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.
Everything about Milton and its outskirts is dingy and uninviting. Even before they arrive in the town, the Hales see that the horizon is dark—a detail that foreshadows a not-very-promising future for them and a dreary existence for the population as a whole. Once they get there, their impressions are confirmed by the atmosphere's acrid smell and taste, a direct result of burgeoning industry. The loss of "grass and herbage" adds to the unwholesome atmosphere and the contrast with Helstone's green countryside.
The imagery persists in Chapter 8 as the Hales settle down in Milton. Though they are troubled by the palpably unhealthy environment of "smoke and fogs," they can't afford to go anywhere else.
They were settled in Milton, and must endure smoke and fogs for a season; indeed, all other life seemed shut out from them by as thick a fog of circumstance.
The "fog of circumstance" is a metaphor for the Hales' sudden removal from Helstone, sense of dislocation in Milton, and uncertainty about the future. Since fog makes it difficult or impossible to see where one is going or to move at all, fog imagery also reflects the Hales' financially reduced and emotionally strained circumstances. They don't have the means to live in a healthier place, and they feel cut off from the genteel village lifestyle they've always known before.
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.
Everything about Milton and its outskirts is dingy and uninviting. Even before they arrive in the town, the Hales see that the horizon is dark—a detail that foreshadows a not-very-promising future for them and a dreary existence for the population as a whole. Once they get there, their impressions are confirmed by the atmosphere's acrid smell and taste, a direct result of burgeoning industry. The loss of "grass and herbage" adds to the unwholesome atmosphere and the contrast with Helstone's green countryside.
The imagery persists in Chapter 8 as the Hales settle down in Milton. Though they are troubled by the palpably unhealthy environment of "smoke and fogs," they can't afford to go anywhere else.
They were settled in Milton, and must endure smoke and fogs for a season; indeed, all other life seemed shut out from them by as thick a fog of circumstance.
The "fog of circumstance" is a metaphor for the Hales' sudden removal from Helstone, sense of dislocation in Milton, and uncertainty about the future. Since fog makes it difficult or impossible to see where one is going or to move at all, fog imagery also reflects the Hales' financially reduced and emotionally strained circumstances. They don't have the means to live in a healthier place, and they feel cut off from the genteel village lifestyle they've always known before.
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.
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.
The imagery makes it clear that the Hales' standard of living is very different from the Thorntons'—it's nowhere near as "fine," but it's much more lived-in, homey, and comfortable. Their furnishings might be worn, but they're also "warm" and "dear," whereas the Thorntons' drawing-room is draped in plastic to protect their expensive things from the mill's dust and smoke. The Hales' home also has touches of nature everywhere—"English ivy," birch, and beech-leaves—that connect the Hales to England's countryside in a way not often seen in a manufacturing city, and certainly not in the Thorntons' mansion. Thornton observes, too, that the Hales make good use of their environment: there's handiwork (sewing and mending) in progress and books that are actually being read, not just displayed to impress visitors.
The imagery reveals what's most important to the Hales—especially beauty, learning, and family comfort—and gives Thornton an early, appealing glimpse of who Margaret is. It also suggests that the Hales have found a way to thrive in a region and city that aren't natural for them and, in turn, that one's environment doesn't determine one's character.
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:
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[.]
The novel uses auditory details to emphasize just how noisy Marlborough Mills is. There is a "continual clank" and a "long groaning roar" that intrude on the neighboring residence so strongly as to "deafen" the Thorntons. This language suggests that industry produces endless, unpleasant noise that makes comfortable human life impossible. This pollution isn't just audible, but visual and tactile as well—the Thorntons' house, though "handsome," is smoke-blackened, which implies that its residents must have to deal with the smoke's choking, dirtying presence as well.
Inside, when Margaret looks around the Thorntons' drawing-room, she notices that the furniture is all bagged up, producing an:
effect of icy, snowy discomfort. Wherever she looked there was evidence of care and labour, but not care and labour to procure ease, to help on habits of tranquil home employment; solely to ornament, and then to preserve ornament from dirt or destruction.
The Thorntons' atmosphere is "icy" and "snowy"—not a cozy environment to visit in, much less live every day. Moreover, the chilly imagery shows that the Thorntons go to great effort to protect their possessions from the mill's smoke and dirt (the byproducts of the very factory that has gotten them rich), and also that the decor is merely "ornament[al]"—displaying their wealth but not helping create a comfortable home. Gaskell's imagery thus strengthens her critique of the industrial revolution as not only polluting human homes and bodies but also producing wealth for questionable ends. That is, if the Thorntons' wealth doesn't promote a humane atmosphere, then what is its point?
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:
"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[.]
The visual details brought to Margaret's mind are incredibly small, things that the average passerby would easily overlook: weather-stains, the map-like markings created by lichen, and crane's-bill (a tiny wildflower in the geranium family—basically a weed that pops up anywhere and everywhere). The fact that Margaret remembers all these seemingly insignificant details, and that they're enough to bring her to tears, shows how much she cherishes and misses the Hales' old place in Helstone. The lichen marking the old stone wall "like a map" also gives a sense of meaning and purpose to a random pattern. It's not literally a map, but Margaret remembers the pattern so well that it signifies home in her mind.
Notably, these details seem to mean even more to Margaret than to her father. Mr. Hale is more glib about Helstone, his "do you remember[...]" almost a passing comment. Margaret's answering emotion shows how much she identifies herself with Helstone, or at least her memories of what Helstone was like. This connects to the novel's nostalgia theme and further identifies England's South, and Margaret herself, with the beauty and purity of nature.
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.
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.
The word "redolent" has to do with the sense of smell. In this case, the word is probably used in a metaphorical sense, but the point is that as Margaret travels closer to Helstone, familiar associations provoke nostalgia as overwhelmingly as a strong scent might do.
Further, the approach to Helstone is "flooded with light," and marked by "summer glory," lively, radiant visual imagery that jars with Margaret's painful feelings of grief. The contrast is so painful because it appears that Helstone hasn't changed at all since the Hales lived there, whereas Margaret has endured terrible losses in the meantime. When nature is personified as "[feeling] no change" and never aging, the reader is meant to sympathize with Margaret's sadness in recognizing that she has changed and that both her parents have died. This contrast anticipates Margaret's ambivalent homecoming.
