[From Joseph Kestner, Protest & Reform: The British Social Narrative by Women, 1827-1867.]
According to Kestner,
North and South is a mid-Victorian text in that it confronts two questions close to the mid-century consciousness: religious doubt and the nature of progress. By confrontation with one or the other of these the characters achieve self-realization. Religious doubt is the catalyst for the Hales' removal from the comforts of Helstone to Milton-Northern (Manchester).
How does Gaskell handle religious doubts in ways similar to Tennyson's In Memoriam? In what nonliterary art does Victorian doubt appear?
Created c.1994; last modified 25 March 2000