Duchess Nicole's Reviews > North and South

"And yet, yo see, North and South has both met and made kind o' friend in this big smoky place."
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I almost feel like a fraud reviewing books like this. I know that there are probably many details that I miss entirely, some nuances that go straight over my head, but these are my thoughts...however scattered they are.

Margaret Hale's father has been the spiritual leader of his community of Helston for decades. Now he questions his faith...not necessarily his belief in God, but maybe the infallible constancy that ministers should have. While Margaret herself has been living among high society with her aunt for the last years, when her father decides to leave the church and uproot his family, she moves with her mother and father to the Northern city of Milton.

"Her keen enjoyment of every sensuous pleasure, was balanced finely, if not overbalanced, by her conscious pride in being able to do without them all, if need were."

Milton is an industrious city full of factories and rich tradesmen and merchants. But there are also the poor, the underfed, the "little guys" who work in those factories day after day just to make enough to feed their families. Margaret's first impression of Milton is not a good one, and her prejudice about her new home town is made known to any who will listen.

And while there were time that Margaret's prejudice really grated my nerves, she grows so much as a person during the course of this story that it's next to impossible not to empathize with her. Both of her parents seem to be weak in character, leaning so heavily on their daughter and giving her so much emotional responsibility as to question who the parents are. What did they do while she was away from them? By the end of the book...poor Margaret!!

"I have passed out of childhood into old age. I have had no youth - no womanhood; the hopes of womanhood have closed for me - for I shall never marry; and I anticipate cares and sorrows just as if I were an old woman, and with the same fearful spirit. I am weary of this continual call upon me for strength."

Mr. Hale has taken up tutoring those who wish to learn. One of his student is John Thornton, who happens to be one of the richer men in Milton.
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He and Margaret definitely do not hit it off on their first meeting. These are two very strong personalities, people with rigid convictions who aren't afraid of speaking their mind...and they often do.

Still, Thornton has a fascination with the outspoken Margaret.

"He almost said to himself that he did not like her, before their conversation ended; he tried so to compensate himself for the mortified feeling, that while he looked up on her with an admiration he could not repress, she looked at him with proud indifference, taking him, he though, for what, his irritation, he told himself he was - a great, rough fellow, with not a grace or a refinement about him. Her quiet coldness of demeanor he interpreted into contemptuousness, and resented it in his heart to the pitch of almost inclining him to get up and go away, and have nothing more to do with these Hales, and their superciliousness."
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Despite her disapproval of everything he is and does, he is continually drawn back to her; due to circumstance or compulsion, he always comes back. Margaret also wages a subtle battle with herself in regard to her feelings for Thornton...though she hides it extremely well. This was a frustrating aspect of the book for me. Thornton is a very kind man. He reveals his difficult childhood to Margaret, he becomes a very good friend of her father's, and shows the Hales every courtesy he can, despite their fairly low status in society. And yet Margaret takes her sweet time coming to terms with the fact that he's a very good person.

"Their intercourse had been one continued series of opposition..."

While this slow moving romance develops, the meat of the story is the industrial revolution taking place in towns like Milton. Factories needed workers, and often those workers were treated no better than animals. The threat of a strike is ever present. And a strike in those days, when no work meant no food, was much more violent than what it means today. Deplorable, dangerous, and inhumane working conditions led to chronic illness and death for many of the employees.

One such family portrayed in this book is the Higgins family. Nicholas, the father, and Bess and Mary, his daughters, are a huge part of the story. Not only are they fast friends of Margaret's, but Bess has some sort of sickness of the lungs from which she is dying. Her friendship with Margaret and her faith in God when every one around her is faithless is heartwarming and heartbreaking all at once.

Tragedy is ever present in this novel. Death comes to everyone, but it seemed to come an awful lot for the people in Margaret's life during the two plus years that she is in Milton.

"And that was death! It looked more peaceful than life..."
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So while this is definitely not an uplifting romance, it's definitely a story about friendship. Relationships can be formed with people from all walks of life, and it's those relationships that shape who you are. Margaret starts off resigned to her fate, living in this dirty, loud city with these boisterous, rude people. Her character development is by leaps and bounds and huge revelations.

"Oh! had any one such just cause to feel contempt for her? Mr. Thornton, above all people, on whom she had looked down from her imaginary heights till now! She suddenly found herself at his feet, and was strangely distressed at her fall."

Though the end is quite abrupt...it really needed more. After this epic journey of self discovery, to end a book in the middle of one of the most powerful scenes was a bit of a downer. And here's where I can tout the miniseries from which all of the pictures in this review came from. Rarely do I like a movie more than the book that it is about, but I sure did in this case! I'm glad that I read the book first, for sure. But the movie clarified some of my questions and romanticized the story enough for me to relate to it a bit more.

Buddy read with Blacky, Karen, Tea, Cathy, and Amaryllis...Muah!!!
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This ebook is FREE!!! It's considered a public domain book, so you can download it at Project Gutenberg here: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4276 in many different formats, and share away!
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