North and South

This is a Victorian novel without any attempts to pace the exciting bits. It just plows ahead with plot, no pauses at all to drink tea or write a letter. If you've watched the BBC mini-series (and if you're reading this novel now, it's because you spent a few hours watching Richard Armitage stare off into the middle distance in a brooding sort of way, let's not pretend otherwise) you'll be familiar with the events of the novel. What is surprising is how closely the television adaptation follows the novel. With the exception of Bessy, who is rather cloying in the novel but a caustic breath of fresh air in the mini-series, the characters are on the page as they appear on screen.

Despite the way Gaskell keeps things moving along rapidly, show more she doesn't fail to create a cast of memorable characters. In this novel, the parents are a lot. Mrs. Thornton reacts to the world around her with a prickly defensiveness which is understandable given that her husband lost their money in a foolish bet, then committed suicide, leaving her to eke out a living for her two small children. But understandable doesn't mean that she isn't a hard person to be around. And the Hales, Margaret's parents, are both weak and whiny. And yet their children love them deeply and also manage to have become the kind of people who animate their morals with action, so that Margaret befriends a working family and sets out to help them in the ways they both need and can accept and Mr. Thornton postures and yells a lot, then works to improve the conditions for his employees.

This novel was clearly intended to illuminate what conditions were for textile workers, but did so with a certain, not unexpected belief in the need for bosses to call the shots. But Gaskell is also pushing against the caste system with her constant theme that men who make their fortunes in factories are the equals of those who inherit theirs and that working men are as intelligent and ingenious as those who supervise them. There are a number of digs at the moral and intellectual abilities of the Irish, I guess proving that humans will always manage to scapegoat somebody.

This novel was a lot of fun and was often hard to set aside and I'm sure I'll revisit it soon. show less

A socialist tract, a paean to capitalism, a Victorian love story, a bildungsroman, or a realist portrayal of life in mid nineteenth century industrial England. This very wonderful novel is all of these things; what it is not is a novel about the divide between the North and the South, but this title was suggested by Charles Dickens whose own novel Hard Times had just been published. Hard Times a novel also concerned with working conditions was not one of Dickens's greatest achievements and lacked the breadth of vision that Mrs Gaskell achieved with North and South.

Mrs Gaskell's original title was Margaret Hale and her novel charts Margaret's course from a well born but impoverished parson's daughter to an heiress and part owner of a show more large textile mill. The novel opens with Margaret staying with her wealthy cousins in London, but after her cousins marriage she rejoins her parent at Helstone a hamlet in the New Forest. She loves the gentle country life, but the family faces a major change when her father must give up his parish over religious scruples and opts to move to Milton (Manchester) the centre of the cotton industry, where he will eek out a living as a tutor. The family find Milton noisy, ugly, dirty and crowded but Margaret is determined to make the best of it for her parents sake. She makes friends with the Higgens family: mill workers and trade unionists while her father becomes a tutor to Mr Thornton a mill owner and captain of industry. Mr Thornton falls in love with Margaret but she is repelled by his hard commercialism and rejects his marriage proposal. The novel charts the bildungsroman of both Margaret and Mr Thornton which must happen before they can reach any kind of accommodation.

The reader of course recognises their suitability and similarity and the outcome to their possible relationship is only revealed on the last page of the novel. Here is Mr Thornton's view of Margaret when he first sees her in some rented rooms:

"but now that he saw Margaret, with her superb ways of moving and looking, he began to feel ashamed of having imagined that it would do very well for the Hales.....Margaret could not help her looks, but the short curled upper lip the round, massive upturned chin, the manner of carrying her head; her movements full of soft feminine defiance always gave strangers the impression of haughtiness"

And this is Margaret's view of Mr Thornton when she sees him at dinner talking to his colleague Mill Owners:

"some dispute arose, which was warmly contested, it was referred to Mr Thornton who had hardly spoken before, but who now gave an opinion, the grounds of which were so clearly stated that even the opponents yielded. Margaret's attention was called to her host; his whole manner as master of the house, as entertainer of his friends was so straightforward, simple and modest as to be thoroughly dignified. Margaret thought she had never seen him to so much advantage".

Margaret's friendship with the Higgens family which has allowed her to see the suffering of the mill workers at first hand has driven a wedge between her and Thornton:

"Margaret's whole soul rose up against him while he reasoned in this way as if commerce were everything and humanity nothing"

The battle between commerce and humanity, capital and labour is fought out in the factories and mills of Milton and the rhetoric used then is just as relevant as it was in the 1980's when Britain's industry was reshaped under Thatcher's government. Mrs Gaskell guides the reader to a more humanitarian view; the fight between the masters and the men could be ameliorated if only they would take note of what each was saying. Both their livelihoods depend on the success of the industry and if they could find ways of working together then surely it would be to everyone's benefit. This is skillfully reflected in the battle of wills between Margaret and Mr Thornton whose own love story is brilliantly woven into the fabric of the events on the industrial battle ground.

