Nowhere But North Release

My latest project has been live out there in the world for a little over a week now (although it seems much longer–I even had to check my calendar to be sure that was right!). While Nowhere But North does not qualify as JAFF, prevailing sentiment suggests that its source material, North and South, might have been a Victorian era homage to Jane Austen.

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I expect that most readers here have had a chance to hear about the brooding, hard-working, and desperately handsome Richard Armitage John Thornton, but today I wanted to introduce you to Margaret Hale. She is a remarkably strong, intelligent, and interesting heroine, but she is at least as much Fanny Price and Elinor Dashwood as she is Elizabeth Bennet.

In order to understand Margaret, we must also examine the third main “character” of North and South, which is the Industrial Victorian era itself. This was a far different age than the Regency, and the characteristics of “admirable” behavior seem stifling and morbid by comparison. Blame the reigning monarch’s sensibilities or blame the rash of death and disease that came with industrialization, or even point the finger at changing lifestyles and philosophical beliefs. It was all these influences and more, far more than we have room to discuss here.

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The end result is a heroine who will not bow to others’ whims, who is outspoken and indignant when a proper lady should not be, but who also has a tendency to “stuff” her feelings. In Gaskell’s North and South, a modern reader is ready to tear their hair out because she confesses to herself that she loves Mr Thornton, longs to tell him the truth about his misapprehensions regarding her brother, but she demurs at every possible opportunity! Why???

Simply put, it is a matter of dignity. Long-suffering was a virtue, patience and bearing up under injustice considered admirable. Gaskell’s Margaret Hale depended on eventual justice and decided upon the “noble” course… of silence.

It was not merely the age in which she lived that shaped her character. Margaret, like John Thornton, had been the only strong one in her circle. Everyone else depended upon her, and she herself has no shoulder to weep upon. That has a tendency to influence a person’s response to trial. Rather than taking a risk and reaching out, such a person just might turn inward and put up walls… unless someone manages to break them down.

I will leave you with an excerpt from Nowhere But North to get acquainted with my girl. Perhaps you might recognize some other familiar faces in this sketch of her.

28 June 1853

“Margaret, can this be real? Are we truly leaving Helstone and all we love behind? Oh, what can your father be thinking?”

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Mrs Hale had not ceased trembling for a se’nnight, causing all about her to tend her with a concern which might have been better applied to their present troubles. Margaret, in particular, had felt the burden of her mother’s grief, for it was she who had most earnestly wished to be of some comfort, but her assurances which had been found the least desirable by their object.

Mrs Hale quaked now as they neared the train. The iron behemoth belched out a cloud of coal smoke and hot steam, and the press of passengers all about drove them relentlessly forward. She sought Dixon’s arm, but Dixon was occupied in demanding the services of a porter to take their smaller luggage.

“It will be well, Mamma. You know Papa has spoken with Mr Bell, and he has recommended a place for us—and he has a tenant in Milton who has pledged to help Papa.”

“But to leave Helstone! Oh, it does not bear thinking of. I see it now, though it is too late, what a haven it has always been! I never thought I should have to leave my home for an industrial city. Could we not have gone anywhere less horrid? Oh! Is the entire journey to be like this?” She shook anew as the great steam whistle cried out for passengers to board and grasped Margaret’s arm at last.

“Mamma, hold my hand,” Margaret soothed. “We will see that you are well settled and comfortable. And you know, Papa had set aside a sum for you and Dixon to take a few days at the coast while we look for a house—will that not be like a holiday? I am sure it will do you good.”

But her mother was shaking her head. “Nothing good is to be found in this, Margaret. It is all a waste. Your father has been a fool, and he has ruined us all!”

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Margaret made no reply to this accusation. She could not so readily abuse her father’s object, nor fail to applaud the sense of dignity which had forced him into this decision, but there was that lingering sense of disquiet. Once having settled his choice, he did not appear satisfied with it, nor confident in his direction.

