North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

North and South is the first Elizabeth Gaskell book that I have read. I found this to be wonderful story that contained interesting characters and explored both personal relationships as well as larger social issues. In a way, Gaskell’s books are like a combination of Jane Austen, Anthony Trollope, Charles Dickens with a little bit of Leo Tolstoy thrown in. 

This is the story of Margaret Hale. The book opens as the nineteen - year old Margaret is preparing to attend her cousin’s Edith’s wedding. Margaret has spent much of her adolescence living with her cousin’s rich and somewhat frivolous family. We are also introduced to Henry Lennox, who tries to unsuccessfully to woo Margaret throughout the book. At the point that Edith is married, Margaret returns to live in the country community of Helstone where her father, Mr. Hale, a is pastor. Initially, Margaret enjoys the bucolic and country life during which time she assists her father as he brings charity and succor to the local inhabitants. However, due to Mr. Hale’s schismatic views, he decides to step down as pastor. The family is forced to move to the industrial city of Darkshire, where Mr. Hale will earn a living as a tutor. There, the family interacts both with the mill owners and the poorer mill workers. John Thornton is a strong willed but principled mill owner that Margaret’s father is tutoring. Much of the book concerns itself with the romantic attraction between Margaret and Thornton. At first, Margaret spurns the businessman, but as the story progresses, her attraction for him increases. Nicholas Higgins is a mill worker and union leader. Labor tension bring Thornton and Higgins into conflict. This strife also opens the door to lots of philosophizing and debate  between the major characters about economics, capitalism, personal freedom, and more.

Later, Margaret’s brother Frederick comes into the picture. Several years earlier, Fredrick was an officer in the Royal Navy. While standing up to his abusive captain he becomes involved in mutiny and was forced to flee England under penalty of death. At one point in the plot he sneaks back into the country to see his dying mother. During the remainder of the story Margaret engages in efforts to clear Fredrick’s name. 

A lot of words in this book are devoted to debates and discussions between Margaret and John Thornton. Margaret’s views can best be described as a Christian based liberal, social reformist with a tinge of aristocratic paternalism thrown in. Thornton is a laisse fare capitalist with a strong sense of personal ethics. Though it seems that Gaskill favors Margaret’s positions, she puts strong arguments into Thornton’s mouth and shows that his point of view is not completely invalid. This all intertwines with Nicholas Higgins’s pro - union and pro - labor views. It is also clear that Gaskell is somewhat well versed in these theories as well as economics in general.

What I found distinctive about this book is that it combined an interesting story and well - crafted characters with philosophical and social discussions and debates about social issues, economics and religion. Here, I am reminded of the Russian novelists such as Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy. Anthony Trollope also played on this ground a little with political issues but not to the extent that Gaskell does here. 

In addition to the philosophizing the work is filled with interesting characters. I found Thornton’s portrayal to be intriguing. He is originally shown to be a tough businessman who was raised by a tough but still loving mother. He displays a strong ethical code based on personal responsibility. However, early on he reaches out to Mr. Hale in order to advance is education and immerse himself in culture. In what I think is a wonderful passage, he talks about the industrial machine known as a steam hammer and its inventor using colorful language and literary analogy,

so thoroughly was he occupied in explaining to Mr. Hale the magnificent power, yet delicate adjustment of the might of the steam-hammer, which was recalling to Mr. Hale some of the wonderful stories of subservient genii in the Arabian Nights— one moment stretching from earth to sky and filling all the width of the horizon, at the next obediently compressed into a vase small enough to be borne in the hand of a child. 'And this imagination of power, this practical realisation of a gigantic thought, came out of one man's brain in our good town. That very man has it within him to mount, step by step, on each wonder he achieves to higher marvels still

Later Thornton grows. He genuinely falls in love with Margarite. While he does not become pro – labor he takes innovative steps to reach out to his employees, tries to make their lives better and eventually earns their respect.

Mr. Hale is also interesting. He is very principled and ethical. However, he shows a lot of weakness. When he makes his decision, based upon religious convictions, he places his family in a position where they will endure hardship. Yet when it comes time for them to relocate, he is paralyzed with inaction and leaves the emotional and logistical work to Margaret who is only a teenager.  Later, when it comes time to tell a woman that her husband is deceased, he once again is unable to act and leaves the task to his daughter.  This combination of principles and weakness seems a fairly unusual thing in literature. 

Margaret is obviously the center of the book. She is charismatic young woman. She earns great esteem from both lower and upper - class men and women that she encounters. She is calm and at times stoic. She is intelligent, she is a reader, and is easily able to hold her own ion all kinds of discussions that delve into philosophical and social issues. 