The struggle between the masters and the men is a titanic struggle for power and the hard headed Thornton sets himself against Higgens who becomes a sort of working class hero. Gaskell refuses to take sides as she ensures that both viewpoints are given equal weight. Higgens and Thornton are both proud men but are also honorable men and it is through Margaret's friendship with both of them that at last a dialogue can begin. Mrs Gaskell has Higgens speak in the local dialect which highlights the differences between him and the mill owners but also between him and the Hales family. It is superbly done.

Milton is brought to vibrant life through Margaret's eyes and becomes almost another character in the novel. The smoke and the grime, the rough streets the workers pouring out of the factories at certain times of the day catching Margaret unawares and always ready with some witty comment about the way she looks. Mr Thornton's house is situated opposite his mill inside the factory gates, a large courtyard and a flight of steps is all that separates him from his work. Margaret and her family are horrified by the noise and the industry when they first visit.

Change is the motif that runs throughout this novel. The vibrant trade capital of Milton is constantly changing and at a rapid pace. To succeed in their ventures then the attitudes of the mill owners must change as must the trade unionists. Margaret must adapt to her new situation and Mr Thonton must change his way of thinking if he wants to win Margaret. The people who cannot change must make way and there are plenty of deaths, most of which have repercussions for Margaret. Both her parents die, Bessy Higgens finally succumbs to her terminal illness contracted whilst working in the mills. Mr Bell the Oxford friend of Mr Hale must also depart as his refuge in academia does not fit him for the new commercial world. Margaret's strength of character enables her to deal with all that life throws at her and although she bends she does not break and her experiences in Milton only serve to make her stronger.

Mrs Gaskell's achievement in bringing off this novel should be admired by every reader. The avoidance of sentimentality, her refusal to take sides, her realistic portrayal of industrial conflict and the brilliant characters that people her book all add up to a wonderful reading experience. show less

Summary: Margaret is a vicar’s daughter who has grown up in the south of England, in sunny days and slow hours. However, when her father relocates their family to Milton, an industrial town in the north. Margaret faces culture shock moving from the south to the north, but also finds an unusual romance.

Review: I’ve seen the mini-series and enjoyed it greatly, so when I saw a copy of the original book (in an English bookstore in China, no less!), I grabbed it up. My initial reaction to the book was “this is like Pride and Prejudice except with class issues.” But that’s not fair to North and South, which is an excellent book in its own right. Yes, there are similarities to Austen. Headstrong young woman meets standoffish man, he show more proposes to her, she rejects him, but then she learns to see his true worth.

But there are class issues in Gaskell that are mostly absent in Austen, and this makes North and South its own type of story. In Austen, the characters’ problems revolve around marriage and society, but in Gaskell they face additional events such as illness, arrests, workers’ strikes, and poverty. The scope of events is deeper and more meaningful, and although I am not sure she succeeds to the degree that she would want, Gaskell at least addresses the disparity of life between the south and north, and the injustices that are a part of every character’s life. There is a real sense of world weariness in the writing that suits the plot.

Margaret is not that compelling of a protagonist, unfortunately. She sort of floats along from one scene to another, and the constant descriptions of her beauty grated on my nerves. But Mr. Thornton, ah, he could give Mr. Darcy a run for his money. Mr. Thornton, who rose from poverty to become a manufacturer, who is powerful and intelligent but self-conscious about his lack of genteel breeding — Mr. Thornton, in short, is awesome. He made the book for me.

Conclusion: Yes, it will invite inevitable comparisons to Pride and Prejudice. But it is its own book too with a more critical and nuanced look at class and injustice in 1800s England. show less

Cross Emma Woodhouse with a prig, Fitzwilliam Darcy with a fiscal Republican, give half the population of England apoplexy and the other half consumption and you'll end up with North and South. I really did not like this book, for all my usual fondness for nineteenth century literature. Everything about it seemed designed to clash with my sensibilities—the moralising, the formulaic relationship progression, the awful, patronising portrayal of working class characters—and that was even before Gaskell revealed her anti-Irish bigotry.

'There's granite in all these northern people, papa, is there not?'

'There was none in poor Boucher, I am afraid; none in his wife either.'

'I should guess from their tones that they had Irish blood in show more them.

Charming. show less

If Jane Austen and Charles Dickens’ books had babies, this is what they would be like.

The title refers to the different backgrounds of the main character and her love interest: the idyllic, agricultural English South versus the smoke-spewing, industrialized North, as well as the concomitant politics and class distinctions and the societal upheaval that accompanies the power dynamics between them. Most of the plot and subplots of North and South have their characters confront each other over those issues -- in addition to a romance plot, of course.

I found much to enjoy in this one. The main character, Margaret Hale, is one of the main draws: she has a lot of individuality to her, is unafraid to speak her mind, and she bends but show more refuses to break. Several plot developments or character moments surprised me by not taking the eye-rollingly hackneyed turn I had been expecting. I particularly liked the way Gaskell resolves Margaret’s Great Moral Issue of Having Told A Lie.

