SURVIVING THE CAPITAL: A DARWINIAN ANALYSIS OF ELIZABETH GASKELL’S NORTH AND SOUTH

Year 2021, Volume: 7 Issue: 1, 11 - 26, 01.06.2021

Güzide Uysal

Abstract

The rapid progression of industrialism and capitalism in the Victorian era influenced the authors to reflect the changing human condition in their literary works. Questions about the borders of the relationship between capital owners and their workers, terrible conditions of the workplaces and the insignificance of human life started to be discussed widely in the Victorian literature. Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South (1854) similarly reflects the radical contrast between the industrialized cities and the rural life through the eyes of the protagonist Margaret. Margaret’s travel to an industrialized town and her curious gazes on the working-class people when she encounters them for the first time emphasize how industrialization trifles with human life, as Margaret and the working-class people observe each other as if they belong to different species. The confrontation of two alienated groups who examine each other in Gaskell’s novel bears a resemblance to Charles Darwin’s encounter with the indigenous people who live primitively and try to survive in the wild nature in The Voyage of the Beagle (1839). To provide reasons for the alienation effect between the two group, Marxist terms base, superstructure and hegemony will be used and explained. Furthermore, depending on the parallelism between the indigenous people and the working-class people whose only concern is to survive under harsh conditions, this article is going to connect Darwin’s theories of the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest in On the Origin of Species (1859) with Gaskell’s novel. In accordance with Darwin’s theory, it will be pointed out that while physically weak characters cannot adapt to the harsh living conditions and gradually die one by one, Margaret and Thornton get married because they are preserved as the fittest members to create stronger offsprings for the next generation.

Keywords

Victorian, North and South, Darwin, Marxism, On the Origin of the Species, base and superstructure

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