North and South

by Elizabeth Gaskell

I thought this book was skillfully written. I didn’t find it had the emotional depth of Anne Bronte’s Tenant of Wildfell Hall or the deeply believable characters of George Eliot’s Middlemarch; but it’s quality. It had a very contemporary feel, apparently Gaskell was ahead of her time.

Margaret, a proud and stunning beauty, but with a loving heart, is dealt one blow of fate after another, until the only one she has left to turn to is the one who loved her against his will from the moment they met. Along the way her love and strength of character effect lasting change in all who know her.

I liked the strong plot elements of the industrial milling town; so many of the 19th century novels I’ve read are just about the interpersonal workings of upper-middle-class society.

There are interesting triads of characters to think about: the 3 mothers: Mrs Shaw, Mrs Hale, and Mrs Thornton. The 3 father-figures: Hale, Higgins, and Bell. The 3 men: Mr Lennox, Thornton, Frederick. The 3 young women, Edith – spoiled, self-centered, adored. Betsy – a victim of child labor. And of course Margaret, trying fill the role of middle-woman between father and mother, rich and poor, workers and philosophers, the spiritual and the worldly.