Would that contemporary novelists could also take on that challenge. As Dickens himself found with Hard Times, marrying social concerns with enjoyable storytelling is far from straightforward, but Gaskell succeeds. It's not exactly original, either – there's more than a doff of the cap to Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, and suggestions that it's an industrial Pride and Prejudice certainly hold some water.īut, actually, it doesn't matter. Dickens was apparently infuriated by its lack of focus, only for Gaskell to respond by cunningly reintroducing edited chapters later. Here the relationship between Elizabeth Bennet and. There's even a Shakespearean case of mistaken identity, just to make the course of true love run a little less smooth.Īll of which makes North and South far too long. Gaskells North and South (1854-55) has all the makings of a deftly refashioned Pride and Prejudice. She becomes part of a clearly signposted will-they-won't-they love story with the outwardly rough-and-ready manufacturer Mr Thornton. North and South (1855), Elizabeth Gaskells second novel dealing with Condition of England issues, contrasts various milieus in the Victorian heyday of. Margaret is torn from the bucolic surroundings of Hampshire in classic fish-out-of-water style. Gaskell's priorities lay with storytelling.
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