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Definition of Imagery
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After Apple-Picking" contain imagery that engages... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines from Robert Frost's poem "After... read full definition
Imagery, in any sort of writing, refers to descriptive language that engages the human senses. For instance, the following lines... read full definition
Key Examples in North and South
Chapter 7
Explanation and Analysis—Smoke and Fog:
In Chapter 7, as the Hales approach Milton, the sensory details foreshadow the industrial city's unwholesome environment and its stark contrast to Helstone's relative health and rural beauty:
For several miles before they reached Milton, they saw a deep lead-coloured cloud hanging over the horizon in the direction in which it lay. [...] Nearer to the town, the air had a faint taste and smell of smoke; perhaps, after all, more a loss of the fragrance of grass and herbage than any positive taste or smell.
Related Themes:
Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Smoke and Fog:
In Chapter 7, as the Hales approach Milton, the sensory details foreshadow the industrial city's unwholesome environment and its stark contrast to Helstone's relative health and rural beauty:
Unlock with LitCharts A+For several miles before they reached Milton, they saw a deep lead-coloured cloud hanging over the horizon in the direction in which it lay. [...] Nearer to the town, the air had a faint taste and smell of smoke; perhaps, after all, more a loss of the fragrance of grass and herbage than any positive taste or smell.
Related Themes:
Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—The Hales' Drawing-Room:
When Thornton visits the Hales, the novel portrays the Hales' home environment through his eyes, using imagery that highlights their modest, happy family life and connection to nature.
Unlock with LitCharts A+But [the Thorntons'] drawing-room was not like this. It was twice—twenty times as fine; not one quarter as comfortable [...] a warm, sober breadth of colouring, well relieved by the dear old Helstone chintz-curtains and chair covers [...] a tall white china vase, from which drooped wreaths of English ivy, pale-green birch, and copper-coloured beech-leaves. Pretty baskets of work stood about in different places: and books, not cared for on account of their binding solely, lay on one table, as if recently put down.
Related Themes:
Chapter 15
Explanation and Analysis—Marlborough Mills:
The Hales visit Marlborough Mills for the first time, and the novel uses noisy, dark, cold imagery to describe the atmosphere surrounding both the factory and the Thornton home. When they're admitted into the yard, Mr. Hale and Margaret see:
Unlock with LitCharts A+an immense many-windowed mill, whence proceeded the continual clank of machinery and the long groaning roar of the steam-engine, enough to deafen those who lived within the enclosure. Opposite to the wall [...] was a handsome stone-coped house,—blackened, to be sure, by the smoke[.]
Related Themes:
Chapter 27
Explanation and Analysis—The Old Stone Wall:
Mr. Hale reminisces about the Hales' garden in Helstone, prompting Margaret to recall the spot in greater detail and to feel grief for their old home. The passage uses minute imagery, including the simile of a map, to convey the intensity with which she loves and misses home:
Unlock with LitCharts A+"Do you remember the matted-up currant bushes, Margaret, at the corner of the west-wall in the garden at home?"
Did she not? Did she not remember every weather-stain on the old stone wall; the grey and yellow lichens that marked it like a map; the little crane's-bill that grew in the crevices? [...] and, somehow, these careless words of her father's, touching on the remembrance of the sunny times of old, made her start up[.]
Related Themes:
Chapter 46
Explanation and Analysis—Nature Felt No Change:
As Margaret visits Helstone for the first time since her parents' deaths, the novel uses light imagery and also personifies nature to contrast Helstone with her personal situation.
Unlock with LitCharts A+Every mile was redolent of associations, which she would not have missed for the world, but each of which made her cry upon ‘the days that are no more,’ with ineffable longing. [...] Now she was alone, an orphan, and they, strangely, had gone away from her, and vanished from the face of the earth. It hurt her to see the Helstone road so flooded in the sunlight, and every turn and every familiar tree so precisely the same in its summer glory as it had been in former years. Nature felt no change, and was ever young.
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