Another theme here is the contrast between people who hold different philosophies, religious beliefs and partake in different lifestyles. This is inherent in the title of the book, the North of England representing industrial, capitalistic bustle and the South representing a more laid back, rural agricultural and aristocratic lifestyle. As Margarete and her family are displaced from this southern world, they are made keenly aware of these contrasts. At first Margaret faces the industrial Milton and its factories with dread. As the book progresses however, both she and the reader begin to see that both the North and South ways of life have their merits and drawbacks. Margaret connects with all kinds of people in the industrialized town. Towards the end of the story, when it comes time for Margaret to leave Milton she is struck with melancholy as she has to leave people and a place that she one looked upon with dismay. All this is intertwined with the growing attraction between Margaret and Thornton. Alongside this attraction, both Margaret and Thornton begin to moderate their philosophical ideas and move towards each other. Throughout the story various characters’ differences on religious issues also come to light. The story flows in a direction that indicates that social interactions work best when people tolerate one another and look to bridge gaps. All this reminds me of the novels of E.M. Forster. In many of Forster’s books, the theme of connections between different social groups, philosophies and cultures is explored. This is the first Gaskell novel that I have read so I do not know if these are reoccurring themes in her work. But as far as this book goes, it seems to have influenced Forster’s ideas. 

This is an excellent book. Gaskell has managed to combine the strengths of Victorian novel with some very interesting philosophical musings. The novel is full of compelling of characters and relationships. In this way I thought that this combination was fairly unique for British literature of the time. I recommend this work to fans of Victorian literature. 

Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby is the story of the title character. This is a novel that in some ways is very much typical of Dickens but varies in other ways from many of his other works.  I found it to be a funny, entertaining and brilliant novel.

Nicholas is a young man of about twenty-one years old.  Early on, when his father dies, Nicholas, his sister Kate, and his mother are torn from their middle-class lifestyle and thrown to the mercies of Nicholas’s uncle, Ralph. This uncle is miserly, cold and vindictive. Disliking Nicholas, he sends him away from London to work as a teacher. Though Ralph finds nearby employment for Kate, he tries to set her up for romantic entanglements with his lecherous and immoral business associates. 

Throughout the book, Nicholas alternates his time between various employments that he finds both inside and outside of London.  Along the way, he works at a boarding school for boys that is horribly abusive and neglectful of its charges. There, he befriends Smike, a mentally handicapped and horribly abused boy who becomes Nicholas’s loyal ally throughout the story. Unfortunately, the pair are also pursued by the evil and cruel headmaster, Wackford Squeers, who is trying to regain custody of Smike.  Later, Nicholas and Smike join a company of stage performers and meet all sorts of colorful and amusing characters.  Later still, Nicholas settles in working for the kindly Cheeryble brothers. Throughout the narrative arc, Nicholas’s fortunes gradually rise. The protagonist eventually falls in love with a young woman named Madeline Bray. Madeline is ensnared in a moneymaking plot involving Ralph and the girl’s father, aimed at marrying her to the wretched and immoral Arthur Gride. Of course, Nicholas devotes his efforts to derail the scheme. Newman Noggs, a former gentleman with odd habits, who is now impoverished, attempts to aid Nicholas and his family throughout the book. 

I have read a lot of Dickens over the years. This book was the most Dickensian of them all. What I mean by that is that this novel had the common features that characterize the author’s work in the greatest abundance. The malicious characters were the most over the top. They represent high levels of both villainy and hilarity.  The good characters were almost ridiculously virtuous. The oversentimentality flowed in torrents. The implausible coincidences seemed more abundant than usual, even for Dickens. I do not consider these attributes to be flaws. Reading Dickens over the years, I have come to appreciate these apparent excesses as elements of a surrealistic and brilliant universe that Dickens paints in his novels. The author builds these strange worlds like no other writer has ever done. The book is also filled with Dickens’s marvelous, at times surrealistic descriptions. There are fabulous portraits of people, cityscapes, country scenes, etc. 

Nicholas, and to some extent his sister Kate, are a little different from many other Dickens protagonists. In modern language, they would be called “effective.” The siblings are very assertive. Nicholas in particular uses both physical force and the power of language without hesitation to counter the malevolent acts of others.  The physical force that he employs is often justified and is often used to stop violence that is directed at weaker people. It all starts when he saves Smike from a brutal beating being administered by Squeers. As he does this, he administers a thorough thrashing of Squeers himself. As a young man in his prime, he is able to effectively and decisively apply this force. Furthermore, Nicholas usually articulates his positions and his reasoning with great effectiveness.  The assertiveness is not surprising. His ability to apply force is not surprising. His tendency to act virtuously and stand up for those weaker then himself is not surprising. However, I found that sometimes Nicholas is too good of an orator for a young man of his age. For instance, in the below passage Nicholas is trying to convince Madeline not to enter into what will clearly be a disastrous marriage with Gride.

