Résumé
Résumé de North and South
À qui s’adresse-t-il ?
For readers who love romance with real stakes, and anyone curious about the Industrial Revolution seen through ordinary lives, class conflict and friendships across social divisions.
De quoi parle ce livre ?
What if the wrong town turned out to be the right one? Elizabeth Gaskell wrote North and South for a weekly magazine in 1854 and 1855, drawing on her life in Manchester, the great city of cotton mills. She wanted comfortable southern readers to see how life really looked in the industrial north. Margaret Hale, a clergyman's daughter, is pulled from a green Hampshire village to the smoke of Milton. There she meets John Thornton, a proud mill owner, and Nicholas Higgins, a proud mill hand. It is a love story and a social novel at once.
Dans ce résumé
- 1A Comfortable Girlhood Ends in HampshireFree
- 2A Father's Conscience Uproots the Family
- 3Milton Is Smoke, Noise, and Plain Speech
- 4Thornton's Pride Meets Margaret's Pride
- 5Friendship Grows Across the Class Line
- 6A Strike Brings the Mob to the Door
- 7Two Ideas of Industry Clash
- 8Pride, Prejudice, and Learning to See
- 9How the Story Is Told and Why It Lasts
Point clé 1 sur 9
A Comfortable Girlhood Ends in Hampshire
The novel opens in a London house full of silk and wedding talk. Margaret has lived there since childhood with her cousin Edith, who is about to marry. Margaret watches it all with a little distance, then goes home to Helstone, the southern village where her father is the clergyman.
There Henry Lennox, a London lawyer, asks her to marry him. She refuses at once, because she feels no love for him. The refusal is right, yet it is also a little proud.
Helstone is green and settled, and Margaret will measure the north against it. Gaskell lets the reader love the village too, so that the loss is real. The novel will test Margaret's pride again and again.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
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Who’s who
- Margaret Hale
- A proud clergyman's daughter whose move north brings her into contact with mill owners and workers.
- John Thornton
- A self-made mill owner and Hannah's son, whose convictions clash with Margaret's southern assumptions.
- Nicholas Higgins
- A forthright mill worker and union supporter, he is Bessy's father and becomes Margaret's friend.
- Bessy Higgins
- Nicholas's religious daughter, weakened by illness from mill work, becomes a close friend of Margaret.
- Richard Hale
- Margaret's gentle father leaves his ministry over religious doubts and supports his family by teaching.
- Hannah Thornton
- John's fiercely loyal mother values his hard-won position and distrusts Margaret's manner and influence.
- Mr Bell
- An Oxford friend of Richard Hale, he owns Milton property and takes an interest in Margaret.
- Henry Lennox
- A London lawyer who admires Margaret, he is the brother of her cousin Edith's prospective husband.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 187,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 12 h 25 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary; paperback and hardcover at cost
- LanguagesEnglish and 10 other languages
Questions about North and South
What is North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell about?
It follows Margaret Hale, a southern clergyman's daughter who moves to the northern mill town of Milton. There she meets the mill owner John Thornton and the worker Nicholas Higgins, and she is drawn into a strike and a difficult romance.
Is Milton a real place in North and South?
Milton is a manufacturing town in Darkshire, and it is based on Manchester, where Gaskell lived. Its mills, smoke, strikes and trade cycles reflect the real conditions of the cotton industry in the 1840s and 1850s.
Who is John Thornton in North and South?
John Thornton is the owner of Marlborough Mills. He rose from poverty by hard work, and he holds strong views on how a master should run his business. He becomes Margaret's chief opponent in argument and a central figure in the love story.
When was North and South written, and is it a true story?
Gaskell wrote it for Household Words, where it appeared weekly in 1854 and 1855.
Is North and South hard to read?
The story is clear and the characters are strongly drawn, so most readers find it rewarding.