betsyleavitt

I initially read this in Kurt Harris's "19th Century British Women Writers" class at SUU. I liked it then and almost wrote my final paper about it. Of course, Jane Eyre was far too tempting, and I wrote about her instead. I clearly need to head to the library when I start picking up old college books, but this was even more fun the second time around. Margaret Hale and her family move to the North of England to Milton from their country home in the South (hence the title) after her father, a parson, suffers a crisis of faith. Margaret, age 19 at the outset of the book, comes face to face with capital and labour (it's a British book; I'll use British spelling if I want to) in this textile mill town. Mr Thornton owns Marlborough Mills and is seeking to better himself through Mr Hale's private tutoring. Mr Higgins is trying to support his two daughters, one of whom is terminally ill, by working in the mill. He and others support a strike near the beginning of the book, and the story of all these opposing forces gets pretty complex, including a mutinous brother and unrequited love. What sets this book apart from, say, a Dickens novel is its ability to see the merit of BOTH sides of capital and labour. Dickens is famous for villifying the businessmen and glorifying the unskilled worker. Although Dickens was Gaskell's publisher, not everything about him rubbed off on her. There are some pretty involved discussions of economic and moral principles, but it feels natural. The biggest criticism of the book is the ending. I won't spoil anything, but Gaskell herself was dissatisfied with how hurried it feels. She wrote the book in installments for a magazine and ran out of pages. While everything does resolve, I wish it had done so more at the pace of the rest of the novel.

2022-10-29 03:33