SOURCE: Brown, Pearl L. “From Elizabeth Gaskell's Mary Barton to her North and South: Progress or Decline for Women?” Victorian Literature and Culture 28, no. 2 (2000): 345-58.

In the following essay, Brown disagrees with those critics who believe the heroine of North and South to be a more skillfully created character than Mary Barton, claiming that Barton is a more independent woman than Margaret Hale.

Assessments of Elizabeth Gaskell's two novels of social purpose typically conclude that North and South, published in 1855, is a more mature work stylistically and ideologically than Mary Barton, published in 1848. North and South is said to integrate the narrative modes of romance and realism more effectively than Mary Barton (Felber 63, Horsman 284), and to provide a more complicated narrative structure (Schor, Scheherezade 122-23), a more complex depiction of social conflicts (Easson 59 and 93) and a more satisfactory resolution of them (Duthie 84, Kestner 170). North and South is also...