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heathcliffdt_ 's review for:
North and South
by Elizabeth Gaskell
Majority of Austen fans enjoyed the BBC adaptation of North and South, and that’s primarily the main reason why I picked this book up. I was excited to dive into the book and was even hoping to like it better than Pride and Prejudice, considering North and South is often compared to the former.
However, I had a hard time reading North and South. I had to accompany my reading with listening to an audiobook sped up to 3.5x the speed because it was starting to feel like a chore. I also struggled absorbing Gaskell’s attempt to make a case for both the laborers and the masters, when in fact, we know that the industrial revolution was a period in Victorian era where capitalist employers were so exploitative. That’s why I personally think her work fails to attain the quality of timelessness and universality because SURPRISE, that individual level of understanding between employers and employees are near impossible, a hundred years later. This is the ultimate fatal flaw of Gaskell’s proposition—that workers and employers can achieve harmony in labor relations if both parties just exert enough effort to understand each other at a personal and individual level.
Also, the number of deaths was the MOST RIDICULOUS THING EVER. Gaskell should have just killed off Margaret instead of unnecessarily stretching the story for too long. It doesn’t matter because I don’t care for Margaret. Never cared or became invested in any one character in the book at all.
I rarely DNF a book; the feeling of wishing I own a personal copy of North and South so I can tear and burn it is the closest thing I can do to a DNF.
(Sorry for any grammatical lapses i wrote this rant drunk)
However, I had a hard time reading North and South. I had to accompany my reading with listening to an audiobook sped up to 3.5x the speed because it was starting to feel like a chore. I also struggled absorbing Gaskell’s attempt to make a case for both the laborers and the masters, when in fact, we know that the industrial revolution was a period in Victorian era where capitalist employers were so exploitative. That’s why I personally think her work fails to attain the quality of timelessness and universality because SURPRISE, that individual level of understanding between employers and employees are near impossible, a hundred years later. This is the ultimate fatal flaw of Gaskell’s proposition—that workers and employers can achieve harmony in labor relations if both parties just exert enough effort to understand each other at a personal and individual level.
Also, the number of deaths was the MOST RIDICULOUS THING EVER. Gaskell should have just killed off Margaret instead of unnecessarily stretching the story for too long. It doesn’t matter because I don’t care for Margaret. Never cared or became invested in any one character in the book at all.
I rarely DNF a book; the feeling of wishing I own a personal copy of North and South so I can tear and burn it is the closest thing I can do to a DNF.
(Sorry for any grammatical lapses i wrote this rant drunk)