How do you do,
Seeing after giving y'all six weeks of hearing about the eight novels I was willing to read in high school, Anne of Green Gables, over the past summer I decided to continue with other books I read in high school and late elementary in the remainder of the year. First up is North and South by John Jakes.
North and South is the first of three in a trilogy of novels dealing with the events before, during, and after the Civil War (or, as some in my neighborhood would call it, War of Southern Independence, War Between States, War of Northern Aggression, etc.) The first book is about the Antebellum days with the plot of the novel having two families from different sides of the Mason Dixon witnesses the events, and participating in them. I had been reading this and its two sequels since high school, continuing on through college, and I have read the Kent Family series, the works Jakes is most famous for. From that, I am willing to make this entry be about each book of the trilogy, just as I had done with Anne of Green Gables.
One thing anyone might notice is that John Jakes' book shares the same title as Elizabeth Gaskell's novel, published within the time frame of this one, but taking place in Great Britain. To the British, North and South referred to Southern England and the Midlands (with the remarkably similar industrial vs agrarian setting as with the US). Of course, Gaskell was writing about a country girl going up to Manchester and learning of city life not being what it's cracked up to be while going through a plot like that of Austen. Jakes has different plot line in mind, which deals with two families representing the two regions and how they witness the coming apart of the US. Now, this is why I recommend new authors out there to do some research so as to avoid having a used title. Jakes didn't have the internet when he wrote, and I doubt he had even heard of Elizabeth Gaskell, so he can be excused. This is something people today cannot. I mean, we can't have a book about a compass that leads one to the treasure and call it "The Golden Compass", or some kind of tournament themed story that acts like Pokemon and call it "Game of Thrones", and I don't think "Gone With the Wind" can be used as the title of a book about tornadoes or hurricanes, nor can you write about someone going to the University of Notre Dame and call the story "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". So, as I said do some research before settling on a title for your book. If it can help, do what some would do like use a line from a poem or song, like how William Faulkner got As I Lay Dying from The Odyssey and John Updike got In the Beauty of the Lilies from "Battle Hymn of the Republic." You can also use something that was said by a character in what TV Tropes calls "a title drop," like with Harper Lee using the famous quote from her novel as the title.
Following a prologue that establishes the families in the story, the Hazards and the Mains, we are first introduced to our protagonists: George Hazard of Pennsylvania and Orry Main of South Carolina. You'd notice that John Jakes doesn't go the traditional route and have them be descendants of some ancestor who came ashore at either Jamestown or Plymouth (which gave rise to Virginia and Massachusetts, respectively) as most American narratives tend to do. Instead, he focuses on the lesser known Atlantic colonies. South Carolina, and its northern neighbor, is named after King Charles I, with the Latin name Carolus, and with the female naming (just as Georgia is named after King George). Though named for the English king, who was tragically beheaded at the end of the English Civil War, South Carolina was first explored by the Spanish who set up a settlement and then abandoned some slaves in the area. Later, it was founded as an English colony with Charles Town (later called Charleston) as the capital. Even then, many of its inhabitants did not speak English, but French. This is because South Carolina was at one time inhabited by the Huguenots, French protestants exiled from France after King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. So, it is an English colony with a lot of Latin influences (name, early settlers), and some of these men set up homes in the murky and humid lands near Charles Town and grew rich off of rice production (through the labor of slaves). Among these French speaking British subjects, the ancestor of Orry appears. Pennsylvania is also a state founded as an English colony with non-English influences. Its name is conglomeration of Penn, named for William Penn, an Englishman who used the royal charter to establish a home of religious freedom, and Sylvania, which comes from the Latin word Sylva, meaning "forest"; this means the Commonwealth's name means literally "Penn's Forest." As with South Carolina, a great many in Pennsylvania didn't speak English. The Quakers and Anabaptists groups that were brought to the land, also escaping religious persecution, were German born, thus they spoke German (leading to people being named the Pennsylvanian Dutch, a corruption of Deutsch). George's ancestor was by another family, where a boy is shown to have run away from an abusive miner of a stepfather and fell in with a man named Hazard, even taking his name.
Orry and George are as different as apples and oranges. One is the son of a rice planter, the other the son of an iron smith. However, they become good friends in the course of the novel. One might say, they are BFFs. They meet in New York, become friends, and enter the West Point Academy. In the time when college education was a privilege to the few, these two take up to entering the US Army and train in the Academy. This seems more convenient than going through college which costs thousands in tuition. West Point charges no tuition; all one had to do was get appointed by his representative or senator, then devote years of service to the Army. Now, such an easy entry doesn't make it easier: it's boot camp and ivy league college at once. Infractions lead to demerits, which affect one's standing, as do grades in the courses. They also have terms for three of the classes (Plebe, Yearling, Cow...) as opposed to Freshmen, Sophomore, and Junior. West Point gives the highest standing cadets places in the engineering and artillery while the lower guys are simply horsemen or infantrymen.
