More North & South raves

[dangermousie]

Playing havoc with my schedule, I managed to watch the first DVD of N&S, all 2 hours of it. My glee knows no bounds. I will love BBC forever for making perfect adaptations of my favorite books. Please, people who have seen it, do link me to your thoughts on N&S!

I adore Margaret. She is flawed (she is quick to speak without thinking, and she does have elitist attitudes), but she is a strong, intelligent, warm-hearted woman. One can see why Thornton fell for her head over heels, and I love him the more because he clearly likes a woman of strong will who is not afraid to express her opinion even if it contradicts his as at the dinner party where they exchange opinions and keep on doing it (a legacy of his mother, I think). When and if they get married, they’ll have one heck of an interesting marriage. What a contrast she is to his sister Fanny with her airs and faints and shallow weakness, who clearly seems to come from another family than John and his mother. I guess she takes after the father.

And Thornton? Who could have thought that a man with his cravat off could have looked so HOT. I wanted to pounce. I guess “undressed” is a relative term. I am severely in love (but then I was in the book as well). He is someone who can come across as harsh (he is certainly not full of milk of human kindness), but he is scrupulously honest with everyone including himself and unflinching at facing the world. He might scorn cajolery and flattery, but his scorn of any subterfuge is something I really like. What you see is what you get and if he gives you his word, you might rely upon it. He is intelligent and self-made (whatever Margaret’s opinions on that, I love it), but doesn’t want to neglect the “finer” things in life (I think he regrets his not-completed education very much even if he never articulates it. That is why he takes up with Mr. Hale). And he is very intense and that very quality is I think what both attracts (because there is no doubt that she is fascinated with him from their very first meeting) and repels (because she is not used to it. In her world, men veil everything behind proper words and flattery that is light and unmeaning. Witness her father’s friend’s manner. It’s much more extravagant than anything Thornton ever says to her but she isn’t offended by it because it’s clear it’s a formality) Margaret.



I really loved the end of Part I: Margaret’s voice-over saying that she’s seen hell and it’s white and the camera panning over the mill with the white cotton flying like snow and the dark silouette of Mr. Thornton walking back and forth (like the devil??? :P)

I love Margaret because she jumps in front of Thornton to protect him from the mob with her own body (one of my favorite scenes in the book as well) not out of passionate love (though I do think by that point she has unconscious feelings for him) but out of sense of responsibility (it’s her imperious “Go and protect your Irish” that got him outside to face the striking mob after all) and compassion (I do think she really would have done it for anyone, any other mill owner, or striker). I love that she puts her money where her mouth is when she goes out to protect Thornton. And of course, Fanny and Mrs. Thornton and the servants all assume she has done it because she loves him because otherwise, OMG how improper! Of course, the notion of sacrificing a man’s life (because there is no doubt it would have been bye-bye for Thornton if not for her interference) to maintain propriety is crazy to me, but oh well…And I love Thornton because he does NOT automatically assume that the fact that she saved him means she loves him.

But that scene with his mother when she convinces him that yes, Margaret loves him, and he is afraid to hope is rather painful to watch if you know what’s coming next. Because his first proposal scene? Makes Mr. Darcy’s first proposal scene seem a friendly walk in the park. Maybe it’s because Darcy’s proposal is insulting and Thornton’s isn’t (I can’t imagine anything insulting in a man telling a woman he loves her and wants to marry her), and maybe because Darcy did wrong Lizzy’s family and Thornton did not do anything to Margaret, but that proposal is totally angsty (and I love every moment of it). Because Margaret is so angry and Thornton is so hurt and they both say all sorts of things. She is wrong to insult him, but I think she does so because she thinks he offers for her out of obligation (because she hung around his neck to save him) and it must really hurt her because she does have feelings for him even if she doesn’t realize it yet, and then there is of course Bessie’s dying (not to mention her Mother’s) which has her emotionally on edge, and the fact that his intensity, as always, leaves her off-balance, and her class attitudes which must play a part. She tries to take it back but of course…

Guuuuh, can’t wait to get home and watch Part 2

Comments

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

I've only seen the first disk (the set is hopefully arriving today via post). I love Margaret also in this and in the book, and I actually think that given we don't get the author's explanations for her attitudes and thoughts that having Thornton's first scene with her be so violent manages to make her other attitudes more comprehensible and palatable to us.

The proposal scene was bloody painful to watch, especially as you know she's come from Bessie - and I think Thornton is the human face that she puts on all this oppression that is destroying these workers and thus she is even less likely to be polite to him right at this point. And her anger is out of proportion because it's anger at so much more than him - she's come from the luxury of that dinner party to absolute poverty and that's got to involve some measure of self-blame as well.

One of my favourite scenes though was where we hear her read the letter that she really wants to write to Edith, about the horror of Milton and how much she is close to despair because of where she is living, because you realise just how very alone she is.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

having Thornton's first scene with her be so violent manages to make her other attitudes more comprehensible and palatable to us.


You are absolutely right. Because even as it is, I find her "Lady Bountiful" manner earlier on mildly annoying and of course we don't share the same class views as Victorians so you have to be careful of how you portray them (or the unions, for that matter).

I think Thornton is the human face that she puts on all this oppression that is destroying these workers and thus she is even less likely to be polite to him right at this point.

