Something I loved about Mr. Thornton from the first time I saw North & South
Nicholas Higgins (Brendan Coyle) and Mr. Thornton (Richard Armitage) shake hands in farewell at their meeting at the closing of Marlborough Mills. Source: Richard Armitage Central Gallery. Note the way the parting of the cuff enhances the impression of Mr. Armitage’s powerful thumb here.
What did I love about Mr. Thornton? That he has dirt on his hands, as if he’s been fishing around in the guts of a malfunctioning loom himself and has gotten oil ground into the cuticles of his hands that no rag, but only a nailbrush, will get out.
It’s another testament to the amazing dedication of the North & South production team. Of the productions in which Armitage has appeared that I’ve seen, this is the team that pays the most attention to detail and boy, does it pay off in characterization, especially for the alert viewer. They actually make tv at the level at which I look at it, and realize the significance of continuity.
(As opposed to the Spooks team, which makes a continuity error in Lucas’s flat every time they turn around, it seems. Lucas, you deserved better. Interestingly, a graduate student with whom I work rather closely who’s writing a dissertation on cinematographic debates in Nazi Germany told me recently that continuity in the ways we understand it and expect to see it now was not always a central assumption of film editing. In Spooks 8 these errors are frequent enough that one wonders if it they were intentional.)
Anyway the point is not to condemn Spooks 8, but to praise the way that the dirty fingernails help us to understand Mr. Thornton in North & South as a hardworking, upstanding man, even in defeat.
Me + Richard Armitage 
Some thoughts of mine that came with your quotes:
“..the dirty fingernails help us to understand Mr. Thornton in North & South as a hardworking, upstanding man, even in defeat.”
1. LOL! I shall rate this differently in RL from now on.
2. Referring to your high status/low status posts, are you?
“That he has dirt on his hands, as if he’s been fishing around in the guts of a malfunctioning loom himself and has gotten oil ground into the cuticles of his hands that no rag, but only a nailbrush, will get out.”
1. He is mentally in a bad state and is neglecting himself (his brooming)
2. He doesn´t care for general societal moral, because in the North things are perceived differently.
3. He had fist fights or repairwork at the mill
If you could enlighten me at which point this handshake is in the story, then I could give it some background.
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Quoting myself: “If you could enlighten me at which point this handshake is in the story, then I could give it some background.”
You did in the first line! Overlooked it.
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I noticed the dirty fingernails in his handshake with Higgins and have thought it expressed the amount of work he had to do in packing up the mill. I think it depicts all of the above points that Violet refers to. Not being a gentleman he prefers to do this himself, rather than leaving it to others, he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty, it’s his life’s work and he wants to be the one who sees to things, even up to the last minute, he mucks in alongside his men. Later, at the railway station when he meets up with Margaret, his fingernails are scrupulously clean, a sign that he has been forced to be idle for the best part of a year? What he has been living on since the mill closed is shrouded in mystery and I don’t remember Elizabeth Gaskell explaining it in the book.
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There’s a year between the closing of the mill and the love scene? I totally missed that.
Something that’s confusing about the scene wandering through the flowers is that in the film it appears to take place just before the train scene because the flower is still alive, but in the book I believe it says he went to Helstone on his way back from Le Havre when he was checking out prices, and the flower is dried and kept in his wallet …
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I think the year reference comes from the book not the adaptation.
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Let’s be precise – Chapter 51 when Thornton visits the house in Harley Strreet and they finally meet again. “It was considerably more than a year since she had seen him; and events had occurred to change him much in that time.”
I think the adaptation implies a much shorter period apart though – less than six months if you consider the change in weather from snowing in the Look Back scene and high summer when Thornton visits Helstone.
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Of course it could be a year and a half in the adaptation, which would be more consistent with the book 🙂 but somehow that feels wrong to me.
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This is fantastic, kaprekar, I don’t have my copy of the book with me. However: even in the book she leaves Milton well before the mill closes, no? And that would have been the last time she’d have seen him. So that “considerably more than a year” is dating from her departure from Milton?
The thing is that in the book he’s in London specifically to discuss the dissolution of his lease of the mill (which she holds). Would he really have waited a year, or even six months, to take care of that?
