AN ACADEMIC VIEW OF BBC NORTH AND SOUTH - PART II

This is my second post in this series. After sharing with you the most interesting points in Margaret Harris's Taking Bearings: Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South Televised in a previous post, I'm now going to do the same with another essay.  The author is Dr David Kelly , he is Senior Lecturer at Sydney University, Department of English and  wrote "A View of North and South" in 2006.  

The opening pages are an interesting reflection on the theme: has the mini-series become the novel of today? 
"The home entertainment revolution has had a profound effect not only on our viewing but, perhaps surprisingly, on our reading habits. ...No doubt part of the attractions of the mini series for readers is that it has certain affinities with the novel - especially the classic realist novel - which give it  a number  of advantages over the feature film when it comes to the adaptation of literary classics... the television series leaves the viewer with a sense of aesthetic complexity and completion". (pp. 1 - 3) These and other thoughts on the different approaches to a classic either  of a feature film or of a long-running TV series were prompted by Dr Kelly's watching North and South (but not having read North and South!)


Once he delves into the analysis of the filmic text, Dr Kelly states:

"While Elizabeth Gaskell wrote one of the mst famous of all "Condition of England" novels, at first glance  North and South appears on the small screen as a period romance. (...) The title alone seems enough to alert the viewer to the kind of story it will unfold: like pride and prejudice, or sense and sensibility, we might expect north and south to be attributes embodied in the lead characters as impediments to the romance plot. (...) Margaret (Daniela Denby-Ashe) is handsome indeed and bears a likeness to Lydia in the celebrated BBC version of Pride and Prejudice (1995), while charismatic Thornton (Richard Armitage) is dangerously good looking and bears a considerable likeness to Colin Firth's Darcy in the same series, whom he outscowls, which is no mean feat".

But soon after this misleading hint to an easily predictable P&P-like plot, Dr Kelly starts demonstrating how different and more complicated than that the story narrated in the series is:
- soon we realize there is a serious motive for the Hales' forced removal other than Margaret's fleeing an unwanted suitor (Harry Lennox)
- with its emphasis on the gazing eye, the text frequently alerts us to perspective, the partiality of one's own view, and the play of the image in the  eye of the beholder (the thematic device of the partial view in all senses is carefully crafted into the texture of the film itself)
So little by little, our scope enlarges to a broader view following Margaret slow discovery of the new shocking reality she has to cope with in Milton and we catch a glimpse of her maturing personality at the end of the first episode :"I believe I have seen hell -it's white. It's snow white". At this point , we are no longer sure we are in front of a traditional period romance and start expecting something greater:

"It is not what it appears" says Margaret to Thornton when he calls on her during her brother's furtive stay in England, and indeed it is not. Against this background of the known and the unknown, the actual and the apparent, the narrative unfolds a romance plot inextricably implicated in and  complicated by the politics of industrial relations and the clash of views between masters and workers and north and south. (...) Margaret comes to achieve a mature understanding of social conditions in Milton and through this, a true understanding of Thornton's motives and actions ... More than this she seems to come to an understanding of something about human life, effort, relations, and aspirations which the south could never have provided" (p.11)

Then Dr Kelly comes to some interesting literary connections analysis the symbolical presence of the snow:

The snow that falls on Milton in th last episode recalls the snow white hell of Margaret's earlier horrified response to the cotton factory, but which now generalizes that earlier imagery of the factory fluff and metaphorically reveals a truth of the human condition. The snow falls on all alike, as it does in Joyce's "The Dead" (Dubliners, 1914), where the symbol of snow, the struggle of the factory floor is revealed as not unlike the struggle of existence, but this is a truth that remains hidden to the South and its sunny radiance. (...) 'You mustn't leave Milton for the South', Margaret will tell Higgins, 'you could not bear the dulness of life'. (p.12)

So he concludes :

"...there is much to provoke and question our own ideas on the morality of wealth, the exploitative processes of industry, the place of the social ideal, and the plight of the wretched of the earth. The romance does not sentimentalize these themes; rather, in its difficulties, disappointments, and hesitant aspirations, it metaphorizes the problematic reconciliation of practical imperative and moral idea. It's a strange courtship which flowers only at the last moment... The gaze and the handshake, insistent motifs throughout, become its means of achievement, just as they might be its cause of frustration when the gaze is unobservant and the offered hand is ungrasped through custom and prejudice. The end and the eye, and through them the heart - these are the means of connections in a divide society: to look and to know, to reach and to grasp, to agree and to connect. 'Only connect'."  (p.13)

I love several things in this analysis by Dr Kelly: 1. at last a male point of view on this period series and not a scornful dismissal at all 2. I love the literary connections (i.e. with Joyce's The Dead and E. M . Forster "Only connect") 3.  I love  how he analyses the motifs and the imagery: the snow/cotton fluff , the gaze and the handshake, the device of the partial view. Thanks a lot, Dr Kelly. It's been very interesting to see North and South from your impartial, literary trained eyes.