She unpacks and scrubs and cleans and irons, and she is tired.
So, her genteel upbringing is cast aside as the practicalities of running a home land on her shoulders. Her mother has retreated nearly permanently to her room while her father is eking out a living as a tutor. RELATED: Cranford Book Review: An Enjoyable ClassicĪgain, Margaret has to deal with this new place, these new people, these new customs, these new dialects, these new circumstances. Bell has recommended the place and will aid in their relocation. Her father has decided to head to the north, to the industrializing Milton (based on Manchester), to make a living there as a tutor. She deals with the preparations for packing and moving, and saying goodbye to the parishioners. So, Margaret self-assuredly and dutifully deals with it all. TV adaptation of “North and South.” Photo: BBC RELATED: North and South (2004) Review – A Look Back at One of the Best Period Dramas of All Time Her father often retreats to his study and the security of his books. Margaret’s mother is a flighty, delicate woman, prone to headaches. And the southern idyll begins to crack.Īfter much contemplation and prayer, her father decides to leave the church, thus losing his profession and their home. She turns down an offer of marriage from an eligible man.
Following her cousin’s marriage, Margaret returns to her beloved village of Helstone, to its vicarage. North and South follows the story of one Margaret Hale, a nineteen-year-old vicar’s daughter, who has received a genteel upbringing in her aunt’s London home. It’s good stuff! Among These Dark Satanic Mills: When a Southern Lady Meets a Northern Industrialist A mash-up of Austen and Dickens, with a sprinkling of the Brontës, and yet distinctly her own. North and South is this fabulous blend of Austen-like romance with class struggle, social injustice, and the effects of capitalism. Reaping the benefits of socialism in this socialist country I call home, coming from a long lineage of outspoken unionists and being a woman who once wrote a Masters’ thesis steeped in Marxist theory, I should have read North and South years ago. And then I decided to start some reading of Gaskell. Miniseries of Wives and Daughters, Cranford and Return to Cranford have followed.
This major gap in my life – and it is a decided gap, I have discovered – had started to be bridged this past autumn, when I discovered the BBC’s North and South miniseries. I hadn’t read any of her books, hadn’t seen any of the adaptations and miniseries, and I’m a former English major, gosh darn it! Over forty years on this planet, and I’ve had nothing to do with Elizabeth Gaskell. North and South Book Review: Elizabeth Gaskell published the classic love story in 1854.
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