Margaret Hale

Margaret Hale is the heroine of Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 novel North and South.

Initially, Gaskell wanted the title of the novel to be Margaret Hale, but Charles Dickens, the editor of Household Words, the magazine in which the novel was serialized, insisted on North and South.

From Chapter Two:

From Chapter Seven:

Margaret was a character created to challenge stereotypes about women's role in the 19th century.

The theme of challenging stereotypes is one which is integral throughout the novel.

Margaret Hale is nineteen years old and before she was 10, lived in Helstone in Hampshire, in the south of England, with her parents—Richard, a Anglican minister, and Maria—and older brother, Frederick.

When she was nine years old, Margaret was sent to live in London with her aunt, Mrs Shaw, and cousin.

Edith and Margaret were the same age, and became fast friends.

Frederick, meanwhile, joined the Royal Navy.

Once at sea, he took part in a mutiny against his cruel captain.

The Hales realized that Frederick, branded a traitor, would be hanged if he ever returned to England.

When the girls grew up, Edith married Capt. Lennox.

Lennox had a younger brother, Henry, who became infatuated with Margaret.

She rejected his advances, and chose to move back to Helstone.

Mr Hale, however, had begun to question his faith and the doctrines laid out in the Book of Common Prayer.

When asked to renew his vows by the bishop, Mr Hale could not.

Quitting his profession, Mr Hale moved his wife and daughter to Milton, in the north of England, where he took up work as a tutor.

One of Mr Hale's pupils is a local mill owner, John Thornton.

Margaret takes an instant dislike to Thornton, seeing him as the embodiment of the harsh, working-class north.

Margaret, feeling homesick, romanticizes the south.

Mr Thornton, on the other hand, is immediately struck by Margaret.

"He did not understand who she was," when he first saw her, "as he caught the simple, straight, unabashed look, which showed that his being there was of no concern to the beautiful countenance, and called up no flush of surprise to the pale ivory of the complexion. He had heard that Mr. Hale had a daughter, but he had imagined that she was a little girl."

Margaret eventually comes to feel at home in the north; she makes friends, including Bessy Higgins, a dying young woman.

The workers in all of the mills around Milton are dissatisfied and strike.

As the strikers grow desperate, a mob of workers comes to the Thornton's house, where Margaret is calling on Mrs Thornton, John's mother, and his sister Fanny.

Thornton goes out to speak to the rioters at Margaret's behest.

Afraid that they will kill him, Margaret rushes out to Thornton.

Margaret believes that no one would try to hurt a woman, and throws her arms around Thornton, to protect him.

Margaret is mistaken, however.

A rock is thrown from the crowd by a "group of lads", and Margaret is knocked out.

Mrs Thornton, who is wary of Margaret and her son's affection for her, surmises that Margaret acted as she did out of love for Mr Thornton.

She tells her son so, and Thornton proposes to Margaret.

Margaret insists that it was her responsibility to save him because she had sent him out to talk to the men, and that she would have done the same thing for any other "poor desperate man in that crowd".

Mrs Hale, even less happy to be in Milton than Margaret, is dying.

She wants to see Frederick one last time, so Margaret secretly writes to him in Spain, where he has been living.

Frederick comes to visit the Hales in Milton, and manages to stay hidden before she dies.

When Margaret takes Frederick to the train station, to get him out of Milton; they are seen by three people.

The first, Mr Thornton, sees Margaret with an unknown man "with whom she had stood in an attitude of such familiar confidence".

Margaret sees him watching her, and spends much of the rest of the novel bearing the guilt of having fallen from Thornton's regard.