Reconstructing the Gentleman Ideal in Elizabeth Gaskell's 'North and South'

Seminar paper from the year 2017 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0, University of Wuppertal, language: English, abstract: This paper will look at the gentleman ideal from two perspectives: the 'old' ideal before the Victorian Age and the Victorian ideal of a gentleman. The following chapter will provide these ideals by reconstructing them with the help of texts that look at them from a retrospect and also, in case of the Victorian gentleman ideal, by looking at a frequently quoted contemporary work: Samuel Smiles' 'Self Help'. Afterwards the findings will be used to analyse the gentleman ideal that is represented by three different male characters of Gaskell's novel: the London lawyer Henry Lennox, the Milton factory owner John Thornton and the Milton factory worker Nicholas Higgins, in order to find out which ideal these three male characters display. So that at the end it becomes clear which ideal is represented in 'North and South'. In Elizabeth Gaskell's novel 'North and South' the author presents the reader with the world of Victorian England during the industrialisation, a time at which change was a daily occurrence. With the rise of the middle-class society changed and therefore it is not surprising that even a well established social factor as the gentleman ideal changed during that period of time.