North and South
1855
Margaret Hale's world shatters when her father abandons his calling, dragging her from the honeyed villages of Hampshire to the soot-blackened mills of Milton-Northern. She arrives with assumptions as tidy as her petticoats, expecting to find the industrial town a moral wilderness. Instead, she discovers workers toiling in conditions that裂 her conscience, and a mill owner named John Thornton whose fierce opposition to his workforce masks something far more complicated. What unfolds is neither simple romance nor straightforward social treatise, but something rarer: a heroine learning that the world refuses to fit into the categories she was taught. Gaskell's genius lies in her refusal to let anyone off the hook, not the exploitative factory owners, not the striking workers, and certainly not Margaret herself, whose pride and prejudices must fall alongside the old order. The result is a novel that aches with the collisions between justice and mercy, class and compassion, the woman she was and the one she's becoming.
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“I know you despise me; allow me to say, it is because you do not understand me.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“One word more. You look as if you thought it tainted you to beloved by me. You cannot avoid it. Nay, I, if I would, cannotcleanse you from it. But I would not, if I could. I have neverloved any woman before: my life has been too busy, my thoughtstoo much absorbed with other things. Now I love, and will love.But do not be afraid of too much expression on my part.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“Margaret was not a ready lover, but where she loved she loved passionately, and with no small degree of jealousy.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“Oh, Mr. Thornton, I am not good enough!''Not good enough! Don't mock my own deep feeling of unworthiness.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“He shook hands with Margaret. He knew it was the first time their hands had met, though she was perfectly unconscious of the fact.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“He shrank from hearing Margaret's very name mentioned; he, while he blamed her – while he was jealous of her – while he renounced her – he loved her sorely, in spite of himself.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“But the future must be met, however stern and iron it be. ””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“A wise parent humors the desire for independent action, so as to become the friend and advisor when his absolute rule shall cease.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
“But the cloud never comes in that quarter of the horizonfrom which we watch for it.””
— Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
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<a href="https://lex-books.com/book/north-and-south-e5366365-7ec7-4fcb-8a8a-85dd8251ecc0"><img src="https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg" alt="Read North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell free on Lex" width="160" height="40"></a>[](https://lex-books.com/book/north-and-south-e5366365-7ec7-4fcb-8a8a-85dd8251ecc0)[url=https://lex-books.com/book/north-and-south-e5366365-7ec7-4fcb-8a8a-85dd8251ecc0][img]https://lex-books.com/badges/read-on-lex.svg[/img][/url]Read North and South by Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell free on Lex: https://lex-books.com/book/north-and-south-e5366365-7ec7-4fcb-8a8a-85dd8251ecc0Cite this book
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Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. North and South. Lex, lex-books.com/book/north-and-south-e5366365-7ec7-4fcb-8a8a-85dd8251ecc0.Gaskell, E. C. (1855). North and South. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/north-and-south-e5366365-7ec7-4fcb-8a8a-85dd8251ecc0Gaskell, Elizabeth Cleghorn. North and South. Lex. https://lex-books.com/book/north-and-south-e5366365-7ec7-4fcb-8a8a-85dd8251ecc0.
