North and South [antikvár]

INTRODUCTION Charles Dickens published the first episode of North and South in the 2 September 1854 issue of Household Words. Dickens's own industrial novel, Hard Times., had appeared in Household Words from i April to 12 August 1854. Mrs. Gaskell was well aware, in planning and writing North and South, that she was dealing with themes that Dickens himself was using. In the sudden parenthesis of a letter to John Förster she exclaims, 'Oh! I wrote to Mr Dickens, he says he is not going to have a strike'.' The closeness of theme—industrial conditions as a matrix for personal relations—brings out the striking differences between the two works: Dickens's, a moral fable presented in an uneasy mixture of realistic and emblematic characters and situations; Mrs. Gaskell's, a human comedy traced through consistent and developing characters set in onditions the author understood from long personal experience. The successes of Dickens's (the sinister hilarity of Mrs. Sparsit, Harthouse's attempted seduction of Louisa) are things missing from Mrs. Gaskell's work; but she in turn raises questions, leaving us finally with the feeling that they have been explored, and left unanswered only because she is aware of the complexity of the situation she has created. Writing North and South was a painful experience. In the early stages, she admitted she had written not one line for three weeks because of headaches and dizziness, and that 'it is dull'.^ Later she seemed easier; yet she wryly observed, 'I dare .say I shall Hke my story, when I am a little further from it; at present I can only feel depressed about it, 1 meant it to have been so much better'.-^ Part of her depression no doubt came with the difficulties of serialization. Although she had contributed 'Lizzie Leigh' to the first numbers of Household Words in Spring 1850 and Dickens had published other work by her, including Cranford, and wanted more. North and South was Mrs. Gaskell's first experience of ' The Letters of Mrs. Gaskell, ed. J. V. Chappie and Arthur Pollard (1966), p. 281, [23 April 1854I; hereafter cited as Letters. ^ Letters, pp. 290 and 294, to John Förster, [17 May 1854] and [?June 1854]. ' Letters, p. 323, to (?) Charles Dickens, [.'17 December 1854).