YMMV / North and South

• Spiritual Successor: To Gaskell's first novel, Mary Barton. Both novels are about life in a manufacturing town and both feature trade unions and strikes.
• The Woobie:
  • Margaret. Before the story starts, her brother has to leave England or be hanged. During the story, she loses both her parents and her best friend.
  • All of the mill workers, which was sadly Truth in Television for the most part at the time. Bessie is dying of a lung disease she got in one of the mills, Mr. Boucher can't support his family and becomes more and more unstable, eventually committing suicide, Nicholas loses his daughter and sees the organisation he had such high hopes for disintegrate...
  • Mr. Thornton. His father committed suicide, leaving him, his mother and his sister in debt. The woman he loves rejects his proposal, and he later sees her with another man late at night. And then he loses the mill he worked so hard to build.

---