Pride and Prejudice with Worse Air Quality: North and South

I remember the first time the North and South miniseries crossed my path–an old internet friend (so, like, from 2005) was telling me all about it, and I was all, “You’re really into that old Civil War series with Patrick Swayze?”

As, I said, it was 2005. I was a child! I didn’t know!

Last fall, I dove in and read the novel, which I loved for being like an Austen character stepping out into Dickensland, and for having capital-p Plot. But it took me until this week, a week of relative calm and solitude, to sit down and watch the miniseries. (I just finished the new Arrested Development. I needed a break.) Mostly what I have to say is: Well, that was delightful.

I mean, it’s just…it’s everything the novel is, and everything the novel is is wonderful. It’s complicated and suspenseful and lovely and swoony-romantic and a fantastic coming-of-age story. Surprise! I like all of these things!

And—not to start out with the gentlemen, when Daniela Denby-Ashe is so good, and so much more the point of the story—is there a better romantic lead out there than Richard Armitage? Obviously, this is a pro-Colin Firth zone, but Miss Osborne is out of town, and so I feel confident in saying that I think Richard Armitage could give The Firth a run for his money, smolder-wise. (<Tangent:> This is why it makes me so sad that the new Hobbit is so wan and vague in the character department. Could Armitage break out as the new heartthrob of Middle Earth? Easily, on account of his handsomeness and general air of nobility, but Thorin Oakenshield is no Aragorn, son of Arathorn. Sorry, dude.</tangent>)

Anyway.

I love that the miniseries is from that mid-2000s period where the BBC was just starting to embrace artsy direction—you can tell they’re just showing off in that scene where Margaret first approaches the mill floor, with the cotton floating around like snow. I feel like they were actually using their “digital snow” setting, probably just to say, “Hey guys! Digital snow!…I mean, cotton, or something.” Awww.

So, can we talk about Brendan Coyle as Nicholas Higgins? On one hand, my brain is confused. Isn’t Nicholas Higgins pretty much elderly in the book? I’ve been calming my cognitive dissonance by chalking it up to historic life expectancies: for a mill worker in the Victorian North of England, maybe 41—Brendan Coyle’s age at the time—WAS pretty old, what with all the cotton fluff in his lungs.

But. I can forgive all this, because SIDEBURNS. And that short hair! Why can’t Bates have ‘burns? They make him look like a rapscallion, in the best way. I think Anna would be totally into it. (Let’s face it: I am totally into it.) Anyway, blah blah, Brendan Coyle plays a good guy with twinkly eyes pretty well I guess.

I think my other favorite character in North and South is Mrs. Thornton—she occupies a similar space to a Lady Catherine de Bourgh, but with an extra layer of complexity and an extra degree of involvement in the story. I like that she’s strong-willed, but not crazy; she’s willing to confront Margaret and be honest, but also accepts and then honors Mrs. Hale’s deathbed request, even if she’d rather not. She’s a difficult egg, but a good one, that Mrs. Thornton—not unlike her son. It’s a nice touch.

And then they met at the train station and made out a little (ignoring the previous standard of you hugged a man at the train station AT NIGHT, you hussy, but I’m trying to let it go), and my heart grew three sizes that day. The End.

Have you seen North and South, readers? What do you think?

P.S. It’s streaming on Netflix in the States, and it’s almost the weekend! DO IT.

 

 

 

North and Prejudice: Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell

North and South: check!

It was pretty great, you guys.

I maintain what I said before: the comparisons between North and South and Austen’s work, especially Pride and Prejudice, are inevitable, but Gaskell remains a handy and entertaining shorthand for the progression of the novel in the approximate first half of the nineteenth century. (I love that this novel was published by Charles Dickens. Elizabeth Gaskell: Bringing generations together since 1837. Awww!)

Warning: SPOILERS, SWEETIE.

The most obvious parallel between Austen’s work and North and South is the relationship between Margaret and Mr. Thornton: it’s decidedly Bennet/Darcy-ish, from the initial distaste to the first botched proposal to Margaret’s growing desire to regain his respect to the passionate final proposal. This happens all the time, of course; somebody tells a good story and suddenly it’s everywhere, slightly tweaked. Nobody seems to know whether Gaskell was familiar with Austen’s work, and far be it from me to accuse Gaskell of being the Sugar and Spice to Austen’s Bring it On, but ultimately it doesn’t matter that much—the similarities are striking, but Margaret and Mr. Thornton’s relationship stands on its own merits. It’s fabulously romantic, for one thing; I’d also point out that Margaret’s saving of Marlborough Mills creates a nice contrast to Darcy’s saving of the Bennet family honor. And do we really need fewer stories about people respecting each other and then falling in love?

Also, let’s be honest: Margaret is, by Austenian standards, practically the Angel of Death. A LOT of people die in North and South, which just doesn’t happen in Austen; she tends to kill people before the action starts and go from there. In a sense, though, that’s appropriate: this novel is so much more about the wide world than any of Austen’s work that it doesn’t seem out of place. In fact, before the grim and unsympathetic backdrop of Milton, where people live cheek-by-jowl and are forced to be so up-front about their poverty, to ignore the high mortality rate would be almost disingenuous—which I suppose is how you know the Victorians have arrived. (Mr. Boucher’s suicide especially surprised me. Can you imagine, in Austen?)

I was also intrigued by Gaskell’s treatment of parents, who of course tend (with a few notable exceptions) to get less-than-sympathetic treatment from Austen. Mrs. Hale is by far the most Austenian—her “I married below my station and can’t stop telling you about it” shtick places her squarely in Austen Mom Land—but she isn’t that ripe for mocking, because…well, she’s about to die a slow and painful death. (But then, Gaskell doesn’t enjoy making fun of her characters as much as Austen does—she was, after all, pals with the Brontes.) I also see a place for Mr. Hale in Austen, not because he’s silly, but because he’s so un-forceful in his many conflicts. Mrs. Thornton, though, strikes me as decidedly un-Austenian, mostly by virtue of being a strong and somewhat imperious mother figure who isn’t necessarily a villain—I suppose the closest analog would be some kind of semi-reasonable nouveau-riche Lady Catherine (which, of course, wouldn’t be Lady Catherine at all).

All this to say, if you haven’t read North and South, you have something good awaiting you. It’s entertaining, it’s romantic, it’s oddly suspenseful, and there’s a pirate mutiny. And if that doesn’t sell you on it, I’m not sure we can really be friends. So go.

(P.S. I know you’re all wondering, so: I will, in fact, be watching the miniseries directly. Richard Armitage may be hot alongside sweet Mr. Bates, Labor Organizer, whenever the fancy strikes.)

 

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.