North & South by Elizabeth Gaskell

This is the third and final discussion post for the North & South readalong hosted by It's All About Books, Jenni Elyse & Kami's LIbrary Thoughts.

Discussion post two is here.

Discussion post one here.

I have been a little rebellious by not waiting to answer the questions posted by Suey, Kami & Jenni. However I write most of my big posts on the w/e & I didn't want to miss out on the mid-week catch-ups - it was hard enough getting the time zones right for twitter chats!

Happily my posts have covered many of the questions they posed, if in a roundabout fashion!

Let's see if I can wing it three times in a row.

Now that I've got to the end, I see North & South more as coming of age story about Margaret than a straight love story or even a story about the class divide in England.

Apparently Gaskell wanted to name the story after her heroine, Margaret Hale as she did for Mary Barton. But Charles Dickens insisted that she call it North and South. The story was serialised from September 1854 to January 1855 in Household Words (a journal edited by Dickens throughout the 1850's).
At the same time that Gaskell's story was being serialised, Dickens was also serialising Hard Times (also set in Manchester) in Household Words (thank you wikipedia).

Gaskell found the weekly installments required difficult to keep up with as well as being challenged by Dickens writing about the same topic at the same time and trying not to overlap on key points.

I've always found the serialised novel a curious concept.
It must completely mess with the editing & continuity process. I would have to assume that most writers would have the bulk of the story already written, although I've read previous accounts of journals being held up by authors trying to finish the final chapters in time.

By the end of North & South, Gaskell wrote that she would rather call her novel Death and Variations, because "there are five dead, each beautifully consistent with the personality of the individual" (The Cambridge Companion to Elizabeth Gaskell (2007) edited by Jill L Matus). Certainly, all the deaths provide key moments in Margaret's own personal development as they allow her to become emotionally, physically and finally, financially independent.

Later in 1855, the book was finally published in full with many changes to overcome the restrictions of the serialising process. This included editing, changing the ending, adding a preface, several new chapters, chapter headings and the epigraphs.

Although everything that occurs in North and South is part of the maturation of Margaret - from marriage proposals,
moving towns, deaths, money management & new friendships - it is a novel that discusses the class divide in England. A divide that exists also between men and women.

We see the competition between traditional and modern life; country life versus city; poverty and wealth; inherited family wealth and the self-made man.

Even at the end of the book, Gaskell is still highlighting the differences between the two.

"seeing the old south country-towns and hamlets sleeping in the warm light of the pure sun, which gave a yet ruddier colour to their tiled roofs, so different to the cold slates of the north. Brrods of pigeons hovered around these peaked quaint gables....There were few people about at the stations, it almost seemed as if they were too lazily content to wish to travel.

The hot air danced over the golden stillness of the land, farm after farm was left behind." (pg 467-8)

 "Meanwhile, at Milton the chimneys smoked, the ceaseless roar and mighty beat, and dizzying whirl of machinery, struggled and strove perpetually...in their endless labours...(and the) tireless endurance by the strong crowds, who, with sense and with purpose, were busy and restless in seeking after - What? 

every man's face was set in lines of eagerness or anxiety; news was sought for with fierce avidity; and men jostled each other aside in the Mart and in the Excahnge, as they did in life, in the deep selfishness of competition." (pg 508)

I cant help but think, by Gaskell's choice of language, that even though she admired and respected the changes happening in the North, her heart was in the South.

Thank you to Suey, Jenni & Elyse for hosting this wonderful readalong. I'm so glad that I finally read my first Gaskell & that I got to do so in such fine company.

The readalong has also helped to kick start my year of reading challenges as North & South (at 531 pgs) fulfills my TBR pile, Reading England (Lancashire) & Back to the Classics (chunkster) challenges. It is also another book off my Classics Club list.

I hope to watch the miniseries of North and South soon, although I'm not quite sure how I'm going to fit that into my current schedule!
For now I'll leave you all with a  little curious titbit - the actor who played Mr Hale in the 2004 series, Tim Pigott-Smith, played Frederick in the 1975 series.

