Product Description

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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10260 in Books
• Published on: 2003-07-31
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 480 pages

About the Author
Elizabeth Gaskell was born in London in 1810 but spent most of her life in Cheshire, Stratford-upon-Avon. She married the Reverend William Gaskell and had four daughters by him. She worked among the poor, travelled frequently and wrote for Dickens' magazine Household Words. Mrs Gaskell was friends with Charlotte Bronte, and consquently went on to write her biography. Patricia Ingham is a fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford, and has written widely on the Victorian novel.

Customer Reviews

Thoroughly Good
I would certainly recommend this novel. I read it before the TV series came along, and loved it for itself. I read half the book in one night - so desperate was I to find out what happened - although I later regretted having almost skimmed through parts of it. This is a book with a lot to offer - from gritty portrails of life in working mill town, to the beautiful romance that is entwined in the dirt and grime like a silken ribbon slinking through a brier bush. The contrasts between the supposed ideallic life in the South and the harsh North are blurred and erased, as stereotypes are broken down through personal contact as the pages progress. It is a delight to read, giving delight to anyone with a romantic heart, or the harder feelings of someone interested in dealing with issues of empathy with the Victorian working classes.
Read it. You would a stoic indeed to regret it.

Stop! Don't read another review!
If you are like me and like to read your books before being told what happens so that you can better appreciate the book for itself please don't read any of the reveiws below. Much of the pleasure I derived from this book was through its unreliable narration and the difference in Margaret's mind to my own, which made me unsure of how she would act. It is good to get an insight of who the Victorians thought they were through it and what the Victorians thought of one another. The story is described as a social novel which simply can't explain this book. North and South makes you feel more like you can place yourslef within Victorian society at both ends of the spectrum and understand what the people thought and why they did. Gaskell's clever writing and insightful descriptions make it an enchanting story about change and the hopelessness of yearning for the past and learning to move on and understand yourself as society becomes more confusing.

A passionate novel, exploring love within a changing society
For me, Elizabeth Gaskell is the Victorian's Jane Austen. She wrote enduring love stories featuring characters the reader cares about, and this novel continues that record. The relationship of Margaret and Thornton is tempestuous and full of twists and turns, with its misunderstandings, unacknowledged passions and fiery exchanges. Gaskell handles the sexual attraction between these characters skilfully, communicating as she does within the far less sexually-open idiom of the Victorian novel (check out the scene where Margaret saves Thornton from the rioters, or the bit when, whilst having tea with the Hales's, Thornton is transfixed by a bracelet tightening the flesh on Margaret's arm).
Adding an extra depth to the novel are the contemporary Victorian social issues which are addressed within its pages - the decreasing social distinction between the classes, the rise in female empowerment - but don't let these put you off. They are so carefully woven in to the inherent fabric of the plot that there is no struggle to understand the significance they would have had.
In short, this is a fantastic book - Margaret and Thornton remind me of Pride and Prejudice's Elizabeth and Darcy, with their stormy, unacknowledged passion for one another and their intellectual compatibility. And just like Pride and Prejudice, this novel is filled with the kind of pleasurable scenes that you'll want to read over and over again.