Read the following passage from Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 novel *North and South* carefully before choosing the best answer.
For several miles before they reached Milton, they saw a deep lead-colored cloud hanging over the horizon in the direction in which it lay. It was a projection of the smoke of the town, which the wind was slowly drifting away, but which never could be entirely dispersed. Quick, rattling chimneys rose up into the air, and shut out the valley from the beautiful hills that lay beyond. The air had a faint taste and smell of smoke; indeed, after a minute or two, Margaret’s eyes began to smart.
The sides of the road were crowded with people, mostly women and children, but there were also men, who walked with a slouching, heavy gait, very different from the swinging step of the agricultural laborers. Margaret felt herself jostled and pushed about, and she did not like it. She was accustomed to the respect paid to her father's cloth in Helstone, where even the poorest cottager stood aside with a low bow or a pull of the forelock. Here, the people hurried past, intent on their own business, and seemed to regard her rather as an obstacle to be avoided than as a lady to be treated with deference.
"They are very rude, papa," she whispered, drawing closer to Mr. Hale.
"No, my dear, not rude, only busy and independent," he replied, looking around him with a mild interest. "They have a different way of showing their feelings."
Margaret looked at the girls who were passing; they had shawl-covered heads, and wore wooden clogs, which clattered on the pavement. Their speech was strange and loud, and they laughed with a freedom that Margaret found quite unbefitting their sex and class. When she met the eye of any of the young men, they looked at her with a bold, inquiring stare that made the blood rise to her cheeks. In Milton, it seemed, the social hierarchies that had structured her entire life in the south of England were non-existent, replaced by a raw, mechanical energy that leveled all traditional distinctions save those of wealth and industry. The very streets, built of uniform red brick and echoing with the thrum of steam-engines, seemed to demand a new code of behavior that Margaret was entirely unprepared to adopt.
Margaret’s reaction to the residents of Milton primarily highlights a conflict between her inherited social expectations and which of the following characteristics of the industrial milieu?
- AThe emergence of a politically organized class consciousness that seeks to overthrow traditional religious authorities.
- The transition from a paternalistic, deference-based agrarian hierarchy to one centered on industrial labor and individual independence.Answer
- CThe moral degeneration of working-class women who refuse to adhere to standard Victorian gender roles.
- DThe literal physical confinement of the working class due to the oppressive smoke and industrial infrastructure.
- EThe direct, hostile aggression of the townspeople toward representatives of the southern landed gentry.