Industrialization and Secularization: On the Influences of Industrialization on Religion in the English Culture of the 1850's.

Abstract

This thesis consists of a literary case study in which three historical theories on the relation between industrialization and secularization in the English culture of the 1850's by Owen Chadwick, Hugh McLeod and Callum G. Brown, are compared to the historical realist novel North and South which was written by Elizabeth Gaskell in 1855. The different chapters discuss the themes of dissent, labourers, ideology, church and discours. In the conclusion it becomes clear that the christian tradition is perceived differently among the social classes and that in some ways the novel confirms the historical theories and in some ways the novel shows new perspectives or even contradicts widely accepted historical views on religion in an Industrialized Britain.