Orry and George encounter future Civil War generals as cadets. They see Ulysses Grant and Thomas Jackson among the upper class-men (history will call them "U.S. Grant" and "Stonewall Jackson", respectively). These are two of the real men, but Orry and George meet a fictional upper class-man named Elkanah Bent, basically a combination of Peter Griffin and Himmelstoss in West Point garb. Bent takes an instant disliking of Orry and George and does everything in his power to trip them up so that he can report them and they each earn a demerit. The actions he does are appalling and it's a miracle he doesn't get expelled. Of course, he has friends in Washington who can pull strings and keep him there (yeah, he seems to have a 19th Century Don Corleone somewhere who will give West Point an offer it can't refuse and then Bent is in). In the meantime, Orry and George live in the Academy in what can basically two best friends going to military school plot used in some soap opera and moved into the 19th Century America. Another way to describe it is basically Harry Potter without magic, in military uniform, and without Hermione or Ginny. George and Orry are equal in collecting a demerit and being bullied by Bent, yet George is shown to be an excellent student in the academic side. He scores big in his class work and appears to be able to do that in his sleep, but Orry is mediocre at best, becoming one of the "Immortals". Remarkably, no envy arises in Orry. Then there is the social life where George goes to the hop and has time with women, drinking beer, and smoking cigars (two of those were frowned upon at West Point) while Orry seems more willing to keep studying.
As tradition shows, Orry and George get visited by the Hazards as they become Yearlings, with Cooper coming by at one point. Then they get furlough at the end where Orry takes George down to South Carolina. We took a picture of the South when Cooper visited and took us down to Royal Mount. There come the Mains: Tillet, Clarissa, Ashton, Brett, and Cousin Charles. There is also the stubborn Priam, one of the slaves on the Main lands (no pun intended) and the overseer who bullies him in sight of Charles. From this, the Mains are fleshed out: Cooper shows no love of the South, thinking the society with it is obsolete in the Industrial Revolution while Tillet argues for the paternalistic viewpoint of slave owners (made symbolic in the father and son relationship presented; Cooper is the older son in one of Jesus' parables who doesn't want to do his father's will, yet is present in the South for it while Orry, the younger and more willing, is up in West Point), Charles is the orphaned nephew living in the plantation with scorn coming from many, including his uncle (basically Jakes' answer to Luke Skywalker, with the touch of Harry Potter), Clarissa is the rational mother figure who could rival Ellen O'Hara, while Ashton and Brett are Southern belles with two different characteristics, which will develop more as they become women. We even see how Priam is a ticking time bomb, basically any rebellious black man you can think of placed in the role of his ancestors, and his overseer is willing to push him into that state as Bent does to Orry and George.
The Hazards were already introduced in chapter one. George also has a father named William, his mother, his sister Virgilia, and his brothers Stanley and Billy. The Hazards become noticeable in their introductions: Stanley is hard working though entitled, Billy is adventurous, and Virgilia is rebellious. If there is a good reason behind this simplification of the characters its largely a way of showing that despite the two families being from different states and having different status, with different prospects, and the fact one family owns slaves while the other does not, they are not that too far different. They both breathe the same air, they both face the same family troubles, and they both have deal with troubles back home. In a sense, it makes one wonder why the book wasn't called A Tale of Two States or A Tale of Two Regions, as opposed to simply North and South. The thing is, it seems that John Jakes, a Northerner, is willing to put more on the Southern characters. On the same note, both Jakes and Charles Dickens also feature well off men named Charles in their historic epics.
George and Orry graduate from West Point just in time for the Mexican War to break out. You might have noticed something before we get to this point. Instead of starting on the eve of war, Jakes pushes the beginning back to 1842, just nineteen years prior to Fort Sumter. Just why does he do that? Why not be like Herman Wouk who had The Winds of War begin in 1939 and have World War II break out within one hundred pages? Or why not be like Margaret Mitchell who actually started on the eve of the Civil War? Instead, he goes like Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace with the story beginning right as Napoleon has declared himself emperor, even if the Invasion of Russia in 1812 (a mere eight years later) is the centerpiece of the story. There four reasons involved. First it basically allows for the build up and the suspense in the leading up process that precedes the War. Secondly, it allows one to explore the contrasting worlds of the Antebellum South and North. Third, it lets the readers have a chance to see the drama that leads up to the War's outbreak: the Mexican War, the opening of the West, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Bleeding Kansas Affair, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry, the 1860 election, and finally the Secession Winter. Fourth and finally, the book is meant to partly be an adventure story (if lack of a better word) with some soap opera involved, and it requires one to get to known the characters, especially as they are part of the West Point class that make up the leaders on both sides of the Civil War. The modern reader gets that adventure just as he would with Dumas, Stevenson, or Tolstoy where he is transported to a different time period and see far away places that the reader just might know as his backyard. For example, the second half of the novel has scenes that take place in West Texas, which was considered the edge of civilization at the time, now it's home to over a million people.
