North and South

St Just Monday Morning Reading Group 29th January 2024.

North and South. Elizabeth Gaskell.

In general the group greatly enjoyed this book. A powerful story, easy to read, a dramatic ending, and highly interesting characters, were some of the comments. The surprising modernity of the language was noticed by several people, and Mrs Gaskell’s fluency in writing dialogue was also admired.

We noted the successful portrayal of the English north/south difference and considered that this is still apparent today, though perhaps the division is now between London together with the Home Counties, and the rest of the country (we are a far-South-West group!)

We discussed the religious question brought up by the Reverend Hale’s leaving the Church of England, for which the author states no reason. We thought that perhaps a contemporary audience would have needed no explanation for this switch, Unitarianism being popular at the time; or that she had been advised that coming from a woman writer, the topic might be unacceptable to the contemporary audience.

We talked about the position of women in the 1850s, and how boring the lives of well-off ladies must have been, constricted by the norms of society and manners and even by their clothes. Margaret comes across as a spirited individual, not content to sit demurely with her needlework, but prepared to try to understand working relations between employers and workers, the inequalities of the situation and also the mutual need. We thought that many women would have admired Margaret’s stance.

We also considered the matter of Margaret’s brother, Frederick, and his place in the story. Was his presence a plot device, as part of the plan to unite Margaret Hale and John Thornton? Was this in the pattern of romantic novels, based on Pride and Prejudice, in which the couple initially misunderstand each other? Or, was Frederick’s role more complicated – Frederick was not merely a ‘rebel’, but had left his home and made a life for himself in the Navy; his involvement in the mutiny would have been very shocking to her readers, and they might have expected the author to condemn Frederick for his part in it. But Mrs Gaskell does not do so – an advanced point of view for the time. Margaret is also a rebel, but of a very different sort.

Thornton, we thought, became more philanthropic as the story progressed, taking better care of his workers and working with Higgins – we compared this with the Quaker companies of today such as Rowntree and Cadbury.

The romantic ending of the book, where Margaret and John declare their love for each other, is much anticipated by the reader but doesn’t happen until the very last page – was this a clever piece of writing, or was it done for strategic reasons because the book was written in instalments?

Comparisons were made with Mrs Gaskell’s The Moorland Cottage, which we read last year, and we decided we like Mrs Gaskell’s novels and would like to read more of them.