North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (novel #243)

God help ‘em! North and South have each getten their own troubles. ~ Nicholas Higgins

North and South is…well I’d call it a Victorian Novel, but I guess it is more precisely a Social Novel from the Victorian era. It is set primarily in the fictional manufacturing town of Milton, England in the mid-19th Century and is based on Gaskell’s adult home of Manchester. Gaskell intended to title it with the heroin’s name, but at the insistence of her publisher, Charles Dickens, she agreed to North and South. Dickens didn’t care for the novel much either.

The social issue this novel addresses is ostensibly the plight of the working class during the industrial revolution: unhealthy working conditions, poor wages, no job security. However, I think there was another issue: prejudice and ignorance between the industrialists of the North and landed gentry of the South.

The tale opens on Margaret Hale who enjoys an idyllic life in Hampshire, Southern England until her pastor father has a crisis of conscience that causes him on his own accord to leave the ministry and move to Milton where he has found work teaching some of the families in the smoky manufacturing city. Margaret and her mother are distraught by the change in fortune, and even more so by the change in environment and society. However, Margaret supports her father and accepts their new situation intent to make the best of it.

One of Mr. Hale’s most notable and sincere students is John Thornton, a wealthy, self-made factory owner. Thornton and Margaret are intelligent and assertive and quickly develop a courteous antagonism regarding the merits and faults of North versus South. In one exchange Margaret opines…

“Now in the South we have our poor, but there is not that terrible expression in their countenances of a sullen sense of injustice which I see here. You do not know the South Mr. Thornton” she concluded, collapsing into a determined silence, and angry with herself for having said so much.

 

“And may I say you do not know the North?” asked he with an inexpressible gentleness in his tone as he saw that he had really hurt her.

Initially, they hold each other in mild contempt, yet they also have a restrained, perhaps even reluctant admiration for each other.

When Thornton is admonished by his mother that he thinks too well of Margaret, Thorton replies…

“Mother” (with a short scornful laugh), “you will make me confess. The only time I saw Miss Hale, she treated me with a haughty civility which had a strong flavour of contempt in it. She held herself aloof from me as if she had been a queen, and I her humble, unwashed vassal.

Conversely when Mr. Hale chides his daughter for being too hard on Thornton, Margaret declares…

“He is the first specimen of a manufacturer – of a person engaged in trade – that I had ever the opportunity of studying papa. He is my first olive: let me make a face while I swallow it.

You’ve probably read/viewed enough Gaskell, Victorian novels, Hallmark movies to guess where their relationship is going.

Margaret also encounters the working man, specifically Nicholas Higgins and his two daughters. Margaret and Higgins are also at odds initially, but it is merely from misunderstanding different customs. As they become friends, Higgins asks where Margaret is from and she tells him Hampshire.

That’s beyond London, I reckon? And I come fro’ Burnleyways, and forty miles to th’ North. And yet, yo see, North and South has both met and made kind o’ friends in this big smoky place.

Margaret Realizes... 

From that day Milton became a brighter place to her. It was not the long, bleak sunny days of spring, nor yet was it that time was reconciling her to the town of her habitation. It was that in it she had found a human interest.

Higgins is also a union representative, which puts him on no good terms with Thornton, and by proxy does not improve Thornton’s opinion of Margaret.

And yet…

There is reason to be hopeful. 

It's a marvelous read, masterful work. Gaskell is clearly sympathetic to the working class, but she is fair to portray vice and ignorance on both sides, as well as virtue and nobility. I was less aware of the prejudice in England between North and South. Again, Gaskell made what I believe was a fair portrayal of both. This is the second novel I’ve read by Elizabeth Gaskell, Wives and Daughters being the other. Both were very good, and I will certainly read more.

My rating:  4 out of 5 stars

 

This novel satisfies the “Cardinal Direction” category in the What’s in a Name? 2025 challenge. The title must contain a reference to a cardinal direction. I should get double credit.

