North and South

North and South is perhaps one of my all-time favorite historical period dramas produced by BBC films. Oddly enough, the film came to my attention while I was in England. I was bored one night and ran across a video on Youtube, which featured clips of North and South with John Groban’s song ‘Remember When It Rained’ playing in the background. I had to wait half a year until I returned to the U.S. to see the film. I received the dvd as present for Christmas from my mom, who despite her half-hearted complaints, loves period drama films as much as I do.

The story follows the lives of Margaret Hale (one of the novel’s protagonists) and her family as they move from their small southern town in Helstone to the industrial city of Milton in northern England. Her father resigns from his duties as a clergyman because of lingering doubts with himself and the church. His decision to uproot his family and move to the entirely different city of Milton was motivated partly by his friend’s opinions of the city and the fact that Mr. Hale could seek employment as a tutor to wealthy, working class men who wanted to continue with their education.

Whilst there, the Hales have to come to terms with the fact that life in Milton is drastically different from what they had seen in Helstone. While the sorrows of the working class in Helstone were mainly concerned with farming and the land, Milton’s working class dealt with different issues and their working conditions, arguably, were even worse. The lower classes took up various types of employment in the city’s main industry, cotton mills. The hours were long and the wages had been frozen for a couple of years due to the costs of running the mills. The work itself could be potentially dangerous depending on what area of the mill you were assigned to work in. Everyone took a terrible risk by working in the mills because of the ‘fluff,’ i.e. strands of cotton that flew up in the air from the looms and wheels. When ingested, the fluff would settle on the lungs and cause the person to have fits of coughing and difficulty breathing.

Margaret Hale befriends several members of the working class including Bessy Higgins and her father. Bessy had worked in the mills since she was a child and contracted the illness attributed to swallowing fluff. Her father works hard to support his two daughters since their mother had passed away.

Mr. Hale and his family, while appalled by the poverty around them, try their best to provide food and money to poor families in the community when they can afford to do so. In order to provide for his own family, Mr. Hale tutors men in the city who wish to continue their education after having to give up their studies to pursue careers as ‘masters’ or owners of the mills. Mr. Hale is introduced to Mr. John Thornton, the master of Millborough Mills and the novel’s second protagonist, by their mutual friend, Mr. Bell.

Despite the differences in upbringing, temperament, opinions, and social standing, Margaret and Mr. Thornton begin to fall in love and eventually through many obstacles acknowledge one another’s feelings.

After watching the film version with Daniela Denby-Ashe and Richard Armitage playing the lead characters, I immediately ran to my local bookstore to purchase the book version by Elizabeth Gaskell only to find that no one had the book in stock. As typical of classics, you either find them with ease because high schools or colleges are reading them or not at all because bookstores (sadly) do not carry every classic title in their inventory.

I checked by local libraries including my university’s library and no one seemed to have the book. I did find some of Gaskell’s other books like Mary Barton, Cranford, and Wives and Daughters, but not the one book I was hoping to read! In the end I ordered my copy from Amazon and set out to read it when it finally came in the mail. Of course, I got sidetracked with life’s everyday issues and didn’t get back to the book until a month later, but at least I finished reading it eventually!

I found the endings to the film and the book to be perfect. While noticeably the film version ending showed the physical side of the characters’ passion more so than the book, it still captured the idea that they still had more to overcome to be together, especially with their families. The end of the book while giving a satisfactory ending to the main character’s romance also described the two families’ doubts of a marriage between two people of very different social classes:

‘ – but what will she say?’
‘I can guess. Her first exclamation will be, “That man!”’
‘Hush!’ said Margaret, ‘or I shall try and show you your’s mothers indignant tones as she says, “That woman!”’
North and South, Oxford World Classic edition, p. 436

My favorite lines:

From the book:

‘Oh, Mr. Thornton, I am not good enough!’
‘Not good enough! Don’t mock my own deep feelings of unworthiness.’ p. 436

(Mr. Thornton shows Margaret some roses he picked from Helstone)
‘I wanted to see the place where Margaret grew to what she is, even at the worst time of all, when I had no hope of ever calling her mine.’


From the film:

Margaret: “I believe I’ve seen hell and it’s white, snow white.”

I felt this was a poignant statement on the working conditions of factories during the Victorian period. While the factories provided citizens with the opportunity to gain employment and wages to provide for their families, it came with a heavy price of long hours, sometimes low wages, and dangerous working conditions.
Overall, the film version follows the original book quite well. I highly recommend the book to anyone who loves a good classic with social tensions between the classes and a bit of romance. If you’ve read North and South, you would probably like another Victorian classic in the same vein, David Copperfield (yet another one of my faves)!! It calls for a future post so I will not ramble about it this time!

Happy reading or stitching!!

P.S. Thanks, Snowbird, for the spell check :) I don't always catch my mistakes ^___^