Searching for the Famine Remnants in Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South

Abstract

Abstract:In North and South, the Irish are never part of a fully developed plot of their own. The Irish workers' actions, dialogues, and feelings are never clearly presented as a first-hand experience but mediated through third parties who talk about them and act in their name. Most notably, the starving Irish are almost invisible in the mob scene as well as in other scenes where they never appear in person. They are in the background, pushed literally and figurately to the remote corners of the mill and the narrative. Theirs is a double silencing by both the English factory owners and the English workers. Although their presence is in shadows and their voices are silenced in the narrative, these workers set the tone for the most climactic and critical moments of the novel.