary prevents
his going out, he begins to strike at Mary. Margaret, in an attempt to stop him, ‘stood in
the doorway, silent yet commanding’ (217). Her ‘innate sense of oppression’ (195) resultsin him giving up his wish to go drink, and she suggests that he should say goodbye to
Bessy and come with her to her home to tea. Her unexpected invitation probably eases
his inconsolable feeling, for he confesses that he ‘often wished to say to a parson’ manythings (218). At first, Mr Hale is dismayed by the drunken infidel weaver; however, Mr
Hale as a ‘decorous, kind-hearted, simple, old-fashioned gentleman’ treats Higgins as hetreats ‘his all fellow-creatures alike’ (222), listening to him with interest. Higgins, too,straightening his appearance before seeing Mr Hale, with ‘a good, earnest composureon his face’ (222), speaks about religion, the masters, and the worker’s union. While
Higgins cannot believe in God in his depressed state, Margaret, touching his arm very
softly, consoles him: ‘We do not want to reason―we believe; and so do you. It is theone sole comfort in such times’ (224). Mr Hale suggests to Higgins that he should jointhem in family prayer. In Mr Hale’s study, ‘Margaret the Churchwoman, her father theDissenter, Higgins the Infidel, knelt down together. It did them no harm’ (230). It is one of

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No. 46the themes of the novel that human beings are equal before God in spite of the differenceof classes, religions, and opinions. Margaret plays the role of mediating between the
middle class and the working class. Patsy Stoneman argues that ‘Elizabeth Gaskell does
not suggest that verbal communication will eliminate class struggles’ (80); however,Margaret’s straightforward way of speaking and body language appeal to Higgins’s rigid
thinking and emotion, and comfort his unbearable sorrow calmly and strongly; Higgins,too, accepts Margaret’s cordial kindness. Her walk both ways to the Higginses after
Bessy’s death is helpful strengthens her friendship with Higgins.
The most thrilling walk throughout the narrative is in the scene where Margaretsees off Frederick, her fugitive brother, at the station. It is Margaret that asks Frederick tovisit England from Spain to fulfil her mother’s wish of seeing her son before her death;Frederick is under an arrest warrant by English navy as a ringleader of a mutiny, and isin grave danger in England. After Mrs Hale’s death, Mr Hale, due to his overwhelming
despair, cannot play the role of the patriarch, and Frederick is also stricken and far fromsupporting Margaret. Rising from ‘her trembling and despondency’, Margaret has tobecome ‘a strong angel’ (246) to console and take care of her father and brother. Insteadof her father, Margaret accompanies her brother to the Outwood station in the evening
to see him off. When she walks with her hand laid in Frederick’s arm outside the station,
they are seen by Mr Thornton on horseback. Later, her walking with a young gentlemanin the evening stimulates Mr Thornton’s jealousy as well as Mrs Thornton’s criticism
of Margaret’s conduct. Here, from the standpoint of middle-class politics in the midnineteenth century, Margaret is indifferent about how she appears to passers-by in her
walk with Frederick. Female walking has various gendered problems. On the platform,
Frederick is nearly caught by Leonards, a sailor who plots to win a cash award by turning
Frederick in to the authorities, and wrestles with him. As soon as they see Leonards fallfrom the platform, Margaret and Frederick run to the train, and he jumps in a carriage.
Margaret, left alone, feels terribly sick and faint. She walks into the ladies’ waiting room
to rest for a while. She ventures out to walk to the end of the platform, making sure thatthe platform is empty. However, she is ‘so trembling and affrighted that she felt she could
not walk home along the road’ (259), and she goes home by train. Thus, she experiences
for the first time that she is unable to walk owing to her depression and feeling ofapprehension by the terrible accident; moreover, her walk with her brother places her ina very serious situation in the latter half of the narration.

