I try a new old author

On my last visit to LA, a friend studying English literature loaded me down with a box of her old books she thought I'd like. Mostly these have just sat on my shelf, as the ones I'm familiar with I'm not terribly excited about, even though the few I've chanced so far have been on the whole winners.

Recently, though, I picked up Elizabeth Gaskell's North and South, the story of a young woman who is transplanted from the comfortable, rural South of England to a rough industrial city in the North, read Manchester, and the eventual reconciling between the attitudes of the two places, represented by her heated relationship with one of the factory owners. I must say, I like the characters, the even-handed representations of the motives of both the factory workers and owners, and especially the frank acknowledgement of passion in the relationships between men and women, but I am getting annoyed by the amount that the narrator is in everyone's heads.

It is one thing to give us insight into the feelings of Margaret and Mr Thornton after a tumultuous encounter, especially since they are so apparently poor at examining them themselves, but to be presented with every minor character's thoughts and opinions is tiresome. I don't need to hear the doctor's silent soliloquy on how much he admired Margaret's strength after she's been told her mother is dying, it was already obvious he was impressed. In fact, he practically said as much in the moment.

The amusing exception, given how much Gaskell champions for the working classes, is Nicholas and Bessy Higgins, characters whose main purpose is giving both Margaret and the reader insight into the factory workers' hard lives, turning a faceless mob into sympathetic individuals. Even the servants must suffer the narrator's regular prying into their thoughts, but not these two key characters. It is almost as if the workers are not privileged with any private thoughts to reveal; they speak everything they have.

The long and short of it is that I appreciate Austen's restraint in doling out free indirect speech much more after these outpourings.