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. Once again, thank you so much for
watching my video, subscribe to the channel for more videos about
Jane Austen, classic literature and the wonderful world of history. Anyway, also make sure to check me out
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