My first week as a senior in college just flew by and one of the first things I have actually retained from this insane week of pages and pages of reading and lectures and notes was what inspired me to start this blogging-group of “rantings”. For my English senior seminar we started with Florence Nightingale’s Cassandra a piece, highly influential in both feminist and literary circles, but virtually unknown outside of them. Besides my rather naive assumption Nightingale was only and nurse (and one of those sweet ones as well) I knew little about her.
Cassandra was never published in Nightingale’s own lifetime, but her thought-provoking ideas about her own era are astonishing. Astonishing because of just what she expresses in the Polemic. While reading her demands for social revision, I couldn’t help but think of Elizabeth Gaskell, whose novel North and South was published in 1885: only 3 years after Nightingale wrote Cassandra.
My goal is merely this: one, READ both of these fabulous works by brilliant women writers; and two, perhaps the cry of women’s vocation is more complex than we have known. Nightingale is in many ways arguing for the overall right to man’s work so women may be productive, Gaskell is highlighting a woman who does this in a man’s world. (Just as Nightingale did) Can they both be progressive entities for the same argument? Is Margaret Hale not progressive because she doesn’t demand her privileges for all womanhood? Is she not progressive because she marries Thornton in the end?
In Cassandra, Nightingale demands a new type of society for women; she demands a place where man’s work can also be woman’s work and that a woman’s time should be just a valuable. A crude, over simplification, I know, but for my purposes here, enough. Compared the Nightingale, Gaskell seems the saint of conservatives, an advocate for the angel in the house, and yet her character Margaret Hale is as brash and outspoken as Nightingale herself. (I’m not even going into how fabulously an argument could be made for Mrs. Thornton here.)
Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe in BBC's 2004 adaptation
Unlike Nightingale who rejects the social constructions of the 19th century, finding power then outside the normatives of Victorian life, Margaret takes power in the social constructions. I would, however, argue that Margaret Hale is not the typical type of charitable woman: she has thoughts, gives them decidedly, and seems to lack that simpering, delicate nature Fanny Thornton desperately wishes toto have. Certainly, we see a vocal and confident woman in Margaret upon her actions at the mill riot, as well as in her charity during the strike.
How are these actions justified? Margaret Hale for all intensive purposes has no mother (she acts as the mother figure much more than her own ill mother does), she has her rank as a clergyman’s daughter, and she’s read. She has a knowledge of language, and literature, as well as current events which rival any of the men’s knowledge in the novel—including her love interest John Thornton. Considering Nightingale’s demands, Margaret Hale seems to be her ideal woman. She has work to which she fully dedicated herself to, although far more abstract than Nightingale outlines, and is single-mindedly focused on pursuing her “vocation” fully.
Perhaps it is Gaskell’s outlook on society which is more progressive and forgiving than Nightingale. After all, the social circles they are viewing are quite different. Nightingale’s argument and rebukes and leveled square at her own class—the upper class. Gaskell’s novel focuses on the destitute and those how encounter them first hand. Yes her characters are gentlemen and ladies, but more connected individuals than those Nightingale is targeting.
Margaret’s outspoken ways seem to be at least heard and, while not fully welcome by other women, accepted in the North. She is not a woman abominably out of her place by speaking her mind. Thornton, in fact, loves her for her caring and determination, as well as other aspects which mark her and quite unladylike.
The question then is not about woman’s work in society, so much as society itself and the scale on which women wish their value known. Placing these novels in conflict is far more a hindrance than helpful, but somehow I feel neither woman would very much care for the other, or their opinion.
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