Reviews with content warning for Death - North and South

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North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

42 reviews

iced_mochas's review against another edition

challenging emotional informative reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

Workers’ strikes, radical interventions, suicide driven by spiralling debts, changing belief systems, turning down marriage proposals – this is truly a novel that could have been written over the past year.

A contemporary of Charles Dickens, author Elizabeth Gaskell is unbelievably accessible as a classic novelist and alarmingly progressive in her representation of class struggle and womanhood. I would go as far as saying she is miles ahead – and the cherry on top – her writing is enjoyable!

Due to an interesting moral dilemma, the Hales have to move from their comfortable countryside living in the South to the polluted manufacturing town in the North. Gaskell uncovers the social landscape by pitting the classes against each other, then putting them in conversation.

While the passages written in Nicholas Higgins’ voice can feel a bit long (I took a break from the book roughly midway), there is such careful attention paid to the various trials that life dishes out to each of these groups. There is even a distinction made between striking workers and a more radical, desperate cohort of people, who have had even less luck in life. During the strikes, mill owner Mr Thornton “imports hands” from Ireland – the crude dehumanising language exposing cheap labour.

The protagonist, Margaret Hale, is an all-too-perfect daughter to her ailing parents and their turbulent life choices. Yet while her round-the-clock kindness and obedience is unconvincing, her critical take on exploitative bosses and working conditions, as well as her quick, sharp, irritated tongue are a comfort to behold. “Papa, I do think Mr. Thornton a very remarkable man; but personally I don't like him at all,” she tells her father.

Opinionated as she is, Margaret offers a more neutral platform through which to explore each of the characters. We accompany her through the tragedies and we observe as she grieves. Mr Bell, though a fleeting presence, was one of my favourite characters with his amusing, warm and loving nature. Mr Thornton doesn’t really grow on me the way he grows on Margaret. His mother, in particular, is depicted as snobby and overbearing.

As for the ending, I wonder how much the editors influenced it. I remember being a bit disappointed by the ending to Mary Barton too – the other Gaskell novel I read – but both literary works left such a huge impression. This is a great place to start with Victorian literature if you’re interested in the themes above.

***

“She used to sit long hours upon the beach, gazing intently on the waves as they chafed with perpetual motion against the pebbly shore, or she looked out upon the more distant heave, and sparkle against the sky, and heard, without being conscious of hearing, the eternal psalm, which went up continually. She was soothed without knowing how or why.

But all this time for thought enabled Margaret to put events in their right places, as to origin and significance, both as regarded her past life and her future. Those hours by the seaside were not lost, as any one might have seen who had had the perception to read, or the care to understand, the look that Margaret's face was gradually acquiring.”

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milesjmoran's review against another edition

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dark emotional funny sad tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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mmefish's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

What a wonderful book! "An industrial re-writing of Pride and Prejudice", as Jenny Uglow put it in her introduction to the novel; though "North and South" deals with heavier (and more important, in my opinion) topics.

I loved the meditations on religion, class and morals, the picturesque descriptions of the North and the South, and how real every single character felt. I only wish we had gotten more romantic moments and a less abrupt ending (E. Gaskell had to rush the last chapters).

I'm going to include my favourite passages but mark some of them as spoilers if they are lengthy.

'You must grant me this one point. Given a strong feeling of independence in every Darkshire man, have I any right to obtrude my views, of the manner in which he shall act, upon another (hating it as I should do most vehemently myself), merely because he has labour to sell and I capital to buy?'
'Not in the least. Not in the least because of your labour and capital positions, whatever whatever they are, but because you are a man, dealing with a set of men over whom you have, whether you reject the use of it or not, immense power, just because your lives and your welfare are so constantly and intimately interwoven. God has made us so that we must be mutually dependent.'

