me + mr thornton, episode 4(a)6

It’s underway! Don’t forget about the North & South global rewatch, scheduled for June 1 and 2! Times are here. Directions for connection are here.

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[Previous pieces of the argument: the prologue; here episode one; here episode two; continuing with (episode 3a), (episode 3b), (episode 3c), and (addendum to episode 3). Same disclaimers / warnings apply as in previous posts. A short reminder of the way I started this series in the prologue: “What I write about Thornton … I also write of myself.” This is a personal interpretation. Also, a quick reminder that in my interpretation I’m reading from the series alone as a document and my capacity for critical perspective on it as a human and a historian — I don’t consider the book centrally in these interpretations because I didn’t read it until I had seen the series approximately twenty times.]

[This is the last piece of my account of my response to episode 4 of North & South as based on the theme of work. Previous parts of this piece: episode(s) 4(a)1 and 4(a)2 and 4(a)3 and 4(a)4 and 4(a)5.  There are also some great comments on the posts in these series. Do not neglect them; my readers have as much or more insight as I. Also, if you haven’t seen it, check out CDoart’s thoughtful response to my criticism of Thornton’s attitude in the conversation with Latimer, here.]

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Mr. Thornton (Richard Armitage) kisses Margaret (Daniela-Denby Ashe) and makes the whole story better in episode 4 of North & South. Except he doesn’t. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

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All that’s left is to finish up. At the end of the last section, I acknowledged that adherence to principle and love of work were potentially sufficient to keep Thornton standing in the wake of such a colossal failure, and thus valuable on that score, even if they were concrete contributors to his business failure. My sympathy for Thornton’s principles and his loyalty to them and my sympathy for his attitude toward toward work, however, have to be balanced with my fears about Thornton’s future, particular as he joins his fate with that of Margaret at the end of it.

The next scene is relatively long, and given the focus on work here, I’ve edited it slightly to highlight two moments of the conversation. (Of course, it is equally a conversation about Thornton’s relationship to Margaret, so these edits are a bit arbitrary, but I’ll deal with that separately, in the section of this series on romance, when I’ll pull in what I say here and then look at the scene in its entirety.)

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Mr. Thornton (Richard Armitage), reprising our first glimpse of him in the series, looks over his mill on the last day of its operation and remembers seeing Margaret (Daniela Denby-Ashe) there for the first time, in episode 4 of North & South.

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About Thornton’s last visual survey of his now silent mill, I wish to note here primarily that it’s interesting, first, that a memory of Margaret interferes here — as if the makers want to suggest to us that a primary reason he looks so sadly over the mill relates to his loss of the place where he first encountered her, and that the many other recollections he might have associated with the mill as the place of his own victories and defeats of principle and work are forgotten. I’m not suggesting so much that this was the wrong decision on the part of the series makers — particularly if you wish, as many readers will, to follow the reading that the failure of the mill forces Thornton to realize there’s more to life than work, and that the romance with Margaret is key to this development on his part. I’m not saying “no” to that reading as much as wishing to point out that this whole scene is one not so much about romance as about principle, and even its gestures in the direction of romance relate to the articulation and centrality of principle. More of that discussion as it relates to Margaret later, however.

Pursuing the other aspects of the scene: Faced with his financial failure, Thornton will have to close the mill. But not before Higgins and Thornton 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 of the significance of work and the value of doing the job correctly, a conclusion with which Thornton certainly already agrees, although he appears to be chiding Higgins slightly for his devotion. But as anyone who works long hours know, the greeting, “Still here?” offers a an inherent self-indictment of its speaker as much as any kind of observation about the addressee, since it could not be offered in the first place unless the speaker were also “still here.”

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Higgins (Brendan Coyle) affirms the significance of work well done, and informs Thornton (Richard Armitage) that “a fair number” of Marlborough Mills workers would like to work for him again, in episode 4 of North & South.

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With his remarks, of course, Higgins reminds Thornton about the significance of keeping faith with his principles about work, although Thornton immediately points out, with a sort of dry ruefulness, his loss of the title of “master.” Even here, however, we see Higgins telling Thornton that someone else has noted and valued his virtues as an employer, with the extension of a petition of names of workers who would operate a mill for Thornton again in future, should the chance become operative. So he did sell someone — albeit it a bit late. And the final appearance of eager reader Tommy Boucher again serves as a souvenir of the positions that we have seen both men take throughout the episode. He reminds us of Higgins’ strength of principle in supporting the child of the weaker man who served as the proximate cause of the ruin of his own principled project, the strike. Equally, Tommy reminds Thornton (apparently in an optimistic way, given the kind look on his face) nostalgically of the worth of industry, hard work, and love of activity. One may fail in practice, but still, it seems, have been right in development, in activity, in industry, in principle.

And so we arrive at that last, fateful scene, the one that’s supposed to tell us how Thornton feels about himself, and how he’s changed.

