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. Trinie Dalton North & South North & South is a splendid, four-hour adaptation of Elizabeth Gaskells 19th century novel about an unlikely, and somewhat star-crossed, love between a middle-class young woman from Englands cultivated south and an intemperate if misunderstood industrialist in a hardscrabble, northern city. Dickens was apparently infuriated by its lack of focus, only for Gaskell to respond by cunningly reintroducing edited chapters later. 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. First, North and South is a primary example. She becomes part of a clearly signposted will-they-won't-they love story with the outwardly rough-and-ready manufacturer Mr Thornton. Gaskell’s handling of the well-worn marriage plot is highly original and even radical for two reasons that ensure this novel’s lasting power. Margaret is torn from the bucolic surroundings of Hampshire in classic fish-out-of-water style. Gaskell's priorities lay with storytelling.

North and south gaskell novel