'But what win ye have? There are days wi' you, as wi' other folk, I suppose, when yo' get up and go through th' hours, just longing for a bit of a change—a bit of a fillip, as it were. I know I ha' gone and bought a four-pounder out o' another baker's shop to common on such days, just because I sickened at the thought of going on for ever wi' the same sight in my eyes, and the same sound in my ears, and the same taste i' my mouth, and the same thought (or no thought, for that matter) in my head, day after day, for ever. I've longed for to be a man to go spreeing, even it were only a tramp to some new place in search o' work. And father—all men—have it stronger in 'em than me to get tired o' sameness and work for ever. And what is 'em to do? It's little blame to them if they do go into th' gin-shop for to make their blood flow quicker, and more lively, and see things they never see at no other time—pictures, and looking-glass, and such like. But father never was a drunkard, though maybe, he's got worse for drink, now and then. Only yo' see, at times o' strike there's much to knock a man down, for all they start so hopefully; and where's the comfort to come fro'? He'll get angry and mad—they all do—and then they get tired out wi' being angry and mad, and maybe ha' done things in their passion they'd be glad to forget. Bless yo'r sweet pitiful face! but yo' dunnot know what a strike is yet.'

"A bad-looking fellow, I can assure you, miss. Whiskers such as I should be ashamed to wear – they are so red."

My favourite:

...all the time it would have been a relief to believe her utterly unworthy of his esteem. It was this that made the misery—that he passionately loved her, and thought her, even with all her faults, more lovely and more excellent than any other woman; yet he deemed her so attached to some other man, so led away by her affection for him as to violate her truthful nature. The very falsehood that stained her, was a proof how blindly she loved another—this dark, slight, elegant, handsome man—while he himself was rough, and stern, and strongly made. He lashed himself into an agony of fierce jealousy. He thought of that look, that attitude!—how he would have laid his life at her feet for such tender glances, such fond detention! He mocked at himself, for having valued the mechanical way in which she had protected him from the fury of the mob; now he had seen how soft and bewitching she looked when with a man she really loved. He remembered, point by point, the sharpness of her words—'There was not a man in all that crowd for whom she would not have done as much, far more readily than for him.' He shared with the mob, in her desire of averting bloodshed from them; but this man, this hidden lover, shared with nobody; he had looks, words, hand-cleavings, lies, concealment, all to himself

'It is the first changes among familiar things that make such a mystery of time to the young, afterwards we lose the sense of the mysterious. I take changes in all I see as a matter of course. The instability of all human things is familiar to me, to you it is new and oppressive.'

'After all it is right. If the world stood still, it would retrograde and become corrupt, if that is not Irish. Looking out of myself, and my own painful sense of change, the progress all around me is right and necessary. I must not think so much of how circumstances affect me myself, but how they affect others, if I wish to have a right judgment, or a hopeful trustful heart.'

🥲

He knelt by her side, to bring his face to a level with her ear; and whispered-panted out the words:
— 'Take care.—If you do not speak—I shall claim you as my own in some strange presumptuous way.—Send me away at once, if I must go;—Margaret!—

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lahars_little_library's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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aqtbenz's review against another edition

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informative reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

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questingnotcoasting's review against another edition

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emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This is a classic I've been interested in for years and I'm pleased I've actually finally read it. It did take me a long time to read because it's very slow paced at times but it's a good story and I always wanted to pick it up again. It's also a really interesting examination of social issues, many of which are still relevant today. I thought Margaret and Mr Thornton's relationship was well developed and I enjoyed the way Gaskell wrote from both of their perspectives.

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katewhite77's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

One of the best books I have read this year.

A simply wonderful book, narated brilliantly by Juliet Stevenson. I would say that this sits at the mid point between Austin and Dickens. Not as bleak as Dickens but not as light and fluffy as Austin.

It has absolutely everything Comedy, Tragedy, Industrial Unrest Classism and Romace. Oh the romance and kindness. All written with such lightness of touch.

I never put my self down as someone who could be blown away by a Victorian novel as much as a contemporary one but I now have.

Please anyone who carers about the world both then and now reaad or listen to masterpiece.

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