It endures because of its class-consciousness and its interest in labor issues. And because of this, they totally thought that North and South would be forgotten over time.īut more than a century and a half later, North and South is anything but forgotten. And that was something that the stuffy Victorians were really not into. Anywhere you look in this book, you'll find someone fighting the power. The laborer Nicholas Higgins organizes workers' strikes and insists on the rights of workingmen. Her brother challenges authority by disobeying his commanding officer in the navy and causing a mutiny. Margaret Hale constantly steps beyond her boundaries as a woman in Victorian England. North and South is all about challenging authority, especially when authority tries to work against compassion and justice. Even right up until the 1930s, critics' main view of Elizabeth Gaskell was that she "makes a creditable effort to overcome her deficiencies but all in vain". But more criticism was directed at the fact that Elizabeth Gaskell (a woman!) dared to write sympathetically about the rights of English workers. Its editor, the super famous Charles Dickens, said the story was way longer than it needed to be. When it was first published in 1854, North and South was met with some pretty harsh criticism.
Because if anyone deserves to be called fierce, it's Elizabeth Gaskell. Let's get back to that "fierce social commentary" part. Three hundred pages, multiple deaths and some fierce social commentary later, they realize that okay, yes they do like-like each other. These seemingly polar opposite scenarios both describe what happens in North and South when Southern (southern England, that is) belle Margaret Hale encounters Northern self-made man John Thornton. An uptight girl meets a working-class boy who's made his fortune, and mayhem (and love) ensues. Outside his house has helped to break up the strike.A younger version of Daddy Warbucks meets the female version of Eugene Debs, and mayhem (and love) ensues. Hand, she's furious that Margaret would have the nerve to reject her perfectĭeflects their conversation toward the workers' strike. The one hand, she's happy that John won't be marrying Margaret. Replies that no one in the world will ever love him except her, his mother. When he comes in, she asks how it went, and he Of putting her son's and Margaret's initials on them. She was given for her own wedding and starts unstitching them with the thought
Thornton is waiting for John to come home.
He runs his mind over the whole thing again and again, realizing how obvious it was that Margaret would reject him.
Thornton leaving the Hale house, having just been devastated by Margaret's rejection of his marriage proposal.
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