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Her walk at her mother’s funeral transgresses the middle-class ideal in the Victorianera. Margaret’s insistence on accompanying Mr Hale at the funeral is opposed by him:
‘women do not generally go’ (261). She insists that although ‘women of our class don’tgo’ (261) because they cannot control themselves, she ‘will be no trouble’ (261). ‘Over
the records suggest that’, Davidoff and Hall mention, ‘women began to stay away fromthe burial service and the grave side ritual although they might be present at the meal
afterwards. In the 1770s all the family attended the funeral, but by the 1840s this wasmuch less common’ (408). They add that daughters and widows did not attend funerals,
because women were beginning to be considered ‘too delicate to bear the public rituals ofdeath’, and if they did go, ‘they were advised to follow the practices of nobility and gentry
and remain in the church while the actual burial was taking place outside’ (408). Indeed,
Mrs Shaw and Edith do not attend the funeral although their being abroad at the time is
the reason for their absence for the service. As Mr Bell, one of Mr Hale’s friends wholives in Oxford, cannot come because he is suffering from gout, Margaret accompanies
her father to the funeral. ‘Margaret sat by him in the coach, almost supporting him in
her arms, and repeating all the noble verses of holy comfort’ (263) instead of her father.
Margaret finds Higgins and his daughter standing a little aloof, but deeply attentive tothe ceremony. However, she does not notice that Mr Thornton is present for the funeral.
When the funeral service is over, Margaret lays Mr Hale’s hand on her arm, and leads him
away in response to his mute entreaty ‘as if he were a blind, and she his faithful guide’(263). She supports her weakened father during the funeral ceremony as ‘a strong angel’
far from a trouble. Her attendance at her mother’s funeral signifies that she has enoughstrength and courage to transgress the custom of the middle-class ideal of femininity andthat she has an individual responsibility for supporting her father as well as controllingherself.
Margaret’s philanthropic activity is not abandoned by her depression. Visiting the
Higginses in return for their attending the funeral, Margaret and Mr Hale notice that
Higgins is out of work because of the strike. Soon after Higgins disparages his neighbour
Boucher for asking for work to a mill owner in exchange of information regarding theworkers’ union, calling him the good-for-nothing Judas, they see Boucher’s body carriedby policemen, who has committed suicide by drowning himself in the brook due to his
feeling of despair. Finding that no man has the courage to inform Mrs Boucher of her
husband’s death, Margaret walks into Boucher’s house quietly by herself. Thus, her sense

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No. 46of mission gives her courage, prompting her to convey the sad news compassionately to
Mrs Boucher, who has six little children. Margaret nurses her, as she faints after hearing
the terrible news, and takes care of the little children. In this case, too, Mr Hale, an exclergyman, is not reliable and cannot console the crying widow. Margaret and Mr Halecall on Mrs Boucher the next day; however, Margaret is distressed to hear Mrs Boucher
abusing the masters such as Mr Thornton, the union, and the noisy children; however, sherecognises that it is ‘a hard world to live in’ (295):
It is the town life. Their nerves are quickened by the haste and bustle and speedof everything around them, to say nothing of the confinement in these pent-up
houses, which of itself is enough to induce depression and worry of spirits. Now inthe country, people live so much more out of doors, even children, and even in thewinter” (295).
Mr Hale insists: ‘But people must live in towns. And, in the country, some get suchstagnant habits of mind that they are almost fatalists’ (295). Although both Margaret andMr Hale realise that they can do little for the widowed Mrs Boucher, Margaret does notabandon the duty of taking care of the widow; she visits and supports Mrs Boucher andher children. As Elliott argues, ‘Margaret modifies her attitudes and adapts her charitable
practices to fit the new social circumstances she encounters in the industrial North’ (33),
tailoring them to fit the individual person.
Margaret, after her father’s death, visits Helstone with Mr Bell, who is her godfather.
Taking a walk with him, she notices that the landscape has changed since she left withher father and mother three years ago. Finding old trees felled here and there, and afamiliar cottage pulled down, she misses the past landscape. However, Mr Bell regards
this change as a matter of course:
It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to theyoung, afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see asa matter of course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it is
new and oppressive. (378–379)
According to Parkins, Mr Bell ‘sees in every change only the eternal verities of age and38

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experience’. Parkins continues, ‘the fact that such transformations have taken place evenin a place as close to nature as Helstone confirms for him that change is an inevitable,organic―rather than historical―process’ (511). While she walks slower than her normal
pace for the sake of fat and scant o’ breath Mr Bell, Margaret, in her heart, wishes to have
her dear-loved walks alone in silence. Hearing the cruel episode of a cat being roasted
alive according to a savage country superstition by the mother of Susan, a girl whom
Margaret used to instruct, Margaret as well as Mr Bell are shocked that some of villagers
believe in such superstitions; Margaret endeavours in vain to enlighten Susan’s motherof the folly of her action. They walk mutely through many a bosky dell to the parochialschool, seeing by chance the present Vicar’s wife, Mrs Hale’s successor. After Mr Hale’s
resignation, the church is taken over by an evangelical Vicar who is a teetotaller and amagistrate. According to Parkins, ‘the arrival of the new evangelical clergyman’, is ‘asign of modernity and transition in the established church, instigates changes in housing
and education and the (attempted) introduction of temperance in the village’ (511). Mrs
Hepworth, the Vicar’s wife, invites Margaret and Mr Bell to see the parsonage which
is currently under renovation, which she starts to call ‘improvements’, changing to‘alterations’ to spare Margaret’s feelings (383). Margaret finds that the parsonage is so‘altered, both inside and out, that the real pain was less than she had anticipated’; ‘thegarden, the grass-plat, formerly so daintily trim’ is messy with children’s things and‘a straw-hat forced down upon a rose-tree as on a peg’ (383). According to Davidoff
and Hall, ‘Gardens were used as teaching devices. Children were given small plots toinculcate patience, care, tenderness, and reverence along with practical science lessons’(373). While she apologises for the messy state of the garden, Mrs Hepworth claims that‘when the nursery is finished, I shall insist upon a little order’ (383) and wonders how
Margaret did without a nursery. As Athmanathan has argued, ‘though the Hales’ poorer
economic circumstances could be cited as the reason behind the absence of a proper
nursery in the parsonage, the lack of a nursery does strike as an oddity in the middleclass household of the Hales’ (40). According to Andrea Kaston Tange, ‘the nursery suite
was tucked away at the top of the house, and the children themselves typically stayedin those rooms except when appearing at prescribed times, carefully groomed, on best
behaviour downstairs’, and ‘the middle-class were for the first time separating children
from adults within the home as common practice’ (222), regarding this practice as thecultural desirability to protect their children from the dangers of the outside world. As