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Yes I believe the “considerably more than a year” is from her departure from Milton, not the date of the mill closure which I understand to be much more recent when they meet in London.
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In the film, we also have the clue of Edith saying it’s been three months since Margaret’s mother’s death (and she’s still wearing mourning … well, duh. It’s the 1850s in England.) Obviously we don’t know how quickly the successive events follow each other, but this suggests that the time frame between meetings in the film is considerably shorter…
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@kaprekar and servetus: confirmation of what you say from page 561 of my Penguin Red Classic version of North and South: [in Aunt Shaw’s drawing room]
“Margaret looked with an anxious eye at Mr Thornton while he was thus occupied. It was considerably more than a year since she had seen him; …”
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Regional grooming standards, I discount because (a) it doesn’t fit with his class profile in the remainder of the film. (b) He’s depressed — I’m willing to buy into that, although his clothing in the scene is absolutely correct.
It’s totally contextual after all. I just noticed that my own fingernails are rather dirty, which indicates slothfulness on my part, not moral fibre!
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I noticed this too when I watched this scene the other day (so that I could watch him say, “He was her brother,” again) and thought it was telling. Those fingernails were really quite dirty! It doesn’t surprise me that they would be at this moment, given how many times we’ve seen Thornton sacrifice his body to keep things going during the course of the film. It’s just surprising that the detail would be included on film.
OT – I also love it when Higgins says, “Him that were there when the mother were dying.” It makes me want to hear him talk so much more to get to the bottom of the grammar construction of the level/geographic part of society he is representing.
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I find it interesting that the film simplifies the lower class syntax of the mill workers SO much. I mean, I know why that happens, but I wonder where the syntax of the mill workers in the film comes from, then.
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I should have said, “simplifies the lower class syntaix of the mill workers SO much” in comparison to the book. Like the book has Higgins making the first person feminine pronoun “hoo” instead of “she.” Apologies.
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Yes that difference stands out even more in the Audio version read by Juliet Stevenson, her Nicolas Higgins dialect is the most challenging as are her other different accents for the other characters are rewarding. Tip for the frugal: when you sign up with Audible you get one free credit.
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Glad to hear that this version is worthwhile, it’s been on my “maybe” list for awhile.
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It enhances the book. The trick is to remember to close your account with Audible before the end of the month.
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Thank you for a very interesting blog! I’ve been reading this for some time now and have enjoyed it very much. I’d love to read more about your thoughts concerning N&S and RA:s role in it!
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Thanks, linnea, that’s very kind of you — and welcome. I think about it a lot, as it was my Armitage “gateway drug,” and I still watch it quite a bit. I taught it in a class this spring and had to stop after we finished that unit, but I picked it up again in mid-May and have seen it several more times. I haven’t been writing much about it, though, because I assume that after six years pretty much everything has been said!
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” after six years pretty much everything has been said!”
From your point of view, I don’t think so! 😉
OML 🙂
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🙂 Giggle! How well you know me.
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I agree with OneMoreLurker, I’m sure you would have interesting things to say about N&S and JT. I was hoping that kind of analysis you did about Guy of Gisbourne a few weeks ago.
I saw N&S five years ago for the first time and fell in love immediately. Since 2005 I’ve seen it countless times, I can’t even guess how many times (20? 30?) and I still find new things in it. I’ve been reading blogs about RA and his shows only for about six months but I haven’t noticed any deep analysis about N&S. I seldom read fan forums because I find them quite tiresome and confusing so I was hoping you would write a coherent analysis about N&S 🙂
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I’m flattered, linnea, so I won’t hesitate to write and post if my thoughts move in that direction. I agree that N&S is an amazingly subtle, fascinating document of his acting, and worth analysis, not least because it represents a quantum leap from his earlier roles in terms of how much the production relies on him specifically. I really believe him in the interview on the N&S DVD when he says that getting cast was a shock, and that moving on from there presented him with a huge mountain to climb. Anyway, from what I understand the oldest parts of the C19 board have lots of extended discussions of N&S. I’ve never looked for them, though — I am often reading on less than optimal internet connections and all the paging around and refreshing screens becomes onerous when you’ve got intermittent wireless and every third page load comes up empty.
