With N & S, i mainly focused on the areas of religion and industry and you could also include marriage. These are bits from one of my assessments:
In particular, the Industrial Revolution, during the Victorian era, had caused immense social upheaval. It was the introduction of new concepts, ideas and a new lifestyle. It caused a great disturbance to the economic structure, particularly as a result of the introduction of the proletariat, who seemed to be in continual conflict with the bourgeoisie. There was also the issue of the opposition of views regarding the benefits of the growth of industry. The belief was that either, "a working-man may raise himself into the power and position of master of his own exertion or behaviour" or "that the whole of society must fall apart into the two classes, the property owners and the property less workers". Either way, the Revolution gave rise to a number of concepts regarding the relationship between the individual and society.
Membership of a society can be seen as a strength, as one is part of a majority as opposed to the minority of an individual. A society represents the common belief, it has great influence and the ability to impact upon decisions made regarding its welfare. If an issue caused concern to a member of society, it was more than likely that the majority of the society would hold a similar view. Thus, they would unite to overcome the problem.
This is evident by the establishment of a vast number of Unions. Unions represented the needs of the workers' population. The main influence of the creation of Unions was the belief that a society exerts greater strength as opposed to acting as an individual. Thus, a master would be apprehensive of the workers, due to their power, and would be more reluctant to displease the workers. If circumstances arose which did not suit the Union, such as the lowering of wages, they would rebel and as was the common practice, in the form of a strike, which did not cease until the demands of the Union were met.
However, this belief did not always prove to be effective as can be seen by the Union's strike in Gaskell's, North and South. Once again, the strike was in order to improve the wages of the workers, " 'They are wanting higher wages, I suppose?' ". The workers believed that the masters' wealth was increasing as a result of the former's labour and rather than their efforts being acknowledged, they were simply ignored. This belief was similar to the commentary of Marx, during this period, in relation to the treatment of the worker, "the worker becomes all the poorer the more wealth he produces".
Although the strike was designed to cause an upset to the master, whose wealth was dependent on the actions of the worker, the Union suffered a similar fate. The two societies, the masters and men, were in continual conflict with each other, " 'I never lived in a society where there were two sets of people always running each other down' ". They had not come to an agreement or a resolution that suited both parties and so the strike continued, resulting in the diminishing wealth of the master and the suffering of the men and their families. Not only did the workers individually suffer, but the Union also became unstable, as there were workers such as Boucher, who opposed the Union and were seen as a threat as their actions could not be monitored, thus were faced with hostility, " 'he comes among us, he works among us, but he's none o' us' ". It was only when the suffering could not reach any higher level, that the two societies were forced to come to an agreement.
If this is helpful in any way i can e-mail you the rest of my notes!
