![]() ![]() ![]() The dripping raindrops on the window are at first a generic background noise, yet they gradually turn towards an unexpected sort of measurement - one that carves a rhythm (‘drip-drip’) out of that generalized passing of time. Margaret breaks off disagreeable conversation to do nothing, but empty time in North and South tends to fall into a structure. Once or twice Margaret found herself mechanically counting the repetition of the monotonous sound’ (21). Margaret responds with demonstrative inattention: ‘On such evenings Margaret was apt to stop talking rather abruptly, and listen to the drip-drip of the rain upon the leads of the little bow-window. In the evenings, her mother tends to complain about the ‘unhealthy’ climate of the area, about Mr Hale’s parochial duties that often take him out of the house, or about the family’s lack of money. ![]() Provincial domestic time, however, is difficult to adapt to. ![]() After living with her fashionable aunt in London and sharing the education of her cousin Edith, Margaret has returned, on Edith’s marriage, to her parents’ small parsonage in Helstone in the New Forest. At the opening of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South, the protagonist Margaret Hale faces a problem with temporality. ![]()
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