Throughout the tour and while discussing North and South in class today, I couldn’t help but compare it to other Victorian novels (specifically the ones from class last semester). When reading Dickens and Hardy, it was very apparent to me that the novels contained a lot of critical social commentary. However, when reading some of the women authors I felt that some of the social commentary was a little more subtle. The novels we read by both the Bronte sisters as well as Eliot definitely contained a lot of social commentary, but it seemed to blend more seamlessly into the story, and perhaps required a closer reading to see. With Gaskell as well as Dickens and Hardy, the approach seems at times more direct, as characters talk openly about the social concerns the novels focus on, and are thus more apparent. I’m curious if other women authors in the Victorian period were as direct as Gaskell was in the novel once she got readers hooked with the marraige plot. The differences between how men and women wrote are very interesting, and it does seem to me that Gaskell was a little more straightforward in her criticism. I’m curious if she received any criticism herself for that, and am curious in general about what was said about her work when it was published.