In the event you are not familiar with Elizabeth Gaskell’s work, I will start by telling you that she was a close friend of Charlotte Brontë, and among other fictional work she wrote a book about Charlotte’s life and the life of her sisters. You might be forgiven for assuming what to expect from her contemporaries – however, Gaskell was most famous for writing fiction about class struggle and poverty in the age of the Industrial Revolution.

This favoured theme forms the backdrop for the story – Margaret, a proud yet naive young woman lives with her father and mother in an idyllic countryside village when her father, the local parson, renounces his position. To escape the shame of leaving the church he moves the family to the heaving, bustling antithesis of their old home; an industrial town in the north where the family have to come to terms with the change in pace, lifestyle, and community of factory workers.

I found the book difficult to get into, but past the first 50 pages I settled into the story. Not that it feels like much of a story, it evolves so slowly, almost in real time it feels, though a few years pass during the book, but the evolutions and events take so long to be drawn out and then resolved that you sometimes wonder whether they ever will be, and whether the book will ever get around to any sort of final climax. Of course you are rooting for the inevitable, and aren’t all books of this time ultimately about romance? But this is no Mr Darcy, though there is much pride and prejudice.

There are in fact a number of potential romantic partnerships, but Gaskell’s heroine isn’t the fawning, giggling type. She is proud, indifferent, and ignorant of romantic ideals unlike many books where the female gushes with sentiment and pining: she is embarrassed and shocked when men confess their feelings for her. In her inexperience she is mortified by their advances and not knowing how to let them down gently drives them away. They stay absent for months and years, so we are unsure who will make it past the winning line right up until the last page. This disinclination to let romance dominate the story, and unhurried intention to resolve the ambiguity is an admirable achievement. While romantic union may be the apex of the book, the events that substantiate the rest of the book are quite unrelated and absorbing for their own sake. The social commentary on industry, strikes, health, family affairs, death, poverty and even mutiny are all dealt with, so it is easy to put aside any desire for the romance to be resolved and simply enjoy the historical observation. So if you are interested in the past, enjoy interpreting baffling local dialect and might enjoy something akin to Austen or the Brontë sisters with more salt and less sugary sentiment, then read this book.

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