‘I speak of this marriage,’ returned Nicholas, ‘of this marriage, fixed for tomorrow, by one who never faltered in a bad purpose, or lent his aid to any good design; of this marriage, the history of which is known to me, better, far better, than it is to you. I know what web is wound about you. I know what men they are from whom these schemes have come. You are betrayed and sold for money; for gold, whose every coin is rusted with tears, if not red with the blood of ruined men, who have fallen desperately by their own mad hands.’

As noted above, I find this level of speechmaking a little implausible for someone of Nicholas’s age. On the other hand, the loquaciousness is entertaining and adds drama to the story. 

Despite Nicholas’s positive attributes, I think that Dickens was trying to show that Nicholas can be a bit too overbearing and aggressive at times. At one point in the book, he takes it upon himself to lecture his own mother on virtue. Later, he nearly provokes an unnecessary fight with a playwright whom he dislikes. 

At one stage of the story, Nicholas and Smike are journeying through the countryside. Here, Dickens’s picturesque descriptions and Nicholas’s strong character both come into play,

The ground seemed elastic under their feet; the sheep-bells were music to their ears; and exhilarated by exercise, and stimulated by hope, they pushed onward with the strength of lions.

Onward they kept, with steady purpose, and entered at length upon a wide and spacious tract of downs, with every variety of little hill and plain to change their verdant surface. Here, there shot up, almost perpendicularly, into the sky, a height so steep, as to be hardly accessible to any but the sheep and goats that fed upon its sides, and there, stood a mound of green, sloping and tapering off so delicately, and merging so gently into the level ground, that you could scarce define its limits. Hills swelling above each other; and undulations shapely and uncouth, smooth and rugged, graceful and grotesque, thrown negligently side by side, bounded the view in each direction; while frequently, with unexpected noise, there uprose from the ground a flight of crows, who, cawing and wheeling round the nearest hills, as if uncertain of their course, suddenly poised themselves upon the wing and skimmed down the long vista of some opening valley, with the speed of light itself.

I find the above passage particularly interesting. It seems to embody much that is typically Dickens, but also the uniqueness of Nicholas’s character.  It is bursting with Dickens’s usual powerful descriptions as the Hills swelling above each other; and undulations shapely and uncouth, smooth and rugged, graceful and grotesque, thrown negligently side by side. I find that prose here to be sublime. 

But Nicholas and Smike are also compared to lions with a steady purpose. One gets a sense of Nicholas’s young strength in this passage. As noted above, Nicholas does embody many aspects of a lion with a steady purpose in his character. This does not seem like typical Dickens to me. His protagonists usually do the right thing, but few, if any, embody the strength and decisiveness of the lion like Nicholas does. One can make an argument that Samuel Pickwick in the Pickwick Paperswas equally strong and assertive in his own way. However, Pickwick was a much older man who had previously lived a life filled with both financial and social successes. 

Like most Dickens books, this work was published in installments. This fact seemed more apparent here than in other Dickens novels that I have read. The work feels episodic. At several points, long before the end, it feels like the story has wrapped up and is heading for its conclusion. I think that a tighter structure would have made this a stronger novel. 

In the end, this is another brilliant portrait by Dickens. As I have written before, I do not read this author for a realistic portrait of the world. Instead, I look at his works as an exaggerated but brilliant reflection of reality. Along the way, there is much for a reader to absorb and to enjoy. Though perhaps not up to the level of Bleak Houseor David Copperfield, this book is very much worth the read for Dickens fans. 

The Eustace Diamonds by Anthony Trollope

The Eustace Diamonds is the third novel in Anthony Trollope’s Palliser Series. This is a huge book with lots of characters and multiple plot threads. At its center is the impressive literary creation of Lizzie Eustace. Though in some ways similar to other Trollope novels, I found this book to be much more cynical and dark when compared to the author’s other efforts.

Lizzie is a beautiful young woman who marries the wealthy Sir Florian. When her husband dies, a dispute arises over the disposition of the very valuable Eustace Necklace. Sir Florian’s family claims it as a family heirloom and considers it the property of the family.  Lizzie, on the other hand, wants to keep the jewels for herself.

A good part of the narrative concerns itself with Lizzie’s battles against the Eustace family for control of the necklace. It also encompasses Lizzie’s many romantic entanglements. There are multiple additional plot threads that become entwined with Lizzie’s life. One particularly important one is the troubled engagement between Lizzie’s cousin, Frank Greystock, and the poor, unassuming but virtuous Lucy Morris.

Lizzie is not a typical Trollope heroine nor is she a typical Trollope character. Though often presented in a humorous way, Lizzie can be described in modern terminology as a sociopath, a narcissist, a hypocrite, a manipulator and a pathological liar.

Lizzie cheats people out of property, commits fraud, manipulates people around her, tries to seduce multiple men at the same time and is vengeful, to just name a few of her faults. She tells lie after lie after lie. She lies to inflate her own importance.  She lies for personal gain. She lies to make herself seem like a victim.  She lies for revenge. She even admires others when they lie well.