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No. 46the child Margaret did not experience such a spatial segregation in the parsonage, she
felt so lonely that she sobbed in the nursery on arriving at Mrs Shaw’s house. Therefore,
Athmanathan argues the following:[T] he fact that a nursery is being constructed out of formerly Margaret’s room in the
parsonage is itself telling in the context of spatial demarcation, fluidity of movement
and emotional connectivity between family members. Spatial segregation withindomesticity in the name of discipline and order reflects a desire to demarcate
homogeneity of behavior and function, one that can be emotionally confining for theoccupants (40).
Walking in Helstone is not what Margaret has expected and the experience disappoints
her:There was change everywhere; slight, yet pervading all. Households were changed
by absence, or death, or marriage, or the natural mutations brought by days andmonths and years, which carry us on imperceptibly from childhood to youth, andthence through manhood to age, whence we drop like fruit, fully ripe, into the quiet
mother earth. places were changed―a tree gone here, a bough there, bringing ina long ray of light where no light was before―a road was trimmed and narrowed,
and the green straggling pathway by its side enclosed and cultivated. A great
improvement it was called; but Margaret sighed over the old picturesqueness, the oldgloom, and the grassy wayside of former days. (384)Thus, Margaret meditates on the changes of nature and the world with the times. In
the latter half of the passage, as Parkins argues, ‘it is not an unmediated nature which
Margaret mourns but an idea cultivated in a slightly earlier period of modernity’, and itis ‘the passing of “old picturesqueness” in favour of the new discourse of “improvement”
which is lamented’ (511). However, the next morning Margaret wakes up with ‘a brighter
view of things’ (390). She begins to think about the change positively:
If the world stood still, it would retrograde and become corrupt, if that is not Irish.
Looking out of myself, and my own painful sense of change, the progress all around40

Margaret Hale as a Walke

me is right and necessary. I must not think so much of how circumstances affect me
myself, but how they affect others, if I wish to have a right judgement, or a hopefultrustful heart. (390–391)
She comes to accept change and progress around her positively and recognise that it
is important to see the changes of others by the effect of circumstances. That is, she
has a role of mediation between people and the changes of their environments. This
flexibility links to her innate ‘hybridity’, as Athmanathan suggests (39). Margaret, before
they leave Helstone, enjoys a walk alone to the parsonage garden to gather a piece ofhoneysuckle. Returning to the common field, she feels the place ‘reinvested with the oldenchanting atmosphere’, ‘more musical than anywhere else in the world’, and ‘the light
more golden’ (391). She, feeling herself different from yesterday, suggests that ‘I toochange perpetually’ (391). She acknowledges that she herself is situated within change.
Margaret’s walks usually have destinations and have aims such as errands for her
family, visits to her acquaintances, or delivering help to her neighbours. Loving walks,
she walks vigorously not only in the country but also in the town, and walks alone aswell in somebody’s company. Indeed, she is an innate pedestrian. Her walking pace isfaster than usual. Walking signifies her mental as well as her physical state. Her walks
connect a place with another place and herself with people. While her walking often
reveals her family’s modest economic status, she is proud of walking for the pleasure
it affords her. While her first walk in London is regulated due to her gender and classnorms as a middle-class young lady, Margaret gradually increases her opportunities towalk alone outside, and the meaning of her walking changes from having a charitablepurpose for her own pleasure and responsibility through her back-and-forth travel to ruraland urban areas, country and town, wealthy and poor regions. In North and South, theheroine’s walk functions significantly for her to make personal contact with people fromcompletely different backgrounds and connect these people.
Text
Gaskell, Elizabeth. North and South. 1854. Edi. Patricia Ingham. London: Penguin, 2003.

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