as if he was ashamed of ever giving way to it", and "She lifted up her head as if she took pride in any delicacy of feeling which Mr. Thornton had shown". Gaskell uses it when exploring the unconscious process that allows Thornton, whose suffering in love disturbs his composure and control of his feelings, to communicate with Higgins: " ... and then the conviction went in, as if by some spell, and touched the latent tenderness of his heart". Style and language According to Bodenheimer, North and South narrative may sometimes appear melodramatic and sentimental ("But, for all that—for all his savage words, he could have thrown himself at her feet, and kissed the hem of her garment" in chapter 29)—particularly in the riot scene—but she sees Gaskell's best writing as "done with the unjudging openness to experience" which the author shares with D. H. Lawrence. Jill L. Matus finds Gaskell's vocabulary "Gothicised" in its descriptions of the characters' agonised inner life—their responses to suffering and pain—which may appear melodramatic out of context. However, "the language of shock and horror is absorbed into the realist texture of the novel's narration" and is consistent with the extreme conditions of the novel's external world. A number of 19th-century authors were interested in native dialects: Scottish for Sir Walter Scott, Irish for Maria Edgeworth. Gaskell, influenced by her husband's work, did not hesitate to give her Milton workers Mancunian expressions and vocabulary without going as far as Emily Brontë's transcription of Yorkshire pronunciation or Dickens' Yarmouth fishermen in David Copperfield. She developed a reputation for the skilful use of dialect to indicate status, age or intimacy between speakers. Margaret's adaptation to the culture is demonstrated through language. When her mother reproaches her for using Milton's vulgar provincialisms (such as "slack of work"), Margaret replies that since she lives in an industrial city, she must speak its language when called on to do so. She cites a word which may be vulgar but which she finds expressive ("knobstick") and uses a local term ("redding up" – tidying) to Boucher's small children: "redding up the slatternly room". Gaskell begins each chapter with a poetic quote to accentuate a relevant theme, such as interior conflicts ("My heart revolts within me, and two voices / Make themselves audible within my bosom"—Wallenstein, chapter XVIII), duality ("On earth is known to none / The smile that is not