As a social problem novel, or a novel of industrial life, North and South has traditionally received much critical attention for its purchase on questions of political economy and the relations of labor and capital. It is also, I will argue in this chapter, a novel with a sustained focus on interiority and consciousness. From the opening pages, where Margaret Hale, now a stately girl of eighteen and about to leave her aunt's home, recalls her early “wild passion of grief” at being separated from her parents, the narrative pays close attention to painful feelings – their expression, censorship and transformative potential. More specifically, North and South is interested in the effect of very powerful feelings on psychic functioning and in the haunting aftermath of intense emotional experience.