Bridging the Gap Between Neighbors

In my British novel class this semester, I have been teaching Elizabeth Gaskell’s North & South (from the mid-Victorian era). Some folks know this novel through the same way I originally become acquainted with it: as the 2004 BBC mini-series. While I love the mini-series, it makes several alterations to the characters and their interactions.

One such difference comes in the proposal scene, when John Thornton, a no-nonsense businessman, reveals his powerful feelings for Margaret Hale, the newcomer to town. Margaret is an Anglican Christian, whose strong faith throughout the novel ministers to her family and friends in times of loss and grief. Yet, she struggles throughout, as Thornton does, with a strong self-will—and, in the first half of the novel, a prejudice against Mr. Thornton. This prejudice, along with the unexpected strength of Thornton’s professed feelings and an overwhelming embarrassment, prompts Margaret to respond to Thornton’s proposal harshly. She doesn’t just reject his proposal of marriage, she rejects him as a person: 

Thornton: “I know you despise me; allow me to say, it is because you do not understand me.”

Margaret: “I do not care to understand.”

Hadrian's Wall, England

While Thornton, himself no great understander of Margaret, at least tries to bridge the gap between them by offering to open himself to her, Margaret shuts down this opportunity. She does not care to understand him. This barrier remains between them for much of the rest of the novel. How unfortunate that Margaret, otherwise in many parts of the novel an example of Christian faith, hope, and love, should be such a poor example when it comes to her interactions with this particular neighbor.

I am reminded of a passage from the end of what is often considered C.S. Lewis’s greatest speech or sermon, “The Weight of Glory”: “You have never talked to a mere mortal,” states Lewis.

“Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit. . . . This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind . . . which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. . . . Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses. If he is your Christian neighbour, he is holy in almost the same way, for in him also Christ . . . is truly hidden.”

Rather than approaching her “neighbor,” Mr. Thornton, who, at great risk, has laid his feelings bare before her, as if he were a “holy object” with an immortal soul, Margaret has approached him with superiority and presumption. She is sorry for her harshness afterward, but the damage to that neighbor has been done. It takes Margaret’s humbling “fall” and Thornton’s charity in protecting her from its consequences before their relationship begins to be repaired.