North and South Readalong (discussion #2)

I'm reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (1810 - 1865) with It's All About Books, Jenni Elyse & Kami's LIbrary Thoughts.

Discussion two covers chapters 19 - 35, 'Angel Visits' to 'Expiation'.

The first discussion highlighted how much of North and South was based on Gaskell's own history.

The middle section seems to be where the views, ways & ideas of the North and the South collide in the eyes of Margaret.

Milton (Manchester) during the time of Margaret (& Gaskell) was a part of the northwest county of Lancashire, which also included the towns of Lancaster, Preston, Liverpool, Wigan and Blackpool.

The Industrial Revolution saw this area come into its own as mill towns and collieries boomed. According to wikipedia Manchester & Liverpool not only dominated the global economy of the time, but they were the birthplaces of modern capitalism.
And Blackpool become the seaside resort that the workers flocked to for their traditional wakes week (see my Four Seasons post about Blackpool here).

In fact, Manchester & Liverpool both became so big and so dominate, that in 1974 when England underwent boundary reform, they were both removed from Lancashire to form their own metropolitan counties of Greater Manchester & Merseyside.

In Margaret's eyes, Milton and its county, Darkshire is a dirty, bustling, noisy place. Her first view of Milton in chapter 7 reveals "a deep lead-coloured cloud hanging over the horizon."

"Nearer to the town, the air had a faint taste and smell of smoke....Quickly they were whirled over long, straight, hopeless streets of regularly built houses, all small and of brick. Here and there a great oblong many-windowed factory stood up, like a hen among her chickens, puffing out black 'unparliamentary' smoke, and sufficiently accounting for the cloud which Margaret had taken to foretell rain. As they drove through the larger and wider streets, from the staion to the hotel, they had to stop constantly; great loaded lurries blocked up the not over-wide thoroughfares....People thronged the footpaths, most of them well-dressed as regarded the material, but with a slovenly looseness."

In chapter 31, Margaret is still comparing Milton unfavourably to Helstone,

"The chill, shivery October morning came; not the October morning of the country, with soft, silvery mists, clearing off before the sunbeams that bring out all the gorgeous beauty of colouring, but the October morning of Milton, whose silver mists were heavy fogs, and where the sun could only show long dusky streets when he did break through and shine."

But Margaret's opinion of the people and their work undergoes profound changes during the middle section of the book.

By chapter 20 she "liked the exultation in the sense of power which these Milton men had. It might be rather rampant in its display, and savour boasting; but still they seemed to defy the old limits of possibility, in a kind of fine intoxication, caused by the recollection of what had been achieved, and what yet should be."

The middle section also brings on the first spate of deaths that affect young Margaret's life.

The deaths of Bess and Mrs Hale not only show us Margaret's strengths but also Mr Thorton's. We already suspected his kind, loving, generous nature, but now Margaret acknowledges it for the first time.
Furthermore, the death of Mrs Hale bonds Margaret and her father to Milton - as her final resting place, Milton will now always have a tender place in their hearts.

I was curious about the Victorian custom of no women allowed at the funeral. The book suggested it was to do with emotional, uncontrollable women & I thought surely not! Margaret was the strong, resilient one after her mother's death while her father and brother fell apart, leaving everything to her.
So then I thought it may have had something to do with their corsets making them unable to walk behind the hearse to the cemetery.

But then I found this fabulous blog by Kathryn @The Regency Redingote that discussed the very issue!

Corsets did play a part, but class sensibility was the driving force.
The upper class wanted to show their natural superiority in the new age of reason & rationalism by enforcing 'polite society' on its members. Part of polite society involved showing no emotion in public. Self-control was highly valued.
The long funeral processions were also seen as being dangerous for women.

I wonder if Gaskell wrote in so many deaths as a way of highlighting yet another class difference?

The Pride and Prejudice parallels in the love affair continue in the middle section. The heated discussion about whether Mr Thornton is a gentleman or a man reminded me of Lizzie's riposte to Darcy about behaving in a more gentleman-like manner!

