When her father leaves the Church, Margaret Hale is uprooted from her comfortable home in Hampshire to move with her family to the North of England. Initially repulsed by the ugliness of her new surroundings in the industrial town of Milton, Margaret becomes aware of the poverty and suffering of local mill workers and develops a passionate sense of social justice. In NORTH AND SOUTH Gaskell … skillfully fused individual feeling with social concern and in Margaret Hale created one of the mostoriginal heroines of Victorian literature.
more
Gaskell is an underrated writer, I feel, though the miniseries of “Wives and Daughters” and “North and South” have perhaps made her better-known.
Margaret is a fine character; strong and self-possessed, and willing to entertain new ideas—which also describes John Thornton. They have excellent chemistry, right from their first meeting. Gaskell manages to include a good deal of information on social and economic conditions of the day without becoming didactic. Her secondary characters are also convincingly drawn.
The author says in a note that she was “was compelled to hurry on events with an improbable rapidity towards the close” due to publication limits, and that does show. The body count gets rather distressingly high, and the lovely lingering progress to the inevitable conclusion becomes breakneck. But that certainly didn’t spoil the reading experience.
(4.5 / 5)
I’ve seen the BBC mini-series of this book several times in the past. I even watched it once with my husband, who appreciated the way that both sides of the labor dispute are presented–both the good and the bad of unions. While I’ve had moderate success in enjoyment of classics in my recent reading, I decided it was time to read the book that inspired a mini-series I love. I’m so glad I did.
One of the things that was great about reading the book is that, as is usually the case with books that are made into movies, mini-series, TV shows, etc., the characters were able to have more depth. We get to read about their thought processes, the reasons behind their actions, which are more difficult to put across on screen. In the case of Thornton, it gave me a lot more insight into his feelings for Margaret. I really appreciated the way he treated her on her dad’s behalf, considering that he saw her as far too good for him and his dirty northern town. And sadly, she didn’t do anything to dispel that feeling.
That is the crux of this story, though, as both sides–the northerners and the southerners–tend to make assumptions about the other, sometimes only due to a cultural difference. Other times due to a shortcoming on someone’s behalf, or simply a bad day.
Unfortunately, I disliked Margaret more by the end of the book than I expected to. While some of the misconceptions are unfounded, she really was quite haughty and seemed even heartless at times, at least in regard to Thornton. As has been the case in the past when I read a book that I have already watched a screen version of, I can’t really say for sure if Higgins would have become such a favorite character of mine as he did, if I hadn’t first seen the mini-series, but I still really liked him in the book. One of my biggest frustrations was that Mr. Hale’s reason for leaving the church is never really expounded upon. I found myself wanting to be able to have my own opinion about how good or bad of a decision it was to uproot his family, but I suppose Gaskell didn’t think it was an important aspect to the story.
I do get why some don’t care for the story. Some compare it to Pride and Prejudice in both positive and negative ways, though I haven’t read it, so I can’t comment. While I do sometimes want to sit both Thornton and Margaret down and tell them to stop being stupid and proud, I still quite enjoyed the book and recommend it for any who enjoys romance from this period, and for fans of the mini-series.
At first I was very excited to find what I thought was a hidden gem in the canon of classics: like a new Jane Austen or a Bronte, just by a different author. The writing style and the initial intrigue of romance led me to believe this was what I was in for.
Alas… not really. The story was boring for the most part, filled with political discussions of strikes during what I gathered was the Industrial Revolution in England. The only way I got through the story at all was because it was audio, and I could tune out for long stretches of time and then tune back in again without missing much. Also, unfortunately the only person I consistently liked in the entire book was Mr. Thornton, who for the vast majority of the story was the rejected lover of the heroine, Margaret. For her part, I found Margaret haughty, self-righteous, and not just opinionated but disdainful of everyone else’s judgement save her own, though the author clearly admired her. Her father was weak and sweet, but impossible to respect. Her mother was negative and hypochondriacal at first, and later horribly selfish. Her cousin Edith was feather-brained and pretty but self-absorbed. Mr Thornton’s sister and mother were both also self-centered, and the sister judgmental and weak. His biggest detraction is his determined love for Margaret, when she’s done absolutely nothing to deserve it.
Why did I bother finishing the story, you ask? I almost didn’t a number of times, but there was just enough intrigue between Margaret and Mr. Thornton that I wanted to see how it ended, even though I could see it coming from a mile away. I felt like Gaskell was attempting to rewrite “Pride and Prejudice” in a sense, as Thornton was the great man with a closed mind at the beginning, while Margaret was supposed to be the cheeky poor beauty who opened his mind to the world. She eventually does become more tolerable. Can’t say I’d recommend it, though.
My rating: ** 1/2
Political content: historical only, though I find a lot of Margaret’s rationale annoying and one-sided
Sexual content: none
Language: none
Violence: none
I have loved the BBC mini series for quite some time now, but was never brave enough to actually read the book. While I prefer to read books in English, it isn’t my mother tongue. Classics can be quite daunting.
Luckily I finally took a leap of faith and gave the book a go. I’m so glad I did. It felt so good to read this familiar story and fall in love all over again with North and South.
I admit it wasn’t always easy to read, and I had to look up quite a few words, but it was more than worth it. I’ll definitely be reading more classics with my new found courage.
I have loved the TV miniseries based on this novel for years. I finally got around to reading the book. It was wonderful. I loved period romances and this one delivers. I love the insight of the different cultures between the regional areas in England as well as political and social views of the era. Struggles between classes will be a never-ending issue, but people with open hearts and minds will always find ways to do the best they can for those around them. Margaret and John are absolutely wonderful. The other characters are flat and sometimes silly, but the changes both the leads to through is superb. Even though I knew how it was going to end, I was still thrilled to finally have them come together at last.
I loved this book.
A periodic romance. A period in which one can find interest also because it is one of the first writers in the modern era, which is also, how not, England, and also because it is the beginning of industrialization in England and the changes it has caused. Gaskell, describes the industrial city, the status of industrialists in northern England and the working class there, and the relationship between them. This is England of Dickens plus romantic relationships, and it’s a little surprising that an English woman at dose days knew all this; I mean, the whole non-romantic part of the book.
It was a lot of fun to read this book. On the one hand, a novel develops slowly with all the pitfalls, misunderstandings and all that needed in the style of Jane Austen, and this mix with labor relations, the beginning of the working class association and the difficulties of trade. All these allow me to tell myself that all I read is good literature.