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The Haunted House by Charles Dickens and others

The Haunted House is a frame story told by Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell, and others. The first and last chapters, authored by Dickens, frame the story of the narrator taking residence in a notoriously haunted house. After the domestics all flee, the narrator invites a group of friends and relatives to occupy the various rooms and individually document what specters may come.

 

"The Mortals in the House" (Charles Dickens)

 

"The Ghost in the Clock Room" (Hesba Stretton)

 

"The Ghost in the Double Room" (George Augustus Sala)

 

"The Ghost in the Picture Room" (Adelaide Anne Procter)

 

"The Ghost in the Cupboard Room" (Wilkie Collins)

 

"The Ghost in Master B's Room" (Charles Dickens)

 

"The Ghost in the Garden Room" (Elizabeth Gaskell)

 

"The Ghost in the Corner Room" (Charles Dickens)

 

 

I had high hopes for this unusual story, but I was disappointed. It’s a magnificent idea, and looking at the above list, you would think, “can’t go wrong.”

 

It went wrong. For starters, the house isn’t haunted, and the individual “ghost stories” are not about ghosts. As Dickens’ narrator says in the final chapter:

 

In a word, we lived our term out, most happily, and were never for a moment haunted by anything more disagreeable than our own imaginations and remembrances.

 

*** yawn ***

 

And I think that is precisely what trickly old CD intended, but it just doesn’t work.

 

Dickens’ was said to have been disappointed in the result, so I won’t lose sleep over a less-than-stellar review of one of my favorite others and company. Some of the individual chapters were entertaining. Gaskell’s offering was very good and quite Dickensian. But as a whole, the individual stories are disconnected despite the overt intention of connecting them.

 

It's probably a must-read for Dickens fans, and I’ll still claim it as fulfilling a read for R.I.P XVII, but I’m happy to be moving out of The Haunted House.

 

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Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell (novel #171)

…he had got an idea that all young men were wolves in chase of his one ewe-lamb. ~ Mr. Gibson, Molly’s father

 

I did not know until I finished the last chapter, that this is an Unfinished Novel. That turned out to be a happy oversight. I might not have read it, had I known, but I ended up liking it in spite of the lack of complete closure. 

 

Elizabeth Gaskell died suddenly when the novel was nearly complete; some speculate there was but one chapter remaining. My disappointment at the “unfinished” aspect was minimal for two factors: Gaskell’s publisher revealed the intended ending that she had apparently confided to him; and more importantly, Gaskell had already tied off the minor loose ends, and only the major dilemma remained. It was clear where Gaskell was heading, so all that is missing is her artful narrative of the happy outcome the reader is hoping for (confirmed by the publisher).

 

Wives and Daughters is a Victorian era novel about Molly Gibson, the only daughter of a widowed country doctor. In many ways, it is a typical of Victorian Romance with gossip, intrigue, misalliances, jilted lovers, hopeless love, heroes and villains. But Gaskell sets her story apart with characters who are just a half shade off what we might expect. The villain, is himself a wronged man, the fickle, beautiful flirt has a heart of gold, the stepmother has genuine affection for her stepdaughter, and the nobility are indeed, at times, noble. Even the Whigs of Cumnor Towers, and the Tories of Hamley Hall, manage to find common ground (impossible today, I know). 

 

As example: One of my favorite characters, though a minor role, Lady Harriet, daughter of Lord and Lady Cumnor – the ranking family of the county. Lady Harriet seems to wink at her family’s airs, playfully provokes her kind but officious mother, takes a liking to Molly and champions her cause when occasion arises without destroying anyone in the process.

 

This was my first time reading Elizabeth Gaskell. I’ll definitely read more, and of course since this was her final work, anything else I read should be finished. What did you think? Do you find Gaskell more or less, like Austen, Brontës, Thackeray, Eliot, etc?

 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

 

This novel satisfies A 19^thCentury classic for the Back to the Classics 2021 Challenge.

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