Macaulay’s Revolution: New Historicism, the Working Classes, and Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South

Abstract

Reads Macaulay’s work in tandem with Gaskell’s novels from a New Historicist perspective to answer charges that Macaulay was not concerned with the plight of the working classes. Finds that Macaulay is one of a panoply of sources on which Gaskell relied for her critique of Tory principles.