North and South in Five Minutes
So last year I watched the BBC Miniseries North and South based on sihaya09's recommendation. It was a lovely series. Today I finished reading the book (it's up free on Gutenberg and good for kindle reading, other than some minor typos, such as 'lust' for 'just' throughout the etext, such that one character or another was always being described as a 'fair
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ALSO, totally and completely unrelated and you may already have seen it but when I saw it I knew you had to see it (got that?) -- "Re: Your Brains" in Zombie Sign Language. (I always think of you when I hear this song-- heh-- because you introduced me to it.)
Oh crud. Now I have a zombie/North & South mashup in my head...
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Mrs. Thornton was an interesting character. The book was full of scenes:
Mr. Thornton: The Hales have been very good to us as friends. Mother, I would appreciate it if you would show them some kindness-
Mrs. Thornton: Only for your sake! Only every for your sake! I will do my best!
Mr. Thornton: Good. I think they are not happy enough.
Mrs. Thornton: Ungrateful, demanding, selfish, horrible people! I hate them!
I agree on the Dixon repressed feelings vibe. The mini-series did a great job of softening all the characters a lot and giving them some more warmth and kindness. And yeah, Richard Armitage smoldered just wonderfully. I don't think he smiled until the last scene, and I've watched that a few times.
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*I don't recommend googling that to confirm.
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In your write up you quite rightly point out that the two of them fall for each other with very little (meaningful) interaction. And while the BBC version hasn't changed a *whole* lot (at least not in the first half of the book), they still managed to make their feelings for each other make sense. Granted, that's at least partly because of genre expectations, but still.
Between that and the first season of the BBC Robin Hood, when I got to watch season 7 of MI-5 it was quite a shock to see Richard Armitage in modern clothing... He pulled off brooding, intense costume drama hero *so* well.
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I like a lot of these stories, but I find a lot of the details frustrating and weird, and chaffing as a female. All of the 'I wouldn't go there without a servant' and 'A lady wouldn't be seen with a man at that hour'. The worst in North and South, to me, was "women don't attend funerals because they become hysterical". Just- I am so glad to live in this part of the world and at this time, for all the faults it often has.
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Inorite? All those stupid, illogical constraints. And I know we still have them, but honestly, we have fewer.
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Seriosuly. Counseling, anti-depressants, and reasonable divorce laws would have helped so much.
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[I wrote a whole escited reply to this post yesterday, and then my computer got kicked off the network and ate my post. so, to paraphrase:]
your plot summaries above made my night. XD
I first read North and South for a Victorian lit class, & fell for it head over heels. (I think we had just come from reading The Mill on the Floss, so I didn't mind all the repressed angst as long as I got my romantic happy ending and the untimely ends confined themselves to everyone but the heroine.) I then picked up Wives and Daughters which I loved just as much ( ... )
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The other thing that struck me about the book (and about a lot of Victorian-era writing I've read) is how much stories tell us how to behave. At least, that's the only reason I can come up with for how some of these people respond to things.
For instance, when Mr. Hale dies, Margaret collapses on a sofa and just lays there for two days. Mr. Bell sits nearly and just waits for her to move again. The entire dynamic was just weird.
Or when Margaret gets hit with a clog during the riots- it's described as a small injury, but she's insensible and lays on the sofa and has her face washed with vinegar (ew) until she comes around.
It's hard to distinguish how much of it is a Victorian reading of normal human responses (the person is in shock or has a concussion or something like that) versus purely societally imposed response (a woman being frail, fainting, etc, because she is a woman and that's how she is).
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[This is quite interesting - I wrote and rewrote my reply as I cogitated. Such fun! ^_^]
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I haven't gotten to the funeral bit-- Margaret's mother, while on the edge, has not yet died (Frederick is about to visit, though, so I know it's close. And Mrs Thornton is about to be forced to promise that if Margaret does something of which she doesn't approve, she'll speak up.)
Well romances are not generally known for people sitting down and having reasonable conversations to clear up misunderstandings.
Too true. I have tried my hand several times at writing romance novels (yes, really) but I get stuck because... to me the answer always seems like it simply ought to be, "Tell each other the truth and have a conversation" which, oddly, doesn't seem to help the rising action...
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