This book is one of my favourite ones. I highly recommend it!

After seeing the movie I read the book and loved it. Worth reading And much better then Wives and Daughters.

After a certain amount of misdirection at the outset of this novel, Mrs. Gaskell quickly gets to the central themes. Margaret Hale has traveled with her family from the rural South of England to the industrial North. At the time of her arrival the cotton workers are agitating for better working conditions; it is then that she meets the capable but bull-headed manufacturer Mr. Thornton (she finds his mother even more intolerable). When Margaret comes to Thornton's aid during an ugly mob scene, he thinks she does so because of her feelings for him - feelings he misinterprets as love. He proposes marriage, but she refuses. But, of course, Margaret has a change of heart and after numerous complications, they are finally united.

Gaskell handles very well the duel theme of worker unrest and the unrest that exists between Margaret and Thornton. The passions that motivate the workers are finally seen by Margaret to be similar (in power, in their sexuality) to the ones coming to the surface in Margaret herself. The novel is overly sentimental in spots (the death of Margaret's mother is particularly overdrawn), and Gaskell's plain, dampened prose is a weakness in her style. But she shows much sympathy for the plight of the workers, and Margaret comes to appreciate their concerns. Not as good (or as well-liked) as her CRANFORD, the novel is a decent enough portrait of life in an industrialized city during the Victorian period.

It'd been a long time (a decade or so) since I read this Elizabeth Gaskell classic before I watched the BBC adaptation on DVD and loved it. Rereading this novel was the best decision I could have made because I hadn't appreciated it then the way I did now. North and South captures the social divide and how the manufacturing and trading industries were revolutionizing in the 1850s. Margaret Hale, the daughter of a respectable clergyman, and her family move from the south of England to the industrialized northern town of Milton after her father leaves the church because of his conscience. Margaret is appalled with Milton and the vulgar, uncouth ways of tradesmen and merchants, whom she also sees as uncivilized and cruel. However, will she change her mind after she meets and gets to know the dashing Mr. John Thornton? There are many twists throughout the novel.

I was able to appreciate the romance and building of tension between Margaret and Mr. Thornton now, especially after having watched the BBC miniseries and the wonderful Richard Armitage playing Thornton. Right now, to me, there are four memorable classic literary heroes -- Mr. Darcy, Heathcliff, Mr. Rochester and now Mr. Thornton. He is gentler and not as brooding here as he is portrayed in the miniseries, but he is as compelling as I had remembered him. The last few pages are my favorite, especially this line: "While she sought for this paper, her very heart-pulse was arrested by the tone in which Mr. Thornton spoke. His voice was hoarse, and trembling with tender passion, as he said: `Margaret.' " What a romantic line and I wish it had been added to the miniseries. The ending at the train station in the miniseries is wonderful (if a bit anachronistic), but it would have been even better if the aforementioned line had been incorporated into the scene. All in all, this is one of my favorite Victorian classics. Elizabeth Gaskell isn't quite as known or as celebrated as Dickens or the Brontes, people who had been big friends of hers, according to her biography, but she was a gifted writer in her own right and her talent shows in this wonderful gem which I will reread again in the not-so-distant future.