DLR LIBRARY BLOG

North and South

by

Elizabeth Gaskell

It's probably a bit cheeky reviewing a classic, but for those who worked their way through Austen and the Brontes during the Winter and find themselves at a loss, Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South might just do the trick.

Margaret Hale is uprooted from her idyllic life in  Helstone in the rural South of England to the dirt, deprivation and industrial unrest of a mill town in the North.

Margaret initially despises the change of setting, pace and most particularly manners. As she befriends workers in the mills, she starts to adapt to her new life and becomes accustomed to her reduced surroundings.

One steadfast is her derision for the factory owners,most especially her father's friend John Thorton, who has become her admirer against his better judgement and the wishes of his domineering mother.

Gaskell is as capable as Austen of clever plotting and wry dialogue. Yet she can create characters and scenes as forbidding as any of the Bronte's ( with whom she was friendly,in fact she wrote a biography of Charlotte Bronte). The setting in a town in the midst of industrial unrest and great change gives the novel a greater sense of urgency and energy than pastoral Austen.

Be warned there is the occasional hint of puritanical mores-at play-it is mildly squeamish about poor people and mobs and bordering on hysterical about poor people in mobs. Also worth noting is Gaskell's portrayal of the imported Irish mill workers which is fairly hilarious in its casual racism, though typical of much of the writing of the era.

At the very least Gaskell attempts to offer a complete snapshot of life for all the social strata of an industrial Northern town.

Overall North and South is an engaging novel to escape to while the long evenings are still with us.

Dympna Reilly