North and South

Described by Jenny Uglow as 'sexy, vivid and full of suspense' North and South is a compelling novel with magnetic central characters.

Margaret Hale's father has a crisis of faith and removes his family from their beloved New Forest to Milton, a manufacturing town in Manchester. Dismayed by the smoky industrial landscape Margaret's mother becomes ill. Her father takes in students and one of them is the powerful cotton-mill owner John Thornton.

Hypnotised by Margaret's dark beauty, dignity and scornful disdain of capitalism he falls in love with her. Margaret befriends a local girl, Bessy, who is dying as a consequence of breathing in the dust when she worked at the cotton mills:

'Fluff,' repeated Bessy. 'Little bits as fly off fro' the cotton, when they're carding it, and fill the air till it looks all fine white dust. They say it winds round the lungs and tightens them up. Anyhow there's many a one as works in the carding room, that falls in a waste, coughing and spitting blood, because they're just poisoned by the fluff.'

After Margaret protects him during a riot by the workers on strike and is injured in the process, Thornton declares his love and is refused. Her mother succumbs and dies, so does Bessy and suddenly Margaret's father. (Charles Dickens once said that much as he admires Elizabeth Gaskell he wished her characters were a little more steady on their feet!)

During this time, Thornton begins to doubt Margaret's virtue after he sees her walking out after dusk with a young man (who turns out to be her brother, but that's another story.) Margaret's stoicism and compassion see her through and after some clever plot twists she comes to appreciate the true value of the man she once disdained and the industrial town she once disliked.

Thank you so much to Make Do and Read, Shelf Love, A Few of My Favourite Books, Potter Jotter, Lilacs in May and Iris on Books for recommending this marvellous novel and I very much enjoyed this post about Victorian embroidery and art by Jane Brocket.

Wives and Daughters

Can't say I'm enjoying the Radio 4 adaption of Wives and Daughters. Something about those arch actressy voices gets on my nerves. Did the Victorians really speak like that? I did enjoy listening to Jenny Uglow talking about Elizabeth Gaskell on Woman's Hour though, and as she pointed out, the fact that the novel is unfinished does not detract from our enjoyment of it.

I'd always vaguely thought of Gaskell's novels as 'industrial' and consequently avoided them, but reading Cranford a couple of years ago opened my eyes to a warmly humourous writer with a deeply perceptive knowledge of human nature.

Wives and Daughters is a coming of age story and follows the life of Molly Gibson from a child to a woman of nineteen. Molly is the daughter of the local surgeon, a widower. When he re-marries Molly does not get on with her stepmother, a woman only concerned with keeping up appearances, but adores her new step-sister, Cynthia. Molly is a deeply moral girl with fierce loyalties to her father and friends, but it is in the portrayal of the sarcastic Cynthia and her mother that Gaskell really excels.

I'm pretty sure Gaskell was influenced by Maria Edgeworth and she actually mentions Edgeworth in Wives and Daughters. Now there's a topic for a dissertation ... if only I was a student again!

More Elizabeth Gaskell

My photos may give the impression that I spend all my time sitting in Costa* reading, but I have a family and work Mon-Thurs. Friday is my day off and that is the day I like to lounge around reading, then saunter into town and browse the bookshops and sit in a coffee shop and read a bit more before the onset of the weekend.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I still haven't finished the 600+ pages of Wives and Daughters. I'm about half-way through and I can understand why Charles Dickens referred to Elizabeth Gaskell as a 'bewitching Scheherazade'. I've also borrowed Jenny Uglow's biography of Gaskell from the library. Not to read cover to cover as I prefer to read fiction but I want to dip into it and discover a little more about her life.

* ... and Costa needs to watch out! Anymore "Would I like a muffin with that or how about a Costa loyalty card?" and I may take my considerable coffee drinking capacity elsewhere!

Wives and Daughters

And she had found her way into the library, and used to undo the heavy bars of the shutters if the housemaid had forgotten this duty, and mount the ladder sitting on the steps for an hour at a time, deep in some book of the old English classics. The summer days were very short to this happy girl of seventeen.

Nothing like having a reading plan and then immediately deviating from it. I initially wanted to read Elizabeth Gaskells's Wives and Daughters because she mentions Maria Edgeworth, but I've got completely absorbed in the story and can't put it down. I've also been inspired by Elaine's post on Vic Lit (love that phrase) Girlebooks review of Wives and Daughters and several of your comments recommending Gaskell.

Back soon - gotta book to read!

The Life of Charlotte Bronte

The Life of Charlotte Bronte is a truly absorbing read and Elizabeth Gaskell was thorough in her research, observation and personal memories. The extracts from Charlotte's letters portray an exceptionally kind-hearted woman of literary ambition plagued by ill health and and the relentless need to earn a living. When acclaim finally comes for Charlotte is is meaningless to her as she has lost both her beloved sisters. The biography sparkles when Gaskell uses her own literary talents to describe events. For example the episode where Emily subdues her bulldog, Keeper:

He loved to steal up-stairs, and stretch his square, tawny limbs, on the comfortable beds, covered over with delicate white counterpanes. But the cleanliness of the parsonage arrangements was perfect; and this habit of Keeper's was so objectionable, that Emily in reply to Tabby's remonstrances, declared that, if he was found again transgressing, she herself, in defiance of warning and his well-known ferocity of nature,would beat him so severely that he would never offend again.

Keeper does transgress again and Emily does beat him but he bore no grudge and 'walked first among the mourners to her funeral.'

Muriel Spark's biography and critical study of Emily Bronte has been on my bookshelf for many years. Time for a re-read.

More Bronte

I don't read a great deal of non-fiction but I'm interested in all things Victorian at the moment and I need to read Elizabeth Gaskell's biography of Charlotte Bronte. Presumably this is the definitive biography as Elizabeth Gaskell was a friend and contemporary of Charlotte Bronte. I'd be interested in any other Bronte biography recommendations.

With my Christmas book token (thanks Rob!) I couldn't resist the new Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition of Wuthering Heights with its fabulous Ruben Toledo cover.

By the way, Jane Eyre is currently featured on girlebooks.