Margaret Hale's upbringing in a parsonage and in London hardly prepared her when circumstances forced her to live humbly in a murky, cotton-spinning town. Here she was brought into contact with both masters and men.

Margaret Hale has met John Thornton, the industrialist. They are attracted, but each is antagonistic to " what the other stands for.

The strikers are determined on Thornton's life-and it is Margaret with an implied taunt of cowardice who has sent him to face them.

Margaret has refused Thornton's offer of marriage-and he has seen her at the railway station with her brother, whom he has mistaken for a rival suitor and the reason for her rejection of him.

Margaret is to leave the North and Thornton, and return to London to live with her cousin.