Review/Showdown: North and South vs. Pride and Prejudice

I just finished up my first week as a working woman. The funny thing is, I never expected how tired I could be after I get off work each day at 5 PM. The day seems to pass so slowly at work, but then the evening seems to zip by, and then before I know it, it's bedtime. I do enjoy the work so far though. I never thought prostate cancer research would be so interesting.

These past few nights, E and I have been watching a BBC miniseries called North and South. Not to be confused with some other TV series about the Civil War. The one I'm talking about is something like Pride and Prejudice in industrial England. And now without further ado, another one of Sophelia's reviews:

North and South (2004)

I normally have no patience to fully watch a TV series, especially when I know I have more pertinent things to do. In this case, I should be writing my secondaries for my medical school applications. However, E managed to convince me to watch North and South after she marketed it to me as a "better version of Pride and Prejudice," and we all know how I'm a sucker for enemies-turned-lovers romances.

The series is adapted from a Victorian novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, which unfortunately I have never read. I am, however, quite well-versed with Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and so inevitably I had to draw comparisons between the two as I was watching. So may I present, the deathmatch showdown you've all been waiting for:

Round 1: The Heroines

Lizzy Bennet (left) vs. Margaret Hale (right)

Margaret is quite reminiscent of Lizzie Bennet. They're both the spirited and headstrong types, which means that they tend to offend people. (Usually these people have sticks up their arses, so oftentimes I find myself cheering for them anyways.) The storylines for these two ladies are also somewhat similar, though I won't go into the spoilerish details here.

But OMFG. There were so many moments when I seriously wanted to slap some sense into Margaret. I can't remember if I felt so aggravated by Lizzie Bennet--it's been a while since I watched either the BBC version or the movie with Keira Knightley, so my memory may be faulty--but I can't remember the last time I've wanted to smack a character as badly as Margaret. There were definitely admirable things I liked about her character--she is very caring about the people closest to her, and I definitely prefer my heroines with some spunk and backbone. But I think there was something more charming about Lizzie that made me fond of her, despite her misguided prejudices. Margaret, in my opinion, possessed only a fraction of that charm, which often made me less sympathetic towards her rash behavior. There were moments when I thought she was overtly rude, even until like the last ten minutes of the series. Totally cannot read the situation... and not just sometimes. MOST OF THE TIME.

Winner: Lizzie Bennet (Pride and Prejudice)

On the other hand, I strongly suspect that the majority of my frustrations with Margaret Hale stem from her crushing rejections of the love interest, which brings me to...

Round 2: The Love Interests

Fitzwilliam Darcy (left) vs. John Thornton (right)

I must admit something blasphemous...

... but I have never sa-WOONed over Mr. Darcy. Never. Matthew McFayden reminded me too much of my Russian tennis coach, and maybe I was too young when I watched it, but the infamous wet-shirt scene with Colin Firth in the 1995 BBC version did nothing for me. He just seemed unpleasant and not all that fun to be around.

One of the other selling points E tried to make when convincing me to watch North and South was Richard Armitage. I haven't watched any of his other work (which includes the Hobbit, in which he plays a dwarf--which actually surprises me, because Richard Armitage is both 6'2" and quite handsome, neither of which are traits one would ordinarily attribute to Middlearth dwarfs).

No character has made me so conflicted about my feelings as Richard Armitage's John Thornton. Obviously, the Pride-and-Prejudice set-up requires that the heroine and her love interest leave a terrible first impression on each other that they must overcome by the end of the story. Well, North and South does an excellent job of doing this, because in the very first scene with Thornton, I was like DUDE WTF THIS GUY HAS MAJOR ISSUES.

But then I quickly found myself thinking, Damn it, Thornton is INSANELY good looking. And his voice. I think we all know that I am a sucker for deep voices (e.g. the Badass One aka T.O.P., Christian Bale, etc.). Richard Armitage's voice is right up there in the Sophelia's pantheon of "voices-I-could-listen-to-all-day," which sounds a lot creepier than it should.

But then I still felt torn about my undeniable attraction to Thornton.Why, you may ask? Because, I understand his strong love for his mother and all (explained in a sad story), but you don't go around saying this sort of shizz to your own mother after you get rejected:

"No one loves me. No one cares for me but you." Seriously, WTF.

