North and South, or, Nobody Expects the Industrial Revolution

When you’re right, Austenacious readers, you are right.

We talked a bit about Elizabeth Gaskell earlier in the summer (check the comments!), and here I am, about a third of the way through North and South. And, you guys, it’s awesome.

I know: this site is not called Gaskellacious. But! The Jane is strong in this one: it’s like a bridge, chronologically and thematically, between Austen and the Victorians. Published by Charles Dickens in his periodical Household Words, I like to think of North and South as a handy metaphor for (early-to-mid-) 19th-century British literature as a whole: drawing room romance, drawing room romance, drawing room romance, and then—BAM!—Industrial Revolution.

(At least, I think this is how it goes. A word about the edition I’m reading: it is one of exactly two copies in the possession of my local public library system, and I am pretty sure somebody—DigiReads, apparently—printed it off the internet and hand-glued it into a vaguely Victorian-print paperback cover, in much the way my junior-high self used to print out X-Files fanfiction and store it in three-ring binders for optimum access at key future moments. It’s riddled with errors, mostly missing punctuation. GoodReads tells me it’s a professional edition, but Penguin Classics, where are you and your air of publishing legitimacy when I need you? [Answer: Checked out.])

Anyway, North and South starts like Austen—in the titular South, with a stroll in a country garden and a surprise proposal. Its heroine is decidedly Austenian: eighteen and a clergyman’s daughter, a lover of nature, unprepared for romantic love and sometimes socially misunderstood. Its primary love story is built around a clearly Pride and Prejudice-esque relationship, in a “Boy, she’s haughty”/”Boy, he’s mean to the poor”/”Wellll, maybe we had it all wrong I love you I love you”  kind of way. (I assume I know where this is going. OR DO I?) Then comes the North, and things change. Suddenly the subject matter is far more Dickensian—smoky air, factory girls, death by industrial accident—but only the subject matter. The voice remains all post-Austen, all the time: it’s the third-person narrative of a young lady and her parents, a couple of not-very-interesting suitors, one very interesting eventual-suitor, some impoverished neighbors, and her lucky girl cousin who got married and moved to Corfu instead of the gross but unexpectedly nuanced industrial town. And this is why I like North and South: it isn’t the urban melodrama of Dickens (though I like a wackily-named poorhouse as much as the next girl) and it isn’t the moody saga of the moors, like Gaskell’s pal and biography subject, Charlotte Bronte (though not much beats a crazy wife in the attic). It’s early Victoriana—the voice of the Regency confronted with a whole new modern world, and still working through the repercussions. Do we know what Jane would have done in the face of factory labor and slavish working conditions? We do not. But Gaskell might give us a hint.

Further reports as the story progresses; watch this space.

Better yet, go find yourself a nice social novel/romance and call me in the morning.

Where have all the Dickensians gone?

The literary internet is a weird place, you guys. I recently stumbled upon the Dickensblog, an active site that ostensibly runs up against some of the same cultural silliness as we Janeites do—sighing over the reading of classics in schools, or indeed the reading of classics anywhere—without, as far as I can tell, the blessings and occasional hilarity of a saturated blogosphere.

So where are all the Dickensphiles? Aren’t we due for a resurgence of interest in good old Charles, or was the BBC’s semi-recent Bleak House/Little Dorrit double-header it? Because I’m pretty sure that, by volume, there’s plenty of material for many a studio to feed on for quite some time. And who doesn’t like squalor and satire in Victorian London?

Perhaps Dickens needs (“needs,” she says, as if widespread pop-culturization and frequent watering down were the goal) a breakout star: a Firth-as-Darcy performance to force the issue, fanwise. But who would that be? The Dickens canon is packed with characters—so many characters!—yet few of them strike a pose that’s either romantic (or Romantic) or especially heroic. Who is there for readers to fall in love with, either by admirable strength of character, recognizable weakness of character, or a particular chemistry with another character? Certainly Dickens tells a mean story with a downright Austenian kind of character satire, and of course he hasn’t exactly dropped off the face of the earth, but general Dickens Fever hasn’t hit—we know because Great Expectations of El Chupacabra hasn’t yet hit the mass-market shelves.

I wonder, a bit, about the romance element: I despise and reject the notion that Austen fans are only in it for the happy (or fascinatingly unhappy) couples, or that Dickens’s stories don’t speak for themselves; on the other hand, there’s nothing like impending romance, or romantic conflict, to hook new fans and bring fan communities together. (Admittedly, I believe the mid-90s Great Expectations adaptation with Ethan Hawke and Gwyneth Paltrow tried to circumvent this, which only brought out the inner literary curmudgeon in my young self, with unfortunate consequences for all.) Surely there’s a pond somewhere that somebody handsome could dive into? A good, sexy kiss in the early morning light? I mean, you know, if they’re looking for advice.

Or is Dickens just not at the front of the line in the year 2011? Maybe in the great cosmic marketing catalog, he’s just waiting for the Brontes to go out of fashion so we can all fully appreciate the complexity of his Industrial Revolution without the crazy folks out on the moors to distract us.

Or maybe—just maybe—Dickens and his people would rather just be left alone. Which, I suppose, isn’t the worst thing in the world. But you know they’re missing out on all the fanfiction.

(Incidentally, Dickensblog informs me that we can expect new adaptations of Great Expectations on both the big and small screens in the near future–with Gillian Anderson and [somewhat inevitably] Helena Bonham Carter as competing Miss Havishams! Or is it Misses Havisham?)