I think the discussion boards are great for discussion, but for coherent thought or really sustained analytical results, not so much — too much pressure to not take up space in the discussion for wordy thinkers like me. However, I think the existence of those boards and the fact that people have participated in them with so much dedication for so many years has really bolstered Mr. Armitage’s career, so I am very thankful to the people who are there and who continue to sustain them. Also, a clear advantage is that the buy in is so much less. If you start write a blog, what happens if you run out of things to say after six months? The boards let people be involved at a less intense level if that is what they prefer.
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The discussion boards are useful and interesting and I do read them occasionally. I think I find them a bit tiring because I’m more of a lurker than an active writer in the online world and because the interesting, i.e. RA related ;), boards are in English and I’m not a native English speaker. For example you have to learn lots of acronyms etc informal ways of express yourself just to be able to follow the discussions and you can’t just look them up in a dictionary.
Looks like I’ve turned out to be a quite chatty lurker. I look forward reading your analysis on N&S if you decide to post one. In the meantime I enjoy your thoughts about the other works of RA 🙂
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Hello Linnea, if you hadn’t mentioned English wasn’t your native language I wouldn’t have known. At some point one stops worrying about such details and just dives in like you just apparently did!
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I wouldn’t have known, either. You’re amazing!
Maybe I’ll write some posts in German or Spanish.
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Thank you for your kind words! I guess I must also thank the Finnish school system that made me study English all the way through comprehensive school and high school (10 years!) and I also took some English courses when I was studying at the university. It is a lot easier to be a fan of RA if you understand English so studying was definitely worth all the trouble!
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Finnish. Wow. Now there’s a difficult language! I’m relieved that you learned English, as I think it never would have worked out for me to “meet” you in the reverse.
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I noticed the dirt under JT’s fingernails too and thought it was endearing. I love the mutual respect between JT & Higgins and the handshake was one of those “aww…” moments for me.
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Yes. Seriously heart warming. I have to say that even without the final scene, episode 4 of North and South, with all its Higgins / Thornton developments, might be my favorite of the four episodes.
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Thought I’d share the joy I felt when finding North & South for FREE on the AppStore last night. Now have it on my iPhone/iPad as the book itself has been left behind during the holidays. Have a feeling I’ll have to read the book again as it has been a while.
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That would almost be a reason to get an iPhone, LOL!
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The best part of the Stanza app (my favorite) is the ability to look up quotes and make bookmarks for favorite passages and such. All classics are considered public domain, I have an iPod touch and it’s great to always have a bunch of books in my pocket. The other app I like is wattpad where people post
books and fanfic so you don’t have to
read it in Safari. But I won’t mention my fave is to have a playlist of fanvids besides RA movies for when away from home.
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I do not have anything to add to this conversation, other than I too love this detail. The fact that Thornton would get “his hands dirty,” makes him all the more loveable. On a side note, I love his hands, I am a “hand girl” and they are perfect, long, strong, elegant and manily. Those are hands that I’d like on…oh, nevermind.
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And the North and South camera man is quite obsessed with following the hands around the screen. This is one of the indices that’s most useful to my students in understanding the relationship of Victorian manners to class arrangements at mid-19th c.
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A quote from the book about Thornton and Higgin’s relationship which is beautifully brought to life in Sandy Welch’s adaptation:
“[Mr Thornton] and [the common people of Milton] had led parallel lives – very close, never touching – til the accident (or so it seemed)of his acquaintance with Higgins. Once brought face to face, man to man, with an individual of the masses around him, and (take notice) out of the character of master and workman, in the first instance, they had each begun to recognize that ‘we have all of us one human heart.'”
I think it’s telling that for Gaskell the realisation is on both their parts. Higgins has had his pre-conceived notions as much as Thornton.
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[…] get in another object lesson about the value of work that reproduces their earlier stances. We’ve already discussed the significance of the dirt under Thornton’s nails as an index of his active presence in the factory, even in defeat. Here, again, Higgins reminds us […]
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me + mr thornton, episode 4(a)6 « Me + Richard Armitage said this on June 2, 2012 at 5:51 pm |