So while we were talking about North and South today in class I brought up a few times how much the story seemed to be using a stereotypical Victorian storyline in order to make a larger point. Just to reiderate, I mean this in the way that there are so many Victorian novels that are written by women in which a marriage plot is involved.  Which made a lot more sense when Katie explained that it was almost essential for a woman to include this portion in the story because otherwise it wouldn’t sell or she would be shunned. However, within this novel, there are so many social and class themes woven in as well. In my head I kept comparing this to modern works, most often that of something like The Hunger Games. It seems like kind of a stretch, but if you read the novels they very much fit the popular theme of young adult dystopian future novels, which are extremely popular right now and hence sell. However, I believe an argument can be made that these novels also have a very political undercurrent involved in them between the popular seller themes and the romance themes. So I find it interesting that women writers today are using similar formulas to not only sell novels and hence make a living, but that they are able to weave in controversial issues that affect the society at large but present it to the public in a well liked book that evokes empathy more than a political upheaval.