This country had a grim will of its own, and the people had guts … There was no communication between Wragby Hall and Tevershall village –none. No caps were touched, no curtseys bobbed. The colliers merely stared: the tradesman lifted their caps to Connie as to an acquaintance, and nodded awkwardly to Clifford: that was all. Gulf impassable, and a quiet sort of resentment on either side. At first Connie suffered from the steady resentment that came from the village. Then she hardened herself to it, and it was a sort of tonic, something to live up against. It was not that she and Clifford were unpopular – they merely belonged to another species altogether from the colliers. Gulf impassable, breach indescribable, such as is perhaps non-existent south of the Trent. But in the Midlands and the industrial North, gulf impassable, across which no communion could take place. – You stick to your side, I'll stick to mine! – A strange denial of the common pulse of humanity.

Not a town in the land is unscarred by the dogmatic application of the market principle.

Themes of power, coercion, and collective resistance shape landscape as a social microcosm.