Department Chair
Dr. Ralph L. Wahlstrom, Associate Professor of English
Date of Award
5-2012
Access Control
Open Access
Degree Name
English, M.A.
Department
English Department
Advisor
Karen Sands-O'Connor, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English
Department Home page
http://english.buffalostate.edu/
First Reader
Karen Sands-O'Connor, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English
Second Reader
Lisa Berglund, Ph.D, Ph.D., Associate Professor of English
Abstract
Abstract
One of the results of the industrialization of Victorian England was a further straining of the relationship between the rich and poor. This was evidenced by events such as the Preston Strike, a prolonged labor battle between the workers and the masters of the cotton mills. Charles Dickens’s periodical Household Words covered the strike on two occasions, with Dickens himself writing the second article on the event. An attempt to bridge this cultural divide between the classes was undertaken by Elizabeth Gaskell in North and South, a novel that first appeared in Household Words and by Dickens himself in his novel Hard Times. While both novels focus on interior domestic spaces, their intended results are dramatically different. Elizabeth Gaskell uses interior space in North and South to defend English Paternalism by asking for increased sympathy for both master and worker, while Dickens uses interior space in Hard Times as a metaphor for the tyranny of Utilitarianism and to criticize the idea of mastery.
Recommended Citation
Bowers, Ryan P., "Master of Your Domain: Descriptions of Interior Space in the Works of Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell as Social Justice Commentary" (2012). English Theses. 6.
https://digitalcommons.buffalostate.edu/english_theses/6