But there's no fighting the supermagnet that is Richard Armitage. In all seriousness though, Armitage did a great job in this role. Lots of smoldering and scowling, just the way I like it. And John Thornton does have his good points as a character, especially near the end when he becomes BFFs with a certain character that used to hate his guts.

Winner: John Thornton (North and South)

Round 3: Side Characters

Pride and Prejudice (top) vs. North and South (bottom)

One of the things I've always admired about Jane Austen is her ability to create memorable secondary characters. As much as I abhor Mrs. Bennet, she is a riot and a classic. Mr. Bennet is hilariously witty, and Mr. Collins is deliciously insufferable. Bingley and Jane are kind of boring, but you can't win them all. North and South has its own cast of characters, with quite a few people to root for. Thornton's mother is a little more pleasant than Lady Catherine de Bourgh, which isn't saying much. His sister Fanny is comically ridiculous, with the best (worst?) stinkface I have ever seen. Margaret's parents are boring, especially in comparison to the Bennets. My favorite--until he made that creepy wife comment near the end--was probably Mr. Bell, who seemed to detect the slow simmering burn between Thornton and Margaret and occasionally had fun trying to meddle with the two of them... which was especially welcome, as there were several times when I wanted to knock their heads together and be like "YOU GUYS LIKE EACH OTHER OKAYYY STOP BEING SO STUBBORN!"

Winner: Tie

Round 4: Plot

I don't know fair of a category this is, seeing that Pride and Prejudice is such a popular classic that has become the basis of a TON of retellings and spin-offs. One might even regard North and South as a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, which wouldn't be too absurd because the similarities between the two are quite striking.


There were good and bad things about the storyline of North and South. I actually really enjoyed the setting of the story, and how Margaret is unceremoniously plopped from the idyllic South to the industrial North. You see her stumble through some social faux pas, which lends to the initial tension between her and Thornton. One of the things I felt was a little lacking in Pride and Prejudice was that there wasn't much of a deeper, critical look at the lopsided social hierarchy of the time. All the characters flit from party to party, with hardly any mention of the lower-class who are working their fields so that these upper-class folks can spend their days gossiping about suitors. At times, it all feels somewhat frivolous. North and South gives a much deeper look at the great divide between the cotton mill masters and the union workers who can barely scrounge up the money to feed their families. It's an intriguing element that's woven pretty tightly into the romantic storyline.

What I didn't like about North and South's plot, however, was the incoherence. There were quite a few plot points that struck me as jumpy, unbelievable, and sometimes far too deus ex machina. The death count suddenly escalates in Episodes 3 and 4, and the last two deaths were especially abrupt and almost seemed too convenient. In this regard, Pride and Prejudice flows a lot smoother, and the characters seem to behave more accordingly to their initial characterizations.

Winner: Tie

Final Verdict
Looks like it's a tie, with the Plot and Side Characters evenly matched, and it looks like Lizzy Bennet and John Thornton are in a tug-of-war on each side. Watch it yourself, and let me know what you think!

Book Report: The Fault in Our Stars

Ever since my brother went off to college, my parents have made a weekly ritual of visiting the public library every Sunday afternoon for an hour and then getting dinner at the same noodle restaurant every time. It's kind of cute. I participate in this ritual whenever I'm at home. As I'm in the midst of MCAT preparations, I've been limiting myself to a treat of one book for leisure reading per week. Even then, I feel guilty about reading. Fortunately, I read like a speed demon and typically finish the books in a single evening.

I've been meaning to read The Fault in our Stars for a very long time. It's one of those rare YA books that has managed to transcend the incriminating label of being "young adult" in mainstream media. Heck, TIME Magazine even listed it as the #1 Fiction Book of 2012. I'd already heard a lot of things about this book before I picked it up from the One-Week Checkout Only section from the Teen Section today. I knew that the protagonist was a cancer patient. I knew it made people around the world cry, cry, and cry. The book had been hyped for me so much already that I was cynical about whether or not it would be able to meet my expectations. After all, despite the fact that my tear ducts are apparently disconnected from the part of my brain that experiences cathartic sorrow, I love a good sad story that doesn't feel like it's pandering for tears. (Which was my main problem with The Notebook, but that's a whole other blog post.)

