Rachel's blog

I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge.

01 Introduction

Filed under: Sin categoría — Raquel Sanchez Sogorb at 11:37 pm on miércoles, mayo 22, 2013

Although, this book was not my first option, I decided to take it because I read it a few years ago and it really made me feel that I was inside the novel with the characters and in the same timeline, which I really like. The Victorian era started in 1837, when Queen Victoria came to the throne, during her reign Great Britain experienced great changes that affected all spheres of society: politics, economy, culture, science and society in general, the most I am interested are the society developed through the novel and the role of women. The British Empire became the most powerful government due to the Industrial Revolution with a thriving coal industry, iron, steel and textiles, so wonderful described by Elizabeth Gaskell in North & South.

Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell was a British novelist and short story writer during the Victorian era, she was born in 29 September 1810, at Chelsea, and she died in 12 November 1865, at Holybourne, Hampshire. When Elizabeth was very young was sent to live with her aunt in Knutsford, a town she shows as Cranford, she received traditional education to young ladies at the time, but her aunt gave her the classics to read and her father, the encouragement in her writing. Elizabeth married a Unitarian minister, William Gaskell, in Knutsford, but they went to live to Manchester, where she could write about the industrial society.

The Gaskell’s social circle included writers, religious dissenters and social reformers such as William and Mary Howitt, Charles Dickens, John Ruskin, and also Elizabeth had as close friend Charlotte Brontë, who had so influence on her, that she wrote “The life of Charlotte Brontë”. Elizabeth’s first works were published in Dicken’s Journal “Household Words”, like North and South in 1854.

In November 1865, when reporting her death, The Athenaeum rated Gaskell as “if not the most popular, with small question, the most powerful and finished female novelist of an epoch singularly rich in female novelists.”

Many critics were hostile to the novel because of its open sympathy for the workers in their relations with the masters, but the high quality of writing and characterization were undeniable. The later publication of North and South, also dealing with the relationship of workers and masters, strengthened Gaskell’s status as a leader in social fiction.

My favorite kind of stories have always been really romantic and idyllic, but in this novel I found a new way to express love, not only in a romantic way, that it has, but also describing the life of the people who lived in the Industrial Revolution, the misery, the strakes and putting a woman as a main character; making Gaskell as one of the most important novelists in the Victorian era.

As you can notice, my opinion is to share the great quality that Gaskell put in her book, so as the principal aim is to learn English, I think it is a good idea to whom are interested in this novel, I put the link to audiobook of North and South in a public domain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IP9Oik97E-Q



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   Rachel's blog » 05 Conclusion

22 mayo, 2013 @ 23:50

[…] I said in the 01 Introduction, my love for the book has made me choose these themes, and also my point of view about the […]

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