영국의 상황과 여성: 『북과 남』 = Condition of England and Woman: North and South

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Carlyle`s phrase Condition-of-England encompasses the major difficulties of industrial society: political inequality, economic inequities and spiritual impoverishment. To Gaskell it summons up economic inequities that rendered England two nations. Her second industrial novel, North and South, examines what role a woman can do in curing the Condition-of-England. The heroine is Gaskell`s agent to initigate the bitterness of class division: her job is to bring feminine influence as a mediating force in class antagonism. When the heroine`s intervention is more private and less direct, it is adopted in the public world by men themselves. But when she directly intervenes in the public matter, the contradiction between her interpretation of feminine influence and society`s definition of sexual propriety is made painfully visible. Female public appearance itself is associated with illicit sexuality. The heroine`s achievement is impeded by the disabling sexual ideology: she loses her right to question the ethics of industrial society because she fails to maintain her own moral integrity. Though Gaskell offers a vision of class reconciliation, she fudges the important issue that she has raised, the contradiction within feminine influence