The novel primarily uses elevated diction and flowing, compound sentences, representing the Hales' educated, cultured, Southern English world. While the Hales' and other educated characters' speech is clearly considered to be standard English, the novel also makes liberal use of a working-class Manchester dialect, both to mark class difference and to garner interest and sympathy for poorer, less educated characters.
Like other Victorian novels influenced by Romanticism, the novel also favors melodramatic language, especially surrounding its many death scenes and scenes of violence. When rioters break into Marlborough Mills and Margaret runs outside to protect Thornton, dramatic and martial diction conveys the prevailing sense of tension tension:
Even while she looked, she saw lads in the background stooping to take off their heavy wooden clogs—the readiest missile they could find; she saw it was the spark to the gunpowder, and, with a cry, which no one heard, she rushed out of the room, down stairs,—she had lifted the great iron bar of the door with an imperious force—had thrown the door open wide—and was there, in face of that angry sea of men, her eyes smiting them with flaming arrows of reproach.
Words like "missile," "gunpowder," "imperious force," "angry sea," "smiting," and "flaming arrows" express the volatility of this moment, as well as Margaret's feminine courage in confronting it. The repeated use of dashes in this long sentence pulls the reader into the action by prolonging suspense.
Another unique characteristic of Gaskell's prose is her frequent use of soliloquy—long passages with characters speaking their private thoughts aloud—to give readers insight into character development at climactic moments, like when Margaret and Thornton ponder their conflicted feelings for one another.
