Over the Christmas holiday my sister in law lent me the movie North and South. She said I'd probably like it because of how much I like Pride and Prejudice and Jane Eyre. Plus it stars Richard Armitage who plays Thorin Oakenshield in the Hobbit (of which I am a huge fan) and I thought it'd be fun to see him in a different role. Last week I finally watched it and instantly fell in love and decided I simply must read the book. Besides, after all these fantasy and paranormal books I've been reading lately I decided a nice Victorian novel sounded divine.
Our heroine is Miss Margaret Hale, the daughter of a parson, Mr Hale, who decides to abruptly uproot his family from the quiet country town Helstone for the bustling factory town of Milton. As Margaret in confronted with her prejudice of mill-owners and factory towns, she becomes acquainted with lower class factory workers, particularly the Higgins family, and a mill-owner Mr Thornton. She becomes personally invested in the social inequality and injustices she sees between the two classes, all the while cultivating unconscious (for most of the novel) feelings for Mr Thornton, who also has feelings for her.
I loved this book. I love that so much of it is focused on the political issues of the time it was written. I probably don't need to point out that I live for a really good love story, and the romance between Mr Thornton and Margaret, while not the focus of the book, is sweet and provoking. The only negative I can have is that I wish the ending was more developed. You root for Margaret and Mr Thornton for the full 400+ pages, so the ending should adequately represent the struggles they both (and the reader) go through to get there. At least the movie embellishes on the ending to make it a little more satisfying. But overall I was so happy to have discovered this gem. It's definitely more serious and darker than Pride and Prejudice, and has less romance than Jane Eyre, but anyone who is a fan of either of those (or any other Jane Austen, Bronte, or Dickens), I highly recommend North and South.
5 out of 5 stars
Loved this movie! We watched it for book club one time on a Friday night in our basement (it was like 5 hours long)! But have not read the book.
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