In Cousin Phillis, Hope Farm is portrayed as a pastoral idyll, idealising the virtues of rural life that is unaffected by the implied ills of modern civilisation. Unlike Dickens’s dystopian industrial city of Coketown, it is teeming with natural beauty, “so full of flowers” that they overflow from the court and stretch across the pathway to the back of the house (Gaskell 10; pt.1). When Paul Manning arrives at Hope Farm, he is exposed to “the soft September air” that is “tempered by the warmth of the sun” and “perfumed” by “the bushes of sweetbriar and the fraxinella” (Gaskell 9-10; pt.1). The farm setting is “profuse in vegetables and fruits”, “covered with tolerably choice fruit-trees”, “great strawberry-beds”, “raspberry-bushes” and “long rows of peas” (Gaskell, 36; pt.2). Engaging the
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This is because “workers who came to the city … often felt a sense of uprootedness, a loss of community or “home”, and an intense nostalgia for what they perceived they had forfeited”, which often took the shape of a longing for the “old English cottage life idealised in song and popular literature” that seemed increasingly unattainable in the age of industrialisation (Archibald 27). To Paul Manning, the landscape of Hope Farm represents “the pastoral virtues of simplicity, peace, and wholeness” and “the simple, good life lived close to nature” (Brown 22-23). Paul is able to establish a sense of belonging within this context, where he feels like “a son of the house” and is expected to fall into their regular patterns of life “like one of the family” (Gaskell 64; pt.4). Paul’s surprised reactions to Hope Farm – “how peaceful it all seemed in the farmyard! … how still and deep was the silence of the house!” (67; pt.4) – imply that this feeling of home is one that he cannot achieve in the
This is because “workers who came to the city … often felt a sense of uprootedness, a loss of community or “home”, and an intense nostalgia for what they perceived they had forfeited”, which often took the shape of a longing for the “old English cottage life idealised in song and popular literature” that seemed increasingly unattainable in the age of industrialisation (Archibald 27). To Paul Manning, the landscape of Hope Farm represents “the pastoral virtues of simplicity, peace, and wholeness” and “the simple, good life lived close to nature” (Brown 22-23). Paul is able to establish a sense of belonging within this context, where he feels like “a son of the house” and is expected to fall into their regular patterns of life “like one of the family” (Gaskell 64; pt.4). Paul’s surprised reactions to Hope Farm – “how peaceful it all seemed in the farmyard! … how still and deep was the silence of the house!” (67; pt.4) – imply that this feeling of home is one that he cannot achieve in the