At one point she ponders,

“She liked lies, thinking them to be more beautiful than truth. To lie readily and cleverly, recklessly and yet successfully, was, according to the lessons which she had learned, a necessity in woman and an added grace in man. “

Despite her villainy, Lizzie is interesting and amusing to read about. Her confrontations with other characters range from serious drama to hilarious clashes. She tries to dominate most of the people around he, but she is also attracted to dominant and reckless men. She extolls the qualities of poetry, but her appreciation for it is superficial at best.

Lizzie is an expert manipulator. Though some of the characters see right through her, others are fooled into believing that it is she who is a victim. She flirts and enchants a series of men. She is constantly pursuing Frank Greystock, despite the fact that they are both engaged to other people. One interesting thing about Frank is that he mostly recognizes Lizzie’s flaws, but he cannot help himself as he is still enticed and tempted by her. This is typical of Lizzie’s skills of influence. Throughout the book, he is fighting her pull.

In the below passage Lizzie feigns distress and tears,

“He dried her tears and comforted her, and forgave all the injurious things she had said of him. It is almost impossible for a man,— a man under forty and unmarried, and who is not a philosopher,— to have familiar and affectionate intercourse with a beautiful young woman, and carry it on as he might do with a friend of the other sex. In his very heart Greystock despised this woman; he had told himself over and over again that were there no Lucy in the case he would not marry her; that she was affected, unreal,— and, in fact, a liar in every word and look and motion which came from her with premeditation…he knew her to be heartless and bad. He had told himself a dozen times that it would be well for him that she should be married and taken out of his hands. And yet he loved her after a fashion, and was prone to sit near her, and was fool enough to be flattered by her caresses. When she would lay her hand on his arm, a thrill of pleasure went through him.”

I have read Trollope’s entire Chronicles of Barsetshire, The Fixed Period and the two prior books of this series. Lizzie is different from any other character that Trollope presents in the other books. Almost all of his fictional personas have shades of good and bad. Lizzie is different in that she is irredeemable. Even the incredibly domineering, controlling and hypercritical Mrs. Proudie of The Chronicles Of Barsetshire showed some humanity.

This work is darker in other ways. Most other Trollope books portray some characters doing terrible things. The author has created some very unlikable characters in many of his books. However, those works do not contain as many immoral people with such intense flaws as are in this novel. Lizzie is surrounded by opportunistic and narcissistic people. One example is the engaged couple of Lucinda Roanoke and Sir Griffen Tewett. The pair decides to marry for reasons of personal gain. The moody, sarcastic and cynical Lucinda hates the boorish and nasty Sir Griffen. The two display open contempt for each other as their marriage plans proceed. They fight like cats and dogs and even manage to assault one another prior to their wedding day.

All of this sounds like a dark story. Thematically it is. However these situations, while presented as being ultimately serious, are more often than not presented in a humorous and, at times, hilarious manor. As this cast of bizarrely flawed characters clash and conflict with one another and with the world at large, their antics provide one entertaining anecdote after another. Trollope displayed some cynical wit in the other books that I have read, but never to the degree that it is displayed in this book. This is a very funny work.

Trollope’s books all contain a moral center. Despite the turn to darker themes here, this core is still present. Here, morality is mostly represented by Lucy Morris. She is a virtuous and ethical woman. Her fiancé, Frank Graystock, neglects her terribly. Lucy is hurt by this treatment but continues to act with nobility and grace. Near the end of the book a confrontation between herself and Lizzy reinforces Trollope’s ethical view of the world.

With all of the terrible behavior displayed by so many of the characters, and the unblemished virtue of Lucy, I found the characters in this book to be more simplistic than the usual Trollope fare. Frank Graystock, who is very flawed but who does the right thing in the end, is this novel’s most complex character.

As nasty as some characters in this book are, they are still unique, interesting and often very funny. However, in the end, I thought that this work was less nuanced than other Trollope books that I have read. What it lacks in complexity, it partially makes up in humor however. This is the funniest Trollope novel that I have read so far.

As noted above, this novel is a little different from many other Trollope books. Nevertheless, it is infused with Trollope’s superb writing traits, including his trademark meta-fiction style, interesting and funny characters, great dialogue and many other things to earn recommendation. While it can be read as a stand alone book, I recommend at least reading the first two Palliser books first for full effect (There are crossover characters between these books and The Chronicles of Barsetshire, thus the two series together can be viewed as one giant series. My recommendation, for completeness, is to read both of the series, in order). Ultimately, this is an extremely entertaining novel that I highly recommend for both Trollope fans and general fans of Victorian literature.

My commentary on the first book of the Palliser Series,  Can You Forgive Her? is here.

My commentary on the second book of the Palliser Series, Phineas Finn is here.