As for Frederick! You want to love him for Margaret's sake, but the whole time you're left wondering what he's up to. Can you really believe him or trust him? Can Margaret count on him when she needs him?

Perhaps Frederick is another way for Gaskell to highlight how alone Margaret really is. Her strength and resilience are born of necessity. She can rely on no-one but herself.
When the time comes (I assume it comes!) for Margaret and Mr Thornton to get together they will do so as independent equals.

Now it's time to go off and see what everyone else is thinking about North and South. Hopefully I will have time to join in the twitter chat this time too :-)

North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (discussion #1)

I'm reading North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell (1810 - 1865) with It's All About Books, Jenni Elyse & Kami's LIbrary Thoughts.

Discussion one covers chapters 1-18 (although I started late & I only got to chapter 12 this week).

Many events from Elizabeth Gaskell's own life story made an appearance in North & South.

Gaskell's father, William Stevenson (1772 - 1829), was a classical tutor at Manchester Academy for a time. He then preached for a short time as a Unitarian minister at Failworth before resigning his position on "conscientious grounds" (wikipedia).

In North & South, Margaret's father leaves his position as minister of Helstone vicarage with "doubts", for "conscience' sake" and as a "Dissenter." (I'm assuming Helstone is another fictional town, as Gaskell refers to the New Forest area of Hampshire twice when Margaret was talking to Mr Lennox, which doesn't match the real town of Helstone in the wild & woolly climes of Cornwall).

Dissenter: (wikipedia) "In the social and religious history of England and Wales it refers particularly to a member of a religious body who has, for one reason or another, separated from the Established Church or any other kind of Protestant who refuses to recognise the supremacy of the Established Church in areas where the established Church is or was Anglican."

Margaret then moves to Milton-Northern with her parents - a fictional industrial town in NW England, but apparently based on Manchester where Gaskell lived with her husband from 1832.

William Gaskell (1805 - 1884) was also a Unitarian minister from a family of well-known Rational Dissenters:

"In the eighteenth century, one group of Dissenters became known as "Rational Dissenters". In many respects they were closer to the Anglicanism of their day than other Dissenting sects; however, they believed that state religions impinged on the freedom of conscience. They were fiercely opposed to the hierarchical structure of the Established Church and the financial ties between it and the government. Like moderate Anglicans, they desired an educated ministry and an orderly church, but they based their opinions on reason and the Bible rather than on appeals to tradition and authority. They rejected doctrines such as the Trinity and original sin, arguing that they were irrational. Rational Dissenters believed that Christianity and faith could be dissected and evaluated using the newly emerging discipline of science, and that a stronger belief in God would be the result." (wikipedia)

The section in North & South concerning Mr Hale's resignation was a little confusing. I couldn't understand why he had to leave the church. I've used Gaskell's personal history (& google) to try and work out what she was trying to imply.

Mr Hale then took up a position as "private tutor".

The Mr Lennox romance was also interesting - a writerly device perhaps to show that Margaret knows how to say 'no', knows her own mind and has definite opinions about the life she wants to lead?

Margaret was aware of "points of difference" between them & she used the words "disagreeable", "annoying", "disdain" & "repelled" to describe her feelings in a few short paragraphs. This all gives us faith in Margaret that she will make the right decision when a more suitable suitor does appear.

I hope to make time this weekend to really get stuck in.

When commenting please remember that I have not read North & South before or seen any of the TV series - all I know is what I have read on the back cover of my Penguin English Library edtion...

Elizabeth Gaskell's compassionate, richly dramatic novel features one of the most original 

and fully-rounded female characters in Victorian fiction, Margaret Hale. 

It shows how, forced to move from the country to an industrial northern town, 

she develops a passionate sense of social justice, and a turbulent relationship with 

mill-owner John Thornton.

North and South depicts a young woman discovering herself, in a nuanced portrayal 

of what divides people, and what brings them together.