He passed by them now, his eyes on the ground rather than the door of the train, and his mouth fallen into that habitual melancholy which bespoke his reluctance to do the thing he had determined. Margaret wished to stop him there and again ask if this was truly his desire, for if it were not, might not he speak again with the bishop? Might not some other situation be found which would not require her mother to spend her later years in a noisome black hole of a city? But Mr Hale appeared no firmer in resolve than his wife and only kept up the motions out of a seeming sense of pride.

Margaret tried to smile back at her mother. “Papa has gone ahead to take our seats. We shall have our own private little box, and you can sit beside me, and we will look out on all the sights as we pass.”

At this moment, Dixon reclaimed Mrs Hale’s other arm, and Margaret’s mother pulled away her hand so that she might draw out a handkerchief. Into this article she wept as she mounted the train.

The journey north was broken into stages; they took a London hotel, but there was no visit to their Harley Street relations to comfort Mrs Hale or to mortify her husband. Margaret had gazed longingly out at their usual stop as the train rolled away north. Edith would be in Corfu by now, and her aunt on her way to Italy. She sighed and stared down at her own rose-embroidered handkerchief, held ready in her lap in case her mother had need of an extra, but Dixon had kept Mrs Hale well supplied.

At last, the engine steamed into Heston, and the family took their lodgings for the night. Mrs Hale and Dixon had a small room not far from the shore, but it did not overlook the ocean.

“Mamma, see how close it is? It is only a short walk. I daresay you could be there in less than ten minutes.”

“Oh, Margaret, how could you think of it? I cannot walk so far. Am I not at least to have the pleasure of seeing the water before I spend the rest of my life looking at smoky, dirty city?”

Margaret could say little more, but she again offered her mother her handkerchief and was refused.

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Dawn of the following day found Margaret and her father already on a train bound for Milton. Their ride was short, a mere half hour, but the scenery was that of another world. Margaret leaned close to the window and stared in silent awe. Cities, she had seen, but there was something to the raw, earthy quality of Milton which rendered it somewhere between the grit and mire of a destitute farm and the dark hopelessness of a coal mine, all splattered upon tall buildings that blocked the horizon. It looked to her like… like the fourth circle of Dante’s Inferno.

“Papa—” she nudged him gently to rouse him—“we are here.” Mr Hale twitched—he had not truly found the comfort of sleep, but a pitiless daze had claimed his consciousness, in which he had no rest but a constant sense of helpless dread. He roused himself now and his gaze took in the charred buildings all round as the train drew into the station.

He did not speak, but Margaret was watching his manner, hoping to draw her courage from his resolve. She found instead a certain frailty of expression, in the slight twinge about his eyes and the nervous workings of his mouth.

Perhaps in that moment, she understood. The course he had set upon terrified him as much as herself, and though it had been his determination, it was she who must carry him to it.

“Come, Papa—” she patted his arm—“the doors are starting to open. Where shall we go first?”

He looked down to a bit of paper drawn from his pocket, worn and soft from countless perusals and re-foldings. “A hotel on New Street. There is a room reserved for us.”

“Already? Mr Bell must have sent word?”

“No, it was the Mr Thornton I spoke of. I expect we shall meet him today. Mr Bell speaks highly of him and says he will prove a valuable friend in the city.”

She smiled and took her father’s arm, rather than waiting for him to offer it. “A friend would certainly be welcome.”

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Yes, any friend, if it gave her father hope. Even a… what was Mr Thornton? A cotton manufacturer, if she remembered correctly. A shabby little king in a filthy little kingdom. She wrinkled her nose as they made their way to a cab.

Christian charity aside, the figures she saw lining the streets were ragged, dismal, and grey… everywhere she looked, from the stone buildings to the drab clothing and the colourless expressions on the faces of the people, it was all one shade of coal-blackened ambivalence.

“It seems a pleasant enough city,” she lied, squeezing her father’s hand. “We ought to do well here, Papa.”

Well, don’t worry about our strong, stoic girl. She will find ample diversions and people of interest in that city to build the sort of life and love that we write about in novels, but the ride may be a bumpy one!

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