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Mr. Thornton (Richard Armitage) detours to Helstone, plucks a rose, smells it, and comes to some conclusion, in episode 4 of North & South.

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Interpretively, this scene is a nightmare, the first sign that the end of the series will run its really quite tightly focused narrative off the dramatic tracks — we aren’t given a concrete time-frame for its occurrence, we don’t know where Thornton was coming from when he’s there, and worst of all, Thornton doesn’t actually say anything during the scene. All we know is that he’s traveled to Helstone; he’s walking toward, or past, the parsonage, which we’ve seen as the failed site of Margaret’s nostalgia several scenes earlier; and he plucks a one of those storied yellow flowers to keep. Armitage’s eye motions seem to suggest that Thornton’s thinking, and feeling, very intensely — and then his eyelids fall in acknowledgement of some big realization. We just don’t know what that thought is, and nothing in subsequent scenes gives us much further definite indication of its content. From the perspective of the series makers, of course, the scene is a master stroke, because as viewers, we can reasonably assign all kinds of meanings to it and so no matter how we’re reading the series, we can write the necessary emotions and recognitions onto Thornton’s behavior in it.

The most obvious, because blatantly, literally obvious, interpretation is that Thornton realizes that work is not everything, and that he needed / needs not to give everything to the mill, but to stop and smell the roses. Enjoy life. Fall in love with a beautiful English rose! Clearly, the setting also suggests a concrete reminder of Margaret and his emotions toward her, pushing us in the direction of the implicit declaration of love and presumed marital alliance with which the episode ends.

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Mr. Thornton (Richard Armitage) offers Margaret (Daniela Denby-Ashe) a Helstone rose, in the final scene of episode 4 of North & South. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

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Because the destruction of the roses (of which we’d also learned earlier) in the vicarage garden to make room for the new vicar’s children is the concrete occasion for and manifestation of Margaret’s observations about the irretrievable nature of passing time and the impossibility of going back, however, I tend to read the rose harvest additionally not as much as a romantic symbol but as a nostalgic one, indeed a troubling one. If we ask what Thornton associates with losses from passing time and the changes that come with it, we’re immediately drawn back to the symbol of Tommy Boucher, his own picture of his childish desire for advancement which was merited due to his labor, and which appears charmingly in almost every scene related to work to remind him of how hard he worked himself as a child. And let’s admit: Thornton never looks at Tommy with much acuity or penetration, at least as far as we see him doing it. He doesn’t acknowledge the potential brutality of Tommy’s life in the way that Higgins does, by rescuing him, even though Thornton and Tommy share the shame of a father who’s killed himself. Indeed, at least initially Thornton says he couldn’t have taken care of Boucher’s children, apparently believing at least at that point that the sins of the fathers accrue justly and unavoidably to the children — in the sense, perhaps, that he paid with his own suffering for his father’s suicide. It’s unclear throughout, really, why Thornton views his own childhood with such approval or why he’d be willing to extend that stance to Tommy. The book states clearly that Thornton pays for Tommy’s education in a way that the series only implies, but again, I feel, this action remains fully consistent with Thornton’s already articulated moral principles rather than constituting an inherently progressive action or evidence of transformation. He’s not saving Tommy — Thornton sees Tommy saving himself, as Thornton thinks that he saved himself when he thinks of his own past.

And then, what will Thornton do with that rose? Initially, he puts it into his waistcoat, perhaps as a souvenir of whatever recognition it is that he’s had, whether work-related or romantic. But when he unanticipatedly encounters Margaret at the train station, he explicitly contradicts her reproduction of her earlier statement that the past is gone forever when she says, “I thought those had all gone.” In response, he says, a bit slyly, “Found it in the ‘edgerow. Y’ave to look ‘ard.” In other words, Thornton thinks: you can still find the things that were important to you if you just keep on looking. Don’t give up on principle.

So, from my perspective, on some level, the rose scene pushes the viewer over the threshold into a potential nightmare, as does the end of the series, as much as I like that kiss. (Richard Armitage, honestly, you can kiss me any time you see me. Don’t feel you need to ask for permission.) It provides him with a recognition that justifies all of his quixotic adherence to principle, and further suggests that he’s drawn the conclusion from his recent experiences that he just needs to keep on working and if he “looks hard” enough, he’ll be able to reconstitute those things that are important to him. As a symbol, in the context of how it is mentioned in dialogue, it implies a romantic return to all the attitudes and convictions that pushed Thornton and Marlborough Mills onto the shoals of failure in the first place. It strongly speaks against the few only very mild suggestions in episode 4 that there may some points at which Thornton is rethinking his visionary rigidity and principled inflexibility with regard to work.

