Nineteen-year-old Margaret Hale happily returns home from London to the idyllic southern village of Helstone after her cousin Edith marries Captain Lennox. She lived for almost 10 years in the city with Edith and wealthy Aunt Shaw to learn to be a young lady. Margaret has refused an offer of marriage from the captain's brother, Henry, an up-and-comng barrister. Her life is turned upside down when her father, the local pastor, leaves the Church of England and the rectory of Helstone as a matter of conscience; his intellectual honesty has made him a dissenter. At the suggestion of Mr. Bell, his old friend from Oxford, he settles with his wife and daughter in Milton-Northern (where Mr. Bell was born and owns property). The industrial town in Darkshire (a textile-producing region) manufactures cotton and is in the middle of the Industrial Revolution; masters and workers are clashing in the first organised strikes.