This is the second post in a series of blogging the-conference-paper-I'm-not-giving.  For the background, you can read the first post here. 

In North and South, after resigning from the CofE priesthood, Mr Hale takes his family - Mrs Hale, Margaret and servant Dixon - to the growing industrial town of Milton-Northern.  Most commentators read this as Manchester, where, after all, Mrs Gaskell herself lived.  But it doesn't really matter; we're given all the information we need in the name: a mill town in the North.  (And this generic character makes it useful to me for my work on West Yorkshire.) 

Relocating to a grimy, sooty, smelly mill town after the pastoral delights of sweetly southern Helstone proves a shock, to say the least.  Margaret's contrast between idyllic Helstone and gloomy Milton is one of the book's central "North and South" contrasts.  Margaret looks at industrialism and believes that something has gone terribly wrong.  She laments the loss of the rural. 

Such feelings were certainly shared by many.  As British socialism developed over the proceeding half century, one strong strand of thought located the answers to its critique of industrial capitalism in (a certain reckoning of) the rural past. 

Two of the most (to me) fascinating figures in this were Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) and William Morris (1834-1896). 

Earlier this year I finally read Sheila Rowbotham's superb biography of Carpenter (quite probably the first middle-aged British man to wear socks with sandals).  He was an amazing figure, not just in his sandals, but in his whole philosophy.  Briefly a CofE priest, Carpenter gave it up, chucked academic life in, and became a socialist and gay rights campaigner who (generally) practiced what he preached.  For a large chunk of his life lived on the rural outskirts of industrial Sheffield growing veg, skinny-dipping and that sort of thing. 

Famed for his Arts and Crafts designs, Morris also advocated a socialism that celebrated crafts over machines and, in his 1890 novel News From Nowhere, envisaged a post-revolutionary agrarianism.  (He kept his clothes on, though I'm not entirely sure where he stood on the socks-with-sandals question.)

In the 19th century, this 'rural past' position maintained a following within socialist circles.  By the 20th, its advocates would be dismissed as 'cranks'.  That's where I'll be heading, Margaret Hale still in tow, in my next post in this series. 

I'm due to give a paper at the ASAANZ annual conference in Roto-Vegas, but, the finances haven't quite come together for me to be able to make it over there.  The paper's called "Margaret Hale, Industrialism, and the Ancestry of Cranks".  It exists in my head; it's about to exist in a series of blog posts.

Mrs Gaskell wasn't the most creative when it came to titles.  Mary Barton (1848) was about, well, Mary Barton.  And in 1854 she figured her new novel would also be named after it's heroine, Margaret Hale. 

The novel was a Pride and Prejudice for the industrial era.  Mr Darcy became the aloof Northern industrialist, John Thornton; and Elizabeth Bennett, dosed with a political conscience, became Margaret. 

Dickens, who did have the knack of a good title, was serialising the novel for his magazine Household Words.  'Margaret Hale' didn't exactly blow him away.  Rename it, he insisted. 

So Pride and Prejudice became Margaret Hale became North and South. 

Dave Russell has argued that how we think about the North of England today had set by about 1840.  That makes North and South an extraordinarily interesting study of the national divide. 

And I freakin' love Margaret Hale.

Elizabeth Bennett I grew up with.  She was sharp as tacks, had a way with words.  And when, in my teens, a be-wigged Jennifer Ehle brought her to BBC life, she was set firmly as one of my heroes. 

But Margaret Hale does politics.  She's not afraid to have a go at Thornton over how he treats his workers.  She stands up for what she sees as fair, just and good.  She doesn't always get it right, but she throws herself into it.  (Yes, there's also a Beeb adaptation.)

Mrs G had taken a bit of a bashing for Mary Barton.  Many of her readers (and Manchester industrialist acquaintances) evidently found it pretty scathing.  So in North and South she set out to tell a story in which there could be redemption for the industrialist.  Not that industrialism gets off lightly, but, the book really engages with issues for which there are no easy answers.  Margaret Hale comes up against plenty of ethical and political dilemmas. 

David Harvey has an article about intellectual Marxists, workers' rights, car plants in Oxford and Raymond Williams (The link goes to the pdf.  Neat huh?) in which he argues that some of the issues academics are wont to weigh in on are actually best explored in fiction.  He's probably right. 

And if he is, then Margaret Hale is a useful companion for talking about industrial history, about the development of nineteenth-century socialism, and about the North/South divide.  Which is where she and I will be wandering over the next couple of posts. 

The big palaver has been Demo2010, the student protest march in London which turned ugly.  The threat of violence is often inherent in a protest, but it often seems doubly so in a student one.  This was of course not violence igniting throughout the crowd, but the usual "yeah, that showed 'em" brigade who excel at ruining it for everybody else.  (On HE reform itself, see this article about Mandelson, Labour and the Browne report.) 

The shouting-and-placard-fest marks David Cameron's 6 month anniversary as PM.  He'll be out for his tea, then.  ToryDiary's Paul Goodman reflects on 6 months of 'Dave'.

North-South divide watch: now then, here's summat on that.  (I am reminded to review Helen Jewell's book on this.)  

An interesting post by Aaron Peters at LFF on 'anxious aspiration'. Peters' solution is a Labour politics of 'familiar fairness in unfamiliar times'.  Yet, elsewhere, Mark Vernon writes that 'a rigorously fair [society], would, actually, be an inhuman one.'

Phil Woolas has gone, but questions of racism and political campaigning remain.  Two responses from the Labour blogs: Dan Hodges suggests 'Phil Woolas is our fall guy' and Jon Lansman responds that 'this isn't a working class racism problem, this is a Labour problem'. 

Finally, stepping away from the politics!  On the heritage front, No Tech Magazine have sniffed out a bunch of free online pamphlets about things like tool care, hedging, and dry stone walling. Also, British Waterways are planning big work on the canal network.  Someone remind me to try and see the lock gate workshop at Stanley Ferry!

I have been hesitating throughout this week about writing a post on the comprehensive spending review.  Since most of the posts and articles I've been reading have been CSR-related, I haven't posted any of them here whilst I contemplate.  So, this handful of links is a bit of a CSR black hole. 

Having said that, the Inequalities blog have a good article on how the coalition has 'found it so easy to cut benefits for the poor'.  This is more about social attitudes than the CSR itself and it's very much worth a look. 

The North-South divide has been cropping up in the news with concerns the CSR cuts will aggravate it.  So it must be John Bulmer time.  Still, oldies but goodies: John Bulmer's North.  (Vaguely related note: I've just started reading Helen Jewell's book about the North-South divide, and I had never before twigged that Northumbria = North of the Humber.)

The Heritage Crafts Association are reporting that skills minister John Hayes has highlighted support for craft skills in a recent speech at the RSA.  This is good news for the HCA, but 1) how seriously do we take this as an indication of potential government policy? and 2) if we do, and we read it alongside the Browne report on higher ed (and do read Stefan Collini's article in the LRB on that front), should we be worried about it as a vision for education which isn't really doing any favours for the social status of traditional crafts? 

Completely unrelated to any of the above (unless we get into spectral ethnography; but that's only my new favourite thing on Tuesdays), Peter Ackroyd has a new book out about the English ghost.  Related to the spectres of English Catholicism, apparently.

And speaking of ... the CofE blogosphere has been firing busily over news not only of the ordinariate but of every women-back-in-the-kitchen brigade charging out to form their own non-secret society.  As I imagine it, a Society of St Teatowel and St Nappy meeting would consist of a chorus of "more tea, vicar?" from 1950s housewives.  It could all go horribly wrong when the housewives turn out to actually be Sharon's Dita Von Teese-themed hen night.