'North and South' by Elizabeth Gaskell

I am trying to read more classic literature and so, for the first time, this month picked up a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell (1810 - 1865).

I lived in Manchester for twenty-five years as a student and then a youngish person establishing myself in a career, and I remember frequently driving past the house Mrs Gaskell shared with her husband (a Unitarian minister) in Plymouth Grove. I went inside once and, if I recall rightly, it was being used for some purpose by the university; certainly not a conventional literary museum. I am also familiar with some of the locations in this book, such as the Golden Lion pub in Victoria Park which is not so far away from where the Gaskell's lived.

'North and South' was first serialised in a magazine run by Charles Dickens called 'Household Words' in 1854 and 1855, by which time Elizabeth Gaskell was a very well-established and respected novelist.

The plot has a whiff of Trollope about it in its lightish style, clerical elements and moral seriousness, and very much more than a whiff of Jane Austen. The plot resembles that of 'Pride and Prejudice' in many ways, but in a much more middle class, industrial and political setting. Unlike both these authors though, Mrs Gaskell includes a great deal more personal tragedy and deals with political matters much more explicitly. The novel deftly combines a fairly conventional romantic story involving opposites being attracted to one another, alongside an accompanying love triangle, with some pretty hard-hitting social comment.

The book was published at the height of the industrial revolution with associated worker unrest and debates raging about how masters treated the people they employed in cotton mills as labourers. On these political questions her approach is to make it clear which side she stands on (she has a lot of sympathy for the strikers), but avoids demonising those who take a different view. All the characters are sympathetically drawn and even those who are less agreeable have understandable motives.

The central protagonist is a young woman called Margaret Hale who has grown up in the south of England, partly in London and partly in a small Hampshire village. She is a parson's daughter. But early on in the novel her family move to Milton in the county of Darkshire (certainly intended to be Manchester) when her father leaves the ministry and takes up private tutoring.

She has two main suitors, both of whom would like to marry her - a London solicitor and a Milton mill owner - and a range of friends and acquaintances with a wide variety of social backgrounds. There is also a subplot involving a brother who is living in Spain and cannot return to England for fear of being arrested for his part in a naval mutiny some years before.

It is beautifully written, serious in intent, thought-provoking and well-plotted. The characters are all skilfully drawn, the story unfolding in very different, contrasting British locations. I particularly liked the way that the romantic and political aspects intertwined and the way that she keeps you guessing until the very end about how the love triangle is going to play out.