North & South Goodness
Jan. 19th, 2006 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieI, like many people on my flist, have been discovering the goodness that is the BBC adaptation of Mrs. Gaskell's novel. I read N&S a few years back when I was going through a Gaskell binge (I also recommend Cranford, Wives and Daughters, Mary Barton (another labor novel), Ruth, My Lady Ludlow, Cousin Phillips, Sylvia's Lovers (a flawed book but a haunting portrayal of despair)) and it became my favorite Gaskell novel. The plot? A rector's daughter, the refined and strong-willed Margaret Hale, is forced to move to a Northern mill town where she encounters and engages in battle with the equally strong-willed and "common" John Thornton, mill owner. Oh, and there is labour stuff, and class issues, and strikes, and a cool plot, but what draws me are the personalities. In a way, it's the best of Austen and Bronte mixed together to create a story that isn't like either (yeah, this made sense in my head). I prefer Gaskell to Austen, btw. Blasphemy, I know.
Well, this adaptation is guuuuuuuuh. I always thought Thornton was hot, but never realized just how hot until I saw Richard Armitage version of him. Guuuh. The height and the spare elegance and intensity and the temper (though he never did beat anyone in the book, the way he did the worker in this adaptation) and that gorgeous burr of a voice that reminds me of Sean Bean. I am smitten and I am less than an hour in.
Mr. Thornton, one of my literary (and now TV) crushes:
Margaret with her father, the gentle and ineffectual Mr. Hale:
Mr. Thornton:
Margaret, a bit of a rarity: a strong Victorian heroine:
Margaret & Mr. Thornton:
Well, this adaptation is guuuuuuuuh. I always thought Thornton was hot, but never realized just how hot until I saw Richard Armitage version of him. Guuuh. The height and the spare elegance and intensity and the temper (though he never did beat anyone in the book, the way he did the worker in this adaptation) and that gorgeous burr of a voice that reminds me of Sean Bean. I am smitten and I am less than an hour in.
Mr. Thornton, one of my literary (and now TV) crushes:
Margaret with her father, the gentle and ineffectual Mr. Hale:
Mr. Thornton:
Margaret, a bit of a rarity: a strong Victorian heroine:
Margaret & Mr. Thornton:
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no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 05:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 05:28 am (UTC)I really, really, really need to see the second half. Friday can't come soon enough!
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Date: 2006-01-19 03:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 05:18 am (UTC)I have ordered the DVDs (I haven't seen the last one yet) and am in agony because they have not arrived yet.
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Date: 2006-01-19 05:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 05:32 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 01:23 pm (UTC)I like Hard Times, and I still admit that its only use in a school is as a textbook example of How Not To Write Anything.
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Date: 2006-01-19 03:32 pm (UTC)We had to read an abridged (!!!!) version of GE in school (as well as an abridged version of Les Mis. I think it's a horrifying insanity to assign abridged books but that's a rant for another time) and I found a proper copy and loved it.
HT I read on my own and still meh. I am afraid it's just the book :P
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Date: 2006-01-19 06:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 06:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 06:48 pm (UTC)I can't understand Welsh at all - it looks even more impossible than Irish!
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Date: 2006-01-19 06:54 pm (UTC)amended to add ..
Date: 2006-01-19 05:22 am (UTC)Embarrassingly, I haven't read the book so ...
can you give a spoiler spaz a crum and tell me if there's a happy ending. *grin*
Also even more embarrassing - when people were babbling about this, I was thinking: "Why are they still going on about that US mini series about the civil war?" *choke* You know the one with Patrick Swayze? I'm so embarrassed that I watched that :P
Re: amended to add ..
Date: 2006-01-19 05:24 am (UTC)When I was buying it in the store and needed the clerk's help, they all kept insisting it was the Patrick Swayze one too (I liked that when I was much younger ;p)
Re: amended to add ..
Date: 2006-01-19 05:29 am (UTC)Hmph ;) Anyway I can't wait to see this, it sounds like just what I feel like watching.
Re: amended to add ..
Date: 2006-01-19 03:45 pm (UTC)It's really really good.
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Date: 2006-01-19 05:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 05:36 am (UTC)"My thoughts on North and South: The 100% Orry Main-Free Version"
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Date: 2006-01-19 03:45 pm (UTC)When I was much younger (much :P) I thought Orry was the height of hot /shameful secret
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Date: 2006-01-19 05:41 pm (UTC)Good god woman don't admit that in public. Next you'll say you lusted after him in Dirty Dancing or Young Blood (where Rob Lowe was kind of hotter).
I meant to mention,
I have zero icon space left but I still like admiring icons :)
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Date: 2006-01-19 05:56 pm (UTC)I totally lusted after him in Dirty Dancing and am unashamed of the fact :P My cousin and I watched that movie 3 times in a row :P
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Date: 2006-01-19 05:41 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 06:29 am (UTC)This series came out in Finnish tv last autumn and I think I still have it on tape. Maybe I should watch it again...
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Date: 2006-01-19 11:45 am (UTC)IT DID??? I never notice these things! Sigh.
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Date: 2006-01-19 03:44 pm (UTC)You mean some crazy people don't have this as a weakness? :P
The thing that stayed with me (so far, I am an hour in only) is actually how well it addresses class issues which is something not that many authors did (everyone in Austen, for example, is pretty much the same, even if poorer or richer or higher or lower on the totem pole).
But for example how Margaret's innate "Lady Bountiful" inclinations meet with the independence (if powerty) of mill workers. The mills might have given them a hard life, but in a way, they gave them an independence from the old rigid social order and dependence on it (witness a potential maid saying she won't work for such wages and do all that stuff because she can get better wages at the mill. I was cheering, actually).
Or, even more significatly, how Margaret and Thornton (the whole Thornton family actually0 interactions are viewed through a class prism. Mrs. Thornton is clearly conscious of the fact that traditionally, she'd be Hales' inferior and so in a way, her pushy "you are poor and your gentility is not needed and business is everything" is a reaction to that thought (her daughter reacts differently, but also to the same stimuli).
Or look at the Hales and Mr. Thornton. Both Margaret and her mother are discommoded by his forthrightness (he is as much more open than them, then Margaret was than London ladies). It has a faint feel of "what a horribly ill-bred, lower-class behavior" aftertaste. And of course, there is a degree of 'socially he is my inferior' in Margaret's attitude.
And of course look at the handshake she refuses to have with him. In her circles, it's not a thing one normally does, but in his? Everyone does it.
The other thing that struck me were the horrid working conditions. That one mill owner who boasted about not having to put the wheel that would keep cotton fluff out of workers' lungs? Horrifyingly realistic.
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Date: 2006-01-19 02:29 pm (UTC)I have watched Wives and Daughters when it was on BBC America some years ago. North and South makes me want to grab the books and read them.
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Date: 2006-01-19 03:33 pm (UTC)As to Thornton? Yum.
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Date: 2006-01-19 04:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-01-19 05:29 pm (UTC)