Customer Reviews

North and South

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This is just a warning about this specific edition, published by Wilder Publishing. I purchased this edition over others that were slightly more expensive but ended up regretting it. It is rife with spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors. The errors were so egregious it didn't appear to have been proofread at all. I loved the novel, but the experience would have been vastly better had I chosen a book by a reputable publisher.

Formulaic love story, with class issues and subtle hints of subversive thinking. For me, much richer and full of substance than others I've read in that genre.

Unlike Austen's characters, protagonist Margaret is less interested in manipulating through her social world, but through circumstances and her strong commitment to her family, Margaret is more interested, first by repulsion and then by attraction, in the lives of the owners and workers she encounters when moving from agrarian south to newly industrialized market/merchant town in the north. It is a newly emerging market society, repulsive to the aristocracy for its blatant quest for money.

Beginning of looking at the symbiotic relationship between the "masters" (factory owners) and the workers who, in response to extreme exploitation for their labor, fall into organizing and resulting dominance from labor unions. Rogue strikers not following carefully engineered plans cause chaos, disrupting a well organized strike. Owners resort to importing Irish workers resulting in lost contracts from substandard products made by this new unskilled labor. Characters find awakening awareness to a need for the masters and laborers to actually hear one other. Also, the instability of markets and the vulnerability not only of workers, but owners, becomes apparent.

Other themes: the love story; the lives of the aristocracy, masters, agrarian poor; family relationships and mothers; health and environmental awareness; operation of a biased legal system in face of brother's mutiny; racial issues in relation to attitudes towards Irish; attitudes towards the Catholic country of Spain; slice of history at start of industrialization; crisis of religious conscience by Margaret's father in Anglican church, which moves the plot. Margaret is from the aristocracy of her mother, lives on the fringes of aristocracy through her father's modest career as a country preacher. Margaret is a strong woman thinking for herself and not angling for a good marriage. Mr. Thornton, the Mr. Darcy of this story, is a self-made man, an emerging captain of industry with more cares of the world and business than Darcy. Men's emotions are more fleshed out here than Austen. In that smokey northern town there is an excitement and energy that attracts, a repulsive market awakening of a flat and static aristocratic society dependent on agrarian roots.

Need to adjust to the English, written for its time. Great local dialogue by Higgens, key worker and union member. Some humor and lovely sense evoking descriptions. Loved Margaret.

Generally I am not a fan of victorian novels. However, North and South had much more depth to it. The coming of age of the mechanization of the English fabric industry gave interest and insight in more than the particular characters. This novel showed some of the first unionization of the workers in the mills, showing both sides of the issue through the characters in the novel. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.