That said, my main reference points while reading this book were Austen and Dickens. Compared to Austen, North and South is a more down-to-earth book, concerned with people of a lower class than Austen usually deigns to write about, with a royal helping of sometimes romanticized grittiness of industrialization and poverty: people die, workers’ conditions are dire, diseases are rampant, manufacturers and workers clash violently in strikes. In Austen’s books, the dramatic moments are those in which decisions with big emotional impacts are taken, announced or relayed; North and South pairs those with actual action (albeit brief, and with a decidedly tell-don’t-show quality). Surprisingly, the main characters are even involved in dangerous and illegal activities (harbouring a convicted mutineer)!

Compared to Dickens, it isn’t just the men who get to have character arcs and 3d-qualities: the main characters gives as good as she gets. North and South is less preachy, less anvilicious. It’s more sedate, perhaps, as discussions of the type “who is better: agricultural conservatives or industrial progressives” do tend to resolve in some form of golden mean, but it has a bite to it, and it reads less like a soap opera.

I really liked this one! North and South may at times be less elegantly written, but I felt its avoidance of both Austen’s cheerfulness and Dickens’ soap operas made the whole thing more engaging than much of what I’ve read by either author. I wish I could think more about this book on its own terms, and less in how it differed from Austen and Dickens, but there you go. That constant comparison, though, did make me realise that I think this book stands out more clearly than other books I’ve read from the same period and/or genre. I’ll remember this more distinctly than, say, Mansfield Park or Emma. show less

I can't believe it's taken me so long to finally read this! I fell in love with the story when I first saw the adaptation on TV, bought the book (and the DVD!) soon afterwards... and it has been sitting on my shelves for FIVE YEARS waiting for me to finally get my act together! Anyway, it was definitely not a short read, but so very worth it.

Basic storyline: Margaret Hale and her family move to the Northern industrial town of Milton from their sweet Southern village. The whole family is uprooted and struggles to settle into the smoky, noisy, dank atmosphere of their new home. Their earliest acquaintances there are the Thorntons - dignified Mrs Thornton, her silly daughter Fanny, and her handsome son John, wealthy master of the show more Marlborough Mills and a famous name in cotton. Despite Mr Thornton's best efforts, Margaret believes Milton society to be inferior to their status as gentlefolk, and so the scene is set for a 'Pride and Prejudice'-esque story of wounded egos, longing glances, misunderstandings and, finally, true love.

Despite the similarities between this novel and the Austen favourite, there are big differences. This book is much more complex, and much grittier, leaning further towards Dickens in some respects. The poverty of the Milton workers, in which Margaret takes a philanthropic interest, is a major focus of the novel. The misfortunes of the Higgins and Boucher families, and their constant struggles against injustice, illness and uncaring employers, are carefully explored and movingly rendered. At the same time the progressive ambitions and difficult decisions made by the masters are never overlooked, providing a balanced view of industrial progress in the mid-19th century. And alongside all this Gaskell pointedly shows the contrast between the frivolity of the London social scene and the harsh life of Milton, as well as slowly drawing the reader deep into the lives of the Hale family, who have their own preoccupations, hardships and tragedies to bear.

All in all, this is a wonderful novel. It provides a fascinating insight into a time and an existence very different to modern life, while never losing the intimacy that draws the reader into the lives of these characters. I cried several times over the course of the novel, and had the HUGEST smile on my face at the inevitable and well-deserved happy ending. These characters burrowed their way into this reader's heart over the course of the book, and I've learned a little to boot. A fantastic read - and if you haven't seen the BBC adaptation with Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe, you should! It's what started my love affair with this story and I've been watching it very happily as I've been reading... Highly recommended. show less

Elizabeth Gaskell apparently understood both sides of life in her times...the very poor and the very rich. She spans the two classes with finesse and makes one think soundly about the responsibilities each has to the other. I thoroughly enjoyed the story and very much liked both Margaret Hale and Mr. Thornton. I especially liked the way Margaret saw beyond her own privileged experiences to the struggles and humanity of those around her. She did not spend any of her time mourning the loss of her Aunt's wealthy home and embraced the pleasures of her more natural and more independent life with her less wealthy parents.

If character is exposed by what an individual endures, Margaret and Thornton earn their reputations as decent, trustworthy show more and strong people. They do both endure more than their share of adversity and rise to the occasion. As is Gaskell's custom, the Victorian sensibilities are all present and accounted for but tinged with a bit of defiance and rebellion.

I could not help drawing the parallels between the differences in the North and South of England and those of the North and South of the United States in the same era. Industrialization had begun to change the face of the country and the rise of a new class of wealthy men, the industrialists, was a particular difficulty for the inherent upper-class. It is interesting to see Margaret's attitude toward the tradesman change from the time she leaves the Southern village of Helstone until she becomes a denizen of the Northern village of Milton. I believe she is a microcosm for the changes of attitude that are going on all over England and abroad. Gaskell does a good job of explaining the difference between the agricultural poor who work the land and the newer class of poor workers that inhabit the factories.

If you enjoy the works of the Brontes, you will surely find much to admire in the works of Elizabeth Gaskell as well. show less