North & South

My current obsession is Elizabeth Gaskell's "North & South". I haven't obsessed about a book this much since Suzanne Collins's "The Hunger Games" Trilogy.

Gaskell's book is much denser and slow moving than Collins's. It took me several days to finish the book, while I had swallowed Collins's books in a day each. To learn the story faster, I watched the BBC mini-series of "North & South" on Youtube. The mini-series has many changes (some significant, most minor) in order to tell the story in a visual format to a modern audience. However, the themes largely play out the same. I am satisfied.

I don't know anyone in real life with whom I can discuss these powerful stories. Most people of my acquaintance would be put off by the violence of THG and the treatment of religion and suicide in N&S. Wander is very patient listening to me prattle on about these books, but as he knows nothing of the books but what I tell him, it's very much me talking "at" him versus having an insightful conversation.

Just as the love story in THG is a delicious feast, so too is the love story in N&S. However to define either book only in terms of it's love story is to deny its full force. The themes, especially of rules vs. workers, leisure vs. activity, and now vs. future, replay through both stories, albeit with different results.

I am startled by how much the heroines (Margaret Hale and Katniss Everdeen) resemble each other. Both have mothers who came from a higher class of society. Both place their families above all else in their lives. Both live in the upper end of poverty. Both have little freedom to direct their own lives. Both have early "outs" in their stories where they could have chosen simpler, comfortable lives. Both are so full with dealing with their present lives that they are unaware and slightly confused by the passions they inspire in others. Both are bridges between the underclass and the overclass, and come to realize that neither group is perfect.

I admire these heroines and what they stand for. I don't want to be them. They endure far too much suffering. Yet, I do wish for their strength of character to do what is right despite confusing circumstances, to act with conviction, skill, and integrity.

What more could I ask for in a girly book?

p.s. How blessed I am to be able to toy with these lofty ideas in the safety and comfort.