Well guys, this book is actually pretty good. A review somewhere described it as "an elegiac comedy," which I think describes the flavor of the book in a nutshell. I won't really say anything about the plot, other than the fact that I actually did predict the "twist" in the book. I wonder if it was obvious to other readers, but in my case I kept wondering where on earth John Green could take this story, and as my mind sketched out all the possibilities, it turns out I nailed one of them. Guessing what was coming didn't particularly take away from the story though.

The characters are crisply written, with some really quirky-cute moments that made me grin stupidly as I was reading in the backseat of the car. I'm also a fan of books that tend to muse over philosophical things about life, which might not be everyone's cup of tea but it really worked for me in this book.

As for the whole crying business, I can't think of a book that has made me cry, but oh man -- this one was so close. A blog I follow near daily reviewed this book a while ago, and the reviewer mentioned that she was going to use this one quote for her wedding vows. While I was reading, I kept wondering what kind of a quote would be amazing enough for one's wedding vows. I still don't know for sure what quote she was talking about, but there's this one part.... oh man, it HURT. I don't know if the quote will spoil things, so read at your own risk (I still cut the spoilerish parts out anyway). Here it is:

"There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities.... There are days, many of them, when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get... But... I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days."

l'étoile brûlée

Je pensais que l'étoile elle-même a déjà brûlée. Mais quand j'ai imaginé que vous étiez assis à côté de moi, le sang me montait aux joues, et tout d'un coup, les souvenirs ont retourné. C'était triste de réaliser que même après quatre ans, je n'ai pas encore moi-même dissociée de temps passé.

Burn Altese

I often have dreams where paralysis strikes me, always in a very specific manner. It begins with the muscles in my jaw suddenly locking, making it very painful and near impossible to open my mouth. Breathing becomes more and more difficult. On rare occasions, the tightness spreads to the rest of my body, and I end up crouched on the ground, unable to move.

I dreamt I was back at school again. The Bryan Center renovations had been completed, leaving the place nearly unrecognizable. I was with Hachi, my friend and ex-roommate from two years ago. We were chatting, when my jaw muscles began to lock. Straining to open my mouth, I had to speak through my clenched teeth to tell Hachi that something was wrong. One of our mutual friends (more Hachi's friend than mine) happened to pass by. By that point, I was crouched on the ground barely able to breathe. He ran off to find help after Hachi told him what had happened.

When he came back, he said there was nobody who could come over to help, but they told him my problem had a name. Burn Altese Syndrome. And the first thing I needed to do was to breathe. He crouched down in front of me and, with one hand on my back, began to coach my breathing.

I realized as I began to take deep breaths that I had been hyperventilating. As my breathing rate slowed, the paralysis in my legs began to dissipate. In time, I was able to stand up, and my friends walked me to the student health center.

It's not often that I awake with a dream retained with such startling clarity. Out of curiosity, I Googled lockjaw, and it appears that some of the symptoms I dream about are related to tetanus.

But not that last part about breathing. Simply taking deeper breaths does not alleviate muscle tension in tetanus.

In truth, this person had flickered across my mind not too long ago. In those moments of daydream when I think about the stories I want to tell, I thought about a blog post I had read once that said the difference between writing about a romance in YA versus adult literature is that for the teenagers, every little action is monumental. Eye contact across a hall, a hand on the shoulder, bodies pressed side by side on a crowded bus.

I never truly liked this person in that way. But there was a time he ran into me at the library one morning when I was trying to finish creating the figures for our thesis class later that day. I told him about how tired I was, and he patted my shoulder in sympathy. I still remember that moment even now, because his touch surprised me.

My friends all know that I don't like to be touched. But that's not entirely accurate. It's true that I don't particularly hug people when I greet them, and I can get annoyed when people cling on my arms too much. But there is something undeniably reassuring about the human touch when used sparingly. This was one of things I learned in college. When my friend broke up with her boyfriend of five years, or when my friend's expensive camera was stolen in Vietnam, I knew that even if I didn't know what to say, the best I could do was a hand on their back, an arm around the shoulder, something to let me know them know that I was physically there for them.

On another note, the dream dictionary that G gave me years ago cautions that dreaming of lockjaw is a warning not to say too much. Since indiscretion is a vice I have continuously struggled with, I supposed I'd best keep my mouth shut today.