Reading Order
North and South Reading Order
North and South (1854-55) by Elizabeth Gaskell is the novel that brought together, for the first time in Victorian fiction, the industrial North of England and the agricultural South — and organized the confrontation between them around the relationship between Margaret Hale (a clergyman's daughter from the Hampshire village of Helstone who moves with her family to the industrial mill town of Milton) and John Thornton (a successful mill owner whose relationship to his workers, to Margaret's criticism of him, and to the economic forces that govern his life is the novel's central investigation). The novel is the most intellectually sustained Victorian investigation of the condition of England question — the relationship between employer and employee, between Northern industrial capitalism and Southern agricultural paternalism, between the old hierarchical order and the new commercial one. It is also a courtship novel of great power: Margaret's relationship to Thornton moves from contempt to respect to love through a series of encounters that are organized around their genuine intellectual equality and their genuine disagreement about the most important questions of their time.
Where to start
North and South (1854-55) — the complete novel, published serially in Dickens's Household Words. Best Gaskell reading order: North and South → Wives and Daughters → Mary Barton → Cranford.
Complete North and South Book List
- 1Buy
North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell·1855·The complete novel — Margaret Hale, John Thornton, and Milton-Northern. Gaskell's most intellectually ambitious novel; the Penguin Classics edition with Patricia Ingham's introduction is the standard modern edition; the BBC adaptation (2004) with Richard Armitage and Daniela Denby-Ashe is excellent - 2Buy
Wives and Daughters
Elizabeth Gaskell·1866·The companion last novel — Molly Gibson in Hollingford. The companion as Gaskell's fullest and most novelistic investigation of the same provincial world, but in the comedic rather than the political mode: where North and South is organized around the confrontation between industrial capitalism and old-fashioned paternalism, Wives and Daughters is organized around the domestic and social comedies of a country town - 3Buy
Mary Barton
Elizabeth Gaskell·1848·The companion first novel — Mary Barton in the Manchester slums. The companion as the predecessor: Gaskell's first published novel and the investigation of the Manchester working class that preceded North and South — where North and South investigates the industrial question from the perspective of a Southern outsider, Mary Barton investigates it from the perspective of the workers themselves - 4Buy
Hard Times
Charles Dickens·1854·Dickens's companion investigation of the same industrial England — Gradgrind and Coketown. The companion as the satirical version of the same investigation: where Gaskell's approach is sympathetic and dialectical (she presents both Thornton's and the workers' perspectives as legitimate), Dickens's approach is satirical and polemical - 5Buy
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Austen·1813·Austen's companion — Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy. The companion courtship novel as the predecessor: Margaret Hale and John Thornton are the Victorian and industrial version of Elizabeth and Darcy — both are pairs of intelligent, proud, equally matched people who begin in misunderstanding and mutual contempt and arrive at mutual respect and love - 6Buy
Middlemarch
George Eliot·1871·Eliot's companion investigation of the same provincial English world. The companion as the fullest realization of the same investigation: both novels are organized around the relationship between intelligence, aspiration, and the social world that simultaneously enables and limits it, and both are organized around a woman whose intelligence exceeds what her world has prepared her for - 7Buy
Cranford
Elizabeth Gaskell·1853·Gaskell's companion — the ladies of Cranford. The companion as the comedic and elegiac version of the same investigation: where North and South is organized around the confrontation between North and South, old order and new, Cranford is organized around the last survivors of the old order — the Amazonian ladies of the small Cheshire town — and their comedy of management and survival - 8Buy
Shirley
Charlotte Brontë·1849·Charlotte Brontë's companion investigation of the same industrial North — Yorkshire mill owners during the Luddite riots. The companion as the Brontë version of the same investigation: both novels are organized around the condition-of-England question and both pair an independent, intellectual woman with a strong, self-made man of the commercial class
North and South — Frequently Asked Questions
What is North and South about?
North and South is about the confrontation between the industrial North of England and the agricultural South, organized around the relationship between Margaret Hale and John Thornton. Margaret is a clergyman's daughter from the Hampshire village of Helstone who moves with her family to the northern mill town of Milton (based on Manchester) when her father's religious doubts force him to leave the Church of England; Thornton is a self-made mill owner who has worked his way from nothing to prosperity. Their relationship begins with Margaret's Southern gentleman's contempt for Thornton's commercial roughness and Thornton's attraction to Margaret's beauty and spirit, and develops through a series of intellectual encounters (about the relationship between masters and men, about the workers' right to strike, about the nature of Northern commercial culture) into mutual respect and eventually love. The novel is simultaneously a condition-of-England novel (the most sustained Victorian investigation of the industrial question) and a courtship novel.
Is North and South by Gaskell similar to Pride and Prejudice?
North and South is often compared to Pride and Prejudice and the comparison is apt, though the differences are as illuminating as the similarities. Like Pride and Prejudice, North and South is organized around the relationship between a proud, intelligent woman (Margaret Hale) and a proud, self-made man (John Thornton) who begin in mutual contempt and arrive at mutual love. Like Austen's Elizabeth and Darcy, Margaret and Thornton are genuinely intellectually equal — their disagreements about the industrial question are genuine disagreements between people who are both partly right. But where Austen's novel is confined to the domestic and social world, Gaskell's novel engages directly with the political and economic questions of the 1850s — the rights of workers, the nature of industrial capitalism, the relationship between employer and employee — and the love story is embedded in, and inseparable from, this larger investigation.
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