Though of course it's made clear that Bessie got sick from working elsewhere before Thornton's and her father actually got her to Thornton's when he found out she was sick because it is a "healthy" (well, as healthy as it can be) place to work. I really think it's everything that combines to create her reaction. And of course, her rational mind knows it's absurd. You can tell she is horrified the minute the words re: workers are out of her mouth but it's too late by then.

And they do have fundamental differences on treatment, of course. Witness her earlier discussion with him about feeding starving children not being a matter of logic. I think they are both the results of their upbringing. She has lived a sheltered and gracious life and is the daughter of a Minister who is supposed to care for less fortunate. He, OTOH, had to make his way the hard way, the really hard way, and so he is impatient with people who can't hack it (sort of "If I could do it, anyone can, so it's their own fault they are downtrodden" attitude).

we hear her read the letter that she really wants to write to Edith, about the horror of Milton and how much she is close to despair because of where she is living, because you realise just how very alone she is.


Yes, she can't confide to anyone. She has no friends in Milton except for Bessie but they aren't really of the same mind or intimacy, and her mother is fragile and her father unworldly. She is dreadfully alone.

Guuuh, I really want to use a spoiler icon.

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

Witness her earlier discussion with him about feeding starving children not being a matter of logic.

It's interesting that Thornton is reading Greek philosophy with her Father, as it matches the valorization of logic that runs through his entire character. Whereas Margaret is more about open emotion - she's upset and she says something (very unVictorian of her!). It makes her closer to Higgins, strangely, whose first big speech is that highly emotional address to the union men. In some ways it's very gendered,, but then that division begins to fall apart when Thornton is driven by his emotions to address her. (And it plays into the book where he discusses the workers as children, and it's Margaret (or her father - I can't recall) who says that they're beginning to grow up and that they need to be addressed as those growing into a new status instead of just ordered around.

Her isolation makes her some of her conversations with Thornton much more intelligible because you get the feeling that if she had someone closer to discuss these things with she wouldn't be trying to work through the misery she is seeing and hearing everywhere with him.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that Thornton is reading Greek philosophy with her Father, as it matches the valorization of logic that runs through his entire character

It's interesting, but I never thought about that...

where he discusses the workers as children, and it's Margaret (or her father - I can't recall) who says that they're beginning to grow up and that they need to be addressed as those growing into a new status instead of just ordered around.


Yet there is this conversation in the adaptation (can't remember if it's in the book, it's been a while since I've read it) where she wants him to be interested in what the workers do with the money once they get it and he retorts that his job is to pay them and run the mill and outside of that, he leaves them their privacy, where of course his attitude (though it wouldn't be approved by Victorians and isn't approved by Margaret necessarily) is the much more modern one.

[lesbiassparrow.livejournal.com]

I know the conversation you're talking about and I think it's there in the book in some form. And it is interesting that it is more modern, though I think the coldness behind it what repels Margaret more than anything else. And that it's not so much privacy as that he doesn't see them as individuals at all. And her attitude starts off more typically lady of the manor and then morphs (I think) into real compassion that has less to do with who the workers are socially, but with an overwhelming need to reach out to those who are suffering.

In any case, it's the conflict and the point at which in the book they start seeing each other's point of view that made the novel North and South so interesting when I read it. It's like P&P except that you really get more of a feel for both character's change of heart as it happens over a painful amount of time.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

It's like P&P except that you really get more of a feel for both character's change of heart as it happens over a painful amount of time.

I actually prefer this to P&P precisely for these reasons. Also, in many ways I find Thornton a lot cooler character than Book Darcy (Firth's Darcy is another matter), and certainly a much more "real" character in his own right as opposed to only Lizzy's addendum. This world feels grittily more real.

It's interesting, but now that I think about it, the theme of reconciliation industry and mass production through humanity, brought about by a woman who the man is in love with reminds me of another favorite novel of mine, Zola's Ladies' Paradise, where the "industry" in question is a huge department store run like a factory by Octave Muret (the male protagonist and one of my favorite fictional characters, actually). The female protagonist, Denise, comes to Paris from the country and works as a sales-girl in the store and sees the human toll as well as a huge step in progress this place is. She gets fired and rehired and other stuff and Muret, who is an inveterate playboy, falls in love with her. She refuses his offer to make her his mistress for very common sense reasons but she does use her influence to achieve reforms in conditions in the store (and of course eventually he proposes). I know this sounds dry, but the book is anything but...

[crumpeteer.livejournal.com]

It's been a looooooong time since I read North and South, but I do remember liking Thornton a lot simply because even though he's not the easiest person to get along with doesn't mean he's not a good man. And just like with Darcy, I respect both men a lot because they DID got for the opinionated, intelligent women and weren't put off by that.

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yes, I do like that he didn't go for a twittery, always agreeing with him woman. Someone who finds intelligence and character attractive is pretty freaking hot.

[muffinkath7.livejournal.com]

Okay, hilarious poll! Loved it. I think we were separated at birth because we share so many common interests.

I voted for Laurie and Jo because it was the one proposal that SHOULD have been accepted at that time (although I think that N&S should have been to - curse you for making my TBR list even longer!)

[dangermousie.livejournal.com]

Yes, the Laurie and Jo one is seriously incomprehensible. Argh.

I think we were separated at birth because we share so many common interests.


Hmmm. Makes plans to ask Mom :P