The first thing that I hate about this pressing conclusion is that it means that the series forces Margaret through a separation from her past and ideals and her adherence to the same that it hardly applies with the same insistence to Thornton, the (now, as we know at the end of the series, temporary) failure of Marlborough Mills notwithstanding. It punishes Margaret vindictively for her self-righteousness in a fashion that it is not willing to afflict upon Thornton. Margaret concludes, in the wake of so many deaths and the loss of her childhood dreams, that one can’t go back to the past, but Thornton uses the rose as a symbol to insist that one can. And then he gets the money to do exactly that, dropped right into his lap, conveniently in the same scene.

But the more important problem, frankly, is that if Thornton doesn’t change, if he really thinks that all we need to do to find the illusory roses of our posts is to “look hard,” he has learned absolutely nothing from all of the lessons of the grinding work to which he subjects himself throughout the series. He has drawn no useful lessons from the ways in which his rigidity cost him allies and cut him off from the people around him who might have helped and prevented him from making either a realistic assessment of the world around him, or indeed, of his own prospects. He plucks the rose, and saves it, and gives it to Margaret, and remains himself all along. And Margaret affirms his vision with her money and her new commitment to work and production as a marker of gentility.

In sum: Thornton’s failed romance of work and rigid principle remains essentially intact throughout the series and is reinforced by its final scenes. This ending is not romantic; it’s catastrophic.

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He might well gloat — basically unrepentant, and he’s got his principles, his chick, and a sizable fortune. Mr. Thornton (Richard Armitage) and Margaret (Daniela Denby-Ashe) on the journey together back to Milton, in the final scene of episode 4 of North & South. Source: RichardArmitageNet.com

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So: concluding with this piece all of the episode 4(a) posts, I summarize the most important of my responses to the episode as they relate to work and moral principle:

• Episode 4 shows that Thornton’s personal transformation as a consequence of the events we see in the series is minimal, constituted primarily in a return to things he has always believed rather than in a change towards greater charity or social-mindedness.
• Higgins, rather than Margaret, offers the primary moral foil for revealing Thornton’s principled attitudes about work and social utility, which I would continue to characterize as utilitarian rather than philanthropic.
• Although we wish to identify with Thornton’s (romantic) allegiance to his moral stances, we need to consider (more seriously than the series forces us to do) the possibility that his vision is heavily flawed, if not in substance, then at least in execution.
• When pressed to articulate his principles, or find allies during a crisis, Thornton finds himself at a continued to loss to sell his vision or justify his actions, a problem which makes these seem arbitrary, not only in terms of content, but also in terms of his inability or downright refusal to examine them critically. Indeed, at times Thornton’s refusal to consider other alternatives, though justified on a moral basis, seems primarily to rely on a decision as to what most pleases him.
• The romance of episode 4 is thus primarily not organized around Margaret, but rather around principle and work and rehabilitation of same as a moral and moralizing response to the challenges to these for Thornton as presented by the strike, the failed proposal, the decision to conceal Margaret’s apparently questionable behavior from judicial examination, the failed financing, and the economic situation at Marlborough Mills.
• When the boundaries of Thornton’s world are rocked, he thus resorts to tried-and-true behaviors that have already created problems for him. When he doesn’t know what to do (or what he should have done), he fails to seek out new strategies.
• Although Margaret puts the problem of the struggling family in Thornton’s path, his relationship with Higgins begins on the basis of principles that Thornton already has, and continues as the two men discover their own affinities around ethical issues around work; the scenes with Higgins thus serve as a rehabilitation of the romance of work with which we began the series.
• Once we edit out our own romantic response to the principled millowner as moral actor and to Armitage as amazing actor, when looked at soberly, Thornton’s ongoing adherence to principle and the related destruction of Marlborough Mills, his second self, provides us at best an ambivalent lesson about the work / ethics problems addressed in the series. Principle makes Thornton simultaneously and inseparably the picture of fidelity, the epitome of a destructive, stubborn insistence — and an apparent emotional survivor who does not stop to justify his behavior even when his looming failure can no longer be ignored.
• We must at least consider that, given, his lack of statements about it when it happens, that Thornton has learned little of practical use from the failure of his enterprise. His most coherent statement of explanation, offered to Latimer, places the responsibility for what happens in the mill on others or on random circumstance.
• Rather than presenting Thornton with an opportunity for charity, Tommy Boucher plays the role of a (damagingly) nostalgic symbol. Thornton’s support for him illustrates fundamental points of his problematically rigid moral stance, and Tommy’s constant reappearances point to Thornton’s ongoing belief in the validity of his own hard work and struggles.
• The final scenes where Thornton says anything substantive point in the direction that his values around work have remained, and remain, the same, despite his chagrin at the loss of the mill.
• The symbol of the rose points in a troubling way at the possibility that Thornton will remain obdurate with regard to his romantic vision of work and principle.

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The next part of the discussion would turn to the romance as an aspect of episode 4, which I’ll be labeling as 4(b). I’m not sure if I’ll proceed to this immediately, or do one of my other pressing projects. It might be time for something a little lighter! Stay tuned.

~ by Servetus on June 2, 2012.