ABSTRACT
The 2004 BBC adaptation of North and South creates a sense of historical immediacy by adding a scene where several of the central characters travel by the newly popular railway, converging at the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851. While this historical event is not included in Gaskell's original text, it is a valid addition: The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations focalizes the impetus of progress in Gaskell's text, as well as the crises of modernity, both spatially and culturally, within mid-nineteenth-century Britain. London's centrality to the Empire is critiqued most often through Mr. Thornton's arguments against centralized government, but even more crucially, we vividly encounter the unrelenting speed of change and progress. In a manner that resonates with cultural anxieties of the early twenty-first century, nineteenth-century culture and society were running to catch up with the ethical and philosophical implications of rapid scientific and technological advancement. In terms of transportation, the advancement of the railway meant not only more extensive travel, but also faster travel—which both literally and metaphorically represented the increased physical access to other cultural spaces. This meant an increased possibility of cultural conflict, not just in terms of colonial encounters or traveling to the exotic Orient or the East, but even within the borders of Great Britain. In Gaskell's North and South (1854–1855), the conflict is even more localized, specifically within England. The term “foreigner” is used repeatedly, not just for the imported Irish “knobsticks” (233), but also for those who move from the South of England to the North. Although the South is part of the same nation, it is being written in terms of a different country, with different cultural values, social and political systems, and language.
