Hi, my name is Ellie Dashwood.
And today, we'll be talking about four Elizabeth Gaskell novels you'll love.
Elizabeth Gaskell was a writer in the early Victorian era, and I love her works.
I would say after Jane Austen, Elizabeth Gaskell is the closest
thing you can get to Jane Austen.
If you really love Jane Austenesque writing and stories, I would move
on to the Elizabeth Gaskell novels.
A lot of people have become more aware of Elizabeth Gaskell ever after
the BBC made, of course, a wonderful adaptation of her novel North and South.
And that is the first one we'll be talking about today.
North and South follows the story of Margaret Hale, who is from the
Southern part of the country of England.
Her father's a preacher in small church in a small town.
And even though she was raised a lot with her cousin in the city,
she still loves the country.
And that's really where her heart is.
However, all of a sudden, her father decides to stop being a preacher, moves
his whole family to a town up in the Northern part of England called Milton.
Milton's an imaginary city, but it's essentially what
Manchester was at the time.
Very dirty, industrialized, not a very nice place to live.
Especially if you're used to living out in the beautiful country in the South.
But that's where the whole book gets its name, North versus South.
And of course, while up North she meets Mr.
Thorton and romantic drama ensues on both sides and misunderstanding and
drama, and a lot of people dying.
That's one thing about Elizabeth Gaskell novels, people are dying left and right.
And like all of them.
It's like, "You know what, who's going to die in this chapter?
I don't know.
Anyone could really."
But I would definitely suggest it.
North and South, I think is very similar to Pride and Prejudice.
She has a lot of prejudice.
He's a lot of pride.
They sort of had that Elizabeth-Darcy dynamic going on only it's
set in industrial Victorian England and not Regency country.
But I definitely like it and would suggest you check it out.
And of course, North and South, I believe is currently up on Netflix, the show.
So if you don't want to read the book, then at least go watch the movie.
The second book I love by Elizabeth Gaskell is Wives and Daughters.
This is one of her later works.
North and South is one of her earlier works.
Elizabeth Gaskell likes to write about two themes that seem
somewhat opposed to each other.
She's either writing very much about the social change and reform of cities
in industrial areas that that's sort of what we see in North and South.
Or she's writing about small country towns and how they're responding to the
industrialization, but mostly it's about families and people in little towns and
little town gossip and drama and politics.
And that's what we see in Wives and Daughters.
This follows the story of young Molly Gibson.
Her mother died when she was very young, so it was just
her and her father growing up.
She becomes a young lady and this guy kind of gets a crush on her
and her dad finds out about it.
And he overreactss slightly.
First of all, he's like, "No, don't like my daughter."
But then he's also like, "I'm going to go find myself a wife.
Cause if I get a wife, she'll come in and protect Molly from all these suitors
who are going to start happening."
So he goes off and marries pretty much the first woman he runs into.
Who is not very nice.
And this is where Wives and Daughters comes in.
Because, so he goes off and gets a wife who he thinks is going to protect Molly.
And this wife has a daughter named Cynthia.
And so Cynthia moves in, she is Molly's age.
And Cynthia is the opposite of Molly.
Molly is a very kind, loving, warm, strongly moraled and principled girl.
Cynthia has not had much parental love or advice or concern in her life.
And she just came back from finishing school in France.
So she is extremely flirtatious and funny and just like out there.
And so they have these polar opposites.
But what I love about Wives and Daughters is that Molly and Cynthia
still become like the best of friends.
But because you have Cynthia and you have the new stepmother who
are kind of way more dramatic than Molly's dad had ever imagined lots
and lots of lots of drama ensues.
And that's what this book talks about.
It has a lot of interesting contrast like that, about how the father trying to
fix everything does the exact opposite.
He's like, "No, I'm gonna protect my daughter."
And then he's like, "Or I'm going to introduce some really, really bad
association to her life and cause drama."
I really liked this.
You should check it out.
The BBC also made a wonderful adaptation of this movie.
I had it somewhere.
It's part of this.
You guys should just get this thing, but Wives and Daughters, it's great.
You should go check it out.
So the third Elizabeth Gaskell novel to checkout is Mary Barton.
I love this book.
Sadly, the BBC has yet to make a movie adaptation of this.
I have read news articles that a couple of years ago they were
planning to make a movie of this.
And I got so excited.
I've yet to see anything come of that.
So if you are somewhere in a movie drawing planning board room, and they're
like, should we still make this movie?
And you have any decision, you should make this movie because this book is awesome.
This is, I believe Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel.
And like we were talking about her two themes of either small
town, country gossip or big city industrial social change.
This is big city, industrial social change right here.
And it follows the story of, well, Mary Barton.
And she is the daughter of a mill worker who imagines himself to be a
social forward thinking guy, who's going to really affect change.
This was the beginning of the whole idea of unions.
He's very much a union man, very similar to North and South.
We see a lot of union stuff happening in there.
Only this girl, Mary Barton is very, very, very pretty.
And she works at like this clothing store and she comes in contact
with one of the mill owner's sons.
So this is a very, very rich guy, a guy very much out of her social class.
However, she catches his eye and they start dating.
And of course she imagines, like "If I marry this guy, we could be so rich
and this would just solve all of our problems and it's just going to be great."
However, at the same time she has this childhood friend named Jim who
like, is in love with her and has been in love with her, their whole lives.
And he's like, "I love you so much, Mary."
And she's like, "Eww, leave me alone.
Get away from me.
I don't like you."
And then once she does that and he's like, "Fine.
If you don't want to marry me, I'm just going to go cry."
And then after that, she's like, "Wait a minute.
I, I, I actually kinda like, like this guy, maybe, I
don't know, maybe I like him.
What about this other guy?
What should I do?
What's happening?"
And that's what's happening in this book.
A lot of other stuff also happens.
Drama happens.
Murder happens.
People dying happens because that's what happens in Elizabeth Gaskell novels.
Everybody's dying all the time.
It's very, very good.
I like it a lot.
It has a good romance in it.
Has a lot about what life in Manchester, England at this time was like.
Which if you ever really wonder about Victorian England or the poor, because we
see a lot in period dramas, it set among at least middle-class to aristocratic
families, well, this really gives you the insight into that other half of the
population that live a whole lot poorer.
I would definitely suggest checking this book out if you're interested in
the Victorian world and what it was like to be poor in the Victorian world.
The fourth Elizabeth Gaskell novel you'll love is not actually a novel, it's a
series of novelettes or novellas that she wrote about Cranford, My Lady Ludlow.
honestly, I've read Mary Barton.
I've read North and South.
I've read Wives and Daughters.
I haven't really read a lot of these short stories, but I do love the movie
based off of them called Cranford.
And this is once again, back to Elizabeth Gaskell's other
theme of small town gossip.
It follows the story of essentially little old ladies who are quite shocked by all
the changes they're seeing in society and industrialism and that train thing.
And you just don't know what's going to happen next.
They're changing everything on us.
We just don't know what to do.
And it's so funny and they're so cute.
Cause they're always like little old ladies running around the town
being like, "Oh, what's happening?!"
So I really liked Cranford.
You should check it out.
So those were our four Elizabeth Gaskell movie and novels
that you should check out.
Some of them are able to stream on Netflix, such as North and South.
And of course, you can find other ones at your local library or Amazon.
Amazon is great too, because I'm sure once you watch them, you'll want
to own them because they are great.
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Have an awesome day.
And be awesome.