Second Paper Assignment

Manchester, 1843: Manchester, so much to answer for. This daguerreotype was taken the year Carlyle wrote Past and Present, the year before Engels wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England, and some ten years before Elizabeth Gaskell used the city as a model for Milton Northern when she wrote North and South.

DUE: Wednesday, December 3

DIRECTIONS: Write an essay of more than five pages that addresses the following assignment directly. Please turn the essay in at Professor Cronin's or Professor Dubrulle's office. If you choose the Late Paper Option, your paper will be due on Friday, December 5th. You may not choose the LPO if you used it for the first essay assignment.

Your essay will concern Gaskell's North and South in the context of one issue that we have studied this semester. For one of the following topics, you should establish a thesis claim and, in the body of the paper, support that claim fully with evidence from the texts and any other sources you use. The paper will demand that you analyze relevant elements of North and South in depth, as well as defining and explaining terms and concepts important to your argument.

ASSIGNMENT: Choose one of the following approaches/questions:

A. North and South and The Woman Question: How does Margaret Hale's character reflect the qualities and position of the Angel in the House figure and/or Mill's view of the best type of woman and the best role for women? Your thesis may argue that the character of Margaret Hale reflects, in part, elements of of both of these portrayals of women.

HINT: As you consider this question, consider whether Gaskell depicts Margaret as idealized—the ideal women, the ideal daughter, the ideal wife (to-be). Consider also the ways that Margaret fulfills some of the attitudes and descriptions Mill expresses about women. Other concepts may be relevant to your argument, such as the portrayal of manliness in North and South and in Mill and/or the depiction of other women in North and South.

B. North and South and Class: In what light does North and South depict differences among the social classes and the qualities/position of the middle class, in particular? How does this portrayal of class agree with, complement, or diverge from the views of class held by other writers we have studied (Bagehot, Arnold, Mill). Your thesis may concern class mobility; the "nature" and behaviors of different classes-particularly the middle class; and characters' perceptions of class issues.

HINT: As you consider this question, be sure to explore the ways that members of different classes are described and portrayed in the novel and in the other relevant readings from our course. Consider the ways that classes conflict—in subtle or more obvious ways—and the manner in which these differences or conflicts are described by mid-Victorian writers.

C. North and South and the "Condition of England" Question: In what ways is North and South a "condition of England" novel? In other words, how do the ideas and images expressed in this novel mirror Carlyle's observations in Past and Present? To what extent do Gaskell and Carlyle see eye to eye on English problems and solutions to those problems?

D. North and South and Religion: North and South depicts several contemporary attitudes toward faith. What are these attitudes? How do they conflict with or complement each other? Do these characters ultimately come up with a way to accomodate each others, their views of God, or even forge their own ideas of faith or goodness?

CITING SOURCES IN THIS ASSIGNMENT: For this assignment, you should choose to use the MLA Documentation Style (parenthetical references and works cited list) or the Chicago Style (footnotes), both of which are described on the course website. Be consistent and use this documentation style to refer to the novel, and all other primary or secondary sources. For any course readings that have been provided to you without accompanying bibliographic information, cite the source (after quoting or paraphrasing it) by placing the author's last name in a parenthetical reference and providing a page number if the document has page numbers. You used this method for the shorter essay. These parenthetical references should include the author's last name [comma] the title of the work [no comma] page number. If you have used the author's last name in the sentence, you may omit that element in the parenthetical reference.

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Copyrighted by Hugh Dubrulle and Meg Cronin, 2006.