You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.
Take a photo of a barcode or cover
fauxvais 's review for:
North and South
by Elizabeth Gaskell
I read this after Pride and Prejudice, so I feel like in a lot of ways, I couldn't help but compare. I'm an avid fan of the latter, having watched the 2005 movie to obsession - it does miss out on the prose, but to be honest, Joe Wright's direction more than makes up for it - but North and South pretty much blew it out of the water. There's higher stakes that exist in this novel due to the setting and the starker class differences, and I really enjoyed the humanitarian and political discussions which arose from that. It felt like where Elizabeth and Darcy were mostly only barred from each other due to piled up miscommunications, the barriers that existed between characters in North and South were far more and much harder to overcome, so the change that we witnessed in Margaret, Thornton, and Higgins was more significant.
I also found that Pride and Prejudice plot points tended to wrap themselves up rather conveniently; Elizabeth and Jane were luckily able to marry people they loved, Lydia and Wickham were saved from disgrace, we know of no backlash from Lady Duberg despite her original threat to Elizabeth, and even Charlotte ended up in an agreeable marriage. While there was a degree of blind optimism in North and South as well (evinced by the tendency of problems to be solved so long as people talked them out face to face), the story line did not cater to its characters nearly as much and still painted a mostly apt portrait of industrial society and its side effects on people. Although Margaret and Thornton did end up together in the end, it took years and significant change from both of them for this to happen, and I liked that.
I didn't really have any complaints other than that the novel was exhausting to read. I'm a huge fan of prose in Victorian literature, but at the same time, sometimes it can get to be overwhelming, especially when we're waiting until nearly the last page for the biggest plot resolution to finally occur. I devoured the first three quarters of the book, but as I reached the end it got harder to keep my attention focused. It might be better read as an audio book.
I also found that Pride and Prejudice plot points tended to wrap themselves up rather conveniently; Elizabeth and Jane were luckily able to marry people they loved, Lydia and Wickham were saved from disgrace, we know of no backlash from Lady Duberg despite her original threat to Elizabeth, and even Charlotte ended up in an agreeable marriage. While there was a degree of blind optimism in North and South as well (evinced by the tendency of problems to be solved so long as people talked them out face to face), the story line did not cater to its characters nearly as much and still painted a mostly apt portrait of industrial society and its side effects on people. Although Margaret and Thornton did end up together in the end, it took years and significant change from both of them for this to happen, and I liked that.
I didn't really have any complaints other than that the novel was exhausting to read. I'm a huge fan of prose in Victorian literature, but at the same time, sometimes it can get to be overwhelming, especially when we're waiting until nearly the last page for the biggest plot resolution to finally occur. I devoured the first three quarters of the book, but as I reached the end it got harder to keep my attention focused. It might be better read as an audio book.