North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell

This book was excellent. It starts like you're typical Jane Austen book, about a young middle class girl staying with her posh relatives and picking up their judgemental habits and then having to actually face real life and tragedy among her family and friends.

It was fantastic to see the young women characters tackle the important and tough issues of the day, such as industialisation and workers' strikes and care about the politics and economics of the world around her instead of simply whether or not she'd marry the handsome rich man. Margaret was great in many ways, she was forced into competence by coming from a rather incompetent (but sweet and tragic) family and while she didn't do a terrible amount was a person who wanted to have carefully considered opinions and took action when she thought it was needed.

In many ways the book was the most religion of Gaskell's that I've read so far. The sweet dying factory girl was almost comical in her woe and longing to see heaven. And Margaret herself seemed to talk about God a bit too much for my liking, but it was God within reasonable bounds, and at the end fun was made of teetotalling hard nosed vicars.

This book took me a very long time to read, just over 3 weeks, but it was enjoyable to spend so much time with these characters, to see their good and bad sides. It felt like one of the most realistic Victorian novels I'd read, despite the over the top melodramatics of parts of it. It was well worth the time spent. I am really enjoying the works of Mrs. Gaskell and shall keep reading them.

My copy was a lovely pocket edition from 1895, with marbled boards, which cost me all of two pounds in Charing Cross road.

Utopia by Thomas More

We're reading this book for bibliogoth this month. Having read so many Victorian books about a Utopia it was quite interesting to go back and read the original version. I know it was a great inspiration for both Wells and Morris, though having now read the original I think I'd much prefer to live in Morris' Utopia than More's.

I've studied quite a lot of Early Tudor history and I think this helped me a great deal when reading this book as there were so many references to things that were important during the time, that it seemed like there was a lot I would have missed, or not understood the significance of (for example the lengthy discourse about Sheep!) had I not had a good background. Saying that I did feel like I had been let down by not knowing as much about Ancient Greece and Rome and will be glad to get the opinions of those who know more to see just how much he was influenced by those writers, as I suspect, knowing how fond More was of his Greek, that it was quite a lot!!!

For the most part I was struck by how ghastly the "utopian" society was. A lot of this was because of the time it was written which was very Christian, sexist and racist. It made me giggle that the perfectly egalitarian society was actually based on slave labour, and all the people were able to live this life because of their slaves, and not because they'd actually gotten a perfect communist society. The part I liked the most was at the end when he was talking about how people who didn't contribute, like the gentry and bankers should not be given wealth while those who laboured hard couldn't afford to feed their children. I felt like this was the part I could agree with most. However, the actual way the country was run kinda terrified me.

It was interesting to see so many parts that reminded me of China. How the Utopians had the Confucian relationships, were the oldest man of every family, as has been already said, is its governor; wives serve their husbands, and children their parents, and always the younger serves the elder. Also the communal dining reminded me so much of the Great Leap that I also found it amusing.

In addition to the slavery I thought it was quite scary to see who Imperialism was considered perfectly justified within Utopia.

But if the natives refuse to conform themselves to their laws they drive
them out of those bounds which they mark out for themselves, and use
force if they resist, for they account it a very just cause of war for a
nation to hinder others from possessing a part of that soil of which they
make no use, but which is suffered to lie idle and uncultivated, since
every man has, by the law of nature, a right to such a waste portion of
the earth as is necessary for his subsistence

So it was considered perfectly just to war on people whose land you had taken if they had a problem with you taking it!!!

Quite an interesting read, even if there wasn't much I agreed with. I disliked how men were so dominant over the women, husbands being able to punish their wives etc! But I feel like it added to my cultural understanding, and I am glad to have finally gotten around to reading it.