“A bridge of silver wings stretches from the dead ashes of an unforgiving nightmare
to the jeweled vision of a life started anew.”
― Journey through the Power of the Rainbow: Quotations from a Life Made Out of Poetry
Two elements in every story are a death and resurrection. Death to a dream. Death of a loved one. Death to a career. But we also experience a resurrection. That’s what gives beauty its wings. It’s the ripening in the soil of adversity that forges character in the human soul.
For the month of October, we’re going to explore how beauty is expressed in story, breaking it down in literature, poetry, and real life.
One of the inspiring stories in literature that illustrates this resilient beauty is Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South. Written and published in 1854-55, the story follows the life of Margaret Hale, a clergyman’s daughter. Since nine years old, she lived in London with her wealthy aunt and cousin, but at nineteen, she returns to pastoral Helstone in the south to live with her parents.
Her life in Helstone is short-lived. Margaret finds herself packing to move to the unfamiliar, Industrial north. Her father resigns from the clergy on moral grounds and finds employment in the manufacturing town of Milton as a tutor.
Here’s an excerpt from the night she discovers her father had submitted his resignation to the Church and they’re now moving north.
“That morning, when she had looked out, her heart had danced at seeing the bright clear lights on the church tower, which foretold a fine and sunny day. This evening-sixteen hours at most had past by-she sat down, too full of sorrow to cry, but with the cold dull pain, which seemed to have pressed her youth and buoyancy out of her heart, never to return.”
She experiences several “deaths” throughout the novel:
- Death of the pastoral south and it’s agricultural beauty (hedgerow and roses on her parents’ property).
- Death to the ease of life she was accustomed, living with her wealthy aunt and cousin in London society.
- Death of her former standards of social etiquette. (The Milton etiquette is direct, often caustic.)
- Death to her ignorant views of laborers and mill owners. (She first looks upon mill owners as tyrannical.)
- Physical death of her family.
- Death to finding love.
Her strong will and moral character get pushed to the limits as she experiences severe adversity and witnesses deep depravity. She has to let go of her former predispositions on industry, social classes, and family expectations.
She works herself to exhaustion almost every night since they only have their beloved Dixon, their loyal housekeeper from Helstone, full time. The other hired help at Milton are nominal and act entitled. Margaret irons, cleans, mends, and cooks. And she is lonely among unfamiliar society, feeling out of place especially when she makes social gaffes.
But Margaret perseveres and adjusts to Milton, it’s ways and its people. She befriends Nicholas Higgins, a factory worker, and his two adult daughters. The eldest, Betsy, becomes her closest friend but she’s ailing from byssinosis (a lung disease caused by exposure to cotton dust in poorly ventilated working spaces).
When Margaret’s ailing mother dies followed shortly by the unexpected death of her father, Margaret moves to London to live with her aunt. But after awhile, she discovers she doesn’t like London society and wants the familiarity and commerce of Milton. Now an unexpected heiress, she has the means to make her own decisions.
“Then her thoughts went back to Milton, with a strange sense of the contrast between the life there and here. She was getting surfeited of the eventless ease in which no struggle or endeavour was required. She was afraid lest she should even become sleepily deadened into forgetfulness of anything beyond the life which was lapping her round with luxury.”
Her resurrection occurs after she heals from grief and receives an unexpected inheritance from her wealthy, but recently deceased godfather, Mr. Bell. Henry Lennox, an admirer and her cousin’s brother in-law, notices the beautiful change Margaret experiences. He discusses the change with Edith, Margaret’s cousin:
“The sea has done Miss Hale an immense deal of good, I should fancy,” said he, when she first left the room after his arrival in their family circle. “She looks ten years younger than she did in Harley Street.”
“That’s the bonnet I got her!” said Edith, triumphantly. “I knew it would suit her the moment I saw it.”
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Lennox, in the half-contemptuous, half-indulgent tone he generally used to Edith. “But I believe I know the difference between the charms of a dress and the charms of a woman. No mere bonnet would have made Miss Hale’s eyes so lustrous and yet so soft, or her lips so ripe and red—and her face altogether so full of peace and light.—She is like, and yet more,”—he dropped his voice,—“like the Margaret Hale of Helstone.”
She stops conforming to the social expectations of her aunt. She partners with Henry Lennox in an attempt redeem her brother from mutiny charges during his time in the British Navy, and to restore Marlborough Mills, Mr. Thornton’s cotton mill that he has to close.
And she realizes that home is not in London or Helstone, but in Milton, the place that became the forging of her character. The place of death that also serves as a resurrection.
Margaret was only too willing to listen as long as he talked of Milton, though he had seen none of the people whom she more especially knew. It had been the tone with her aunt and cousin to speak of Milton with dislike and contempt; just such feelings as Margaret was ashamed to remember she had expressed and felt on first going to live there. But Mr. Lennox almost exceeded Margaret in his appreciation of the character of Milton and its inhabitants. Their energy, their power, their indomitable courage in struggling and fighting; their lurid vividness of existence, captivated and arrested his attention…Henry Lennox found out that an enquiry as to some Darkshire peculiarity of character called back the light into her eye, the glow into her cheek.
How about you? What story demonstrates the beauty of death and a resurrection? Please share in Comments below. Thank you.