During the Mexican War, Orry and George run into Bent again, who proves a coward in some instances and a snake in others. In fact, the man is angry with them for staining his record and holds that grudge to the next generation. Orry and George report him to a superior who expresses the shock at the disloyalty among West Pointers. So, they continue on. Orry loses a hand during the Battle of Churubusco, and is mustered out at the end of the Mexican War. George also has his six years as an officer cut short by an early retirement in peace time. This was, after all, a short war and it takes place in a time when the US military would downscale after a war and never re-mobilize until the next one. Of course, that would make George and Orry lucky because many servicemen in the time period of the book would have wound up in some outpost in the Old West or sent to some base in Florida where malaria ran rampant.
Once they come home, we see other parts of the novel take shape. Prior to the war, Orry encountered a woman named Madeline Fabray from Louisiana. He rescues her from a snake in what looks like a scene of chivalry. Orry had claimed he was a one woman man and was searching for someone like her. To him, it was Madeline. Then life comes in to take her away because she was engaged to one of his neighbors, Justin LaMotte, and their wedding happened within a day of their meeting! I certainly feel sorry for Orry, especially in recent days. You meet the right person for you and she or he is already taken (Rotten luck). Justin, and his brother Francis, are shown to be bullies, and older than Orry and Madeline (in fact, it gets pointed out on how Justin worried on his age compared to her while Madeline is said to expect a man Justin's age to behave). They live a life of ease like the Mains, but their plantations, like Justin's Resolute, are run with inefficiency and brute force. They spend more focus on breaking horses and slaves than tending to their plantations, and Justin sees his wife as another challenge like that of horses. Justin tells Francis he won't tolerate her opinions in a matter of a man who feels his manhood threatened and is trying to convince his peers that he is not weak (and we never get any justification). Later, when the LaMottes consummate their marriage it's rape at best (but the joke's on Justin because Madeline wasn't a virgin on her wedding night, and something else is in her that will be mentioned shortly). Madeline eventually comes to not enjoy being married to Justin who threatens her for voicing her opinion at one point and often holds her hostage on others. Eventually, Madeline becomes like Madame Bovary and loses all beliefs in fidelity and sanctity of marriage, which drives her into seeking an affair.
The marriage of Madeline to Justin sort of shows the values dissonance in marriage in the 1840s, where men viewed their wives as property and opinionated women were not tolerated. This also shatters the image of the Antebellum South as a civilized place presented by Gone With the Wind, though I will say even that book subverts it (that's for a different entry), by presenting not only racism in a society build on enforced labor but sexism as well. In one scene, everyone talks with John Calhoun on the matter of secession and Madeline voices her two cents on it (an act that defies convention in the period) and Justin yanks her aside and talks to her as though she were a misbehaving child. He mentions of the Grimke sisters who were just as opinionated as her and they were banished from the South for it. Eventually, it comes to a point that he carries out his threat and isolates Madeline from all contact and starves her into submission.
But, of course, the joke is on Justin because Madeline not only gave away her precious flower before marriage but she is one eighth black, in a time when having African ancestry was scandalous. Of course, Madeline withholds this information with the intention of revealing it at the right time, though it never comes up. Besides, after seeing the movie Mandingo, I wouldn't be surprised if Justin murders her to avenge his honor and then covers the murder up with a disease death that people would have understood.
During the period of the Compromise of 1850, the Mains and the Hazards flesh out as the nation titters on the brink of break up. Virgilia Hazard becomes an Abolitionist and attends a rally at one point. While Orry is unmarried, thanks to his pining for Madeline, George meets Constance Flynn, to whom he marries, in spite of her Irish Catholic background, which shows that discrimination was felt up North. This was a time when Catholics were viewed with disdain by their Protestant citizens, fueled through Irish immigration and almost brought up in the Mexican War. So, by marrying Constance, George is exposing himself to it. Even his family is slow to warm to her. At least Constance is mild compared to Virgilia, who takes every moment to talk about the South in a vengeful manner, especially with slavery involved. When George brings his family to meet Orry's, Virgilia takes the time to see a slave of James Huntoon, a young lawyer who pays a call to the Mains with a few others for the Nashville Convention, and gets him to freedom. The action is commendable, though two things stand in the way. If we recognize in slavery that a man is someone's property, then what she does to give him freedom is theft. At the same time, she seduces him, in what most would say get some of the Jungle Fever sampling. The latter seems like a confirmation of the pro-slavery men who saw mixing of races involved with abolition. On neither thing does Virgilia apologize.
The debate of slavery provokes tension between Orry and George, to the point that George convinces Orry to let Priam run off unharmed and Orry reminds George that the South doesn't need advice from outsiders. This puts a dark cloud in their friendship.
In contrast, Cooper, Orry's older brother, knows of the slavery curse and wants to modernize the South, yet his father is against it, leading to arguments between the two. In a sense, Cooper comes across an angry cynic who just likes to poison everyone's statements with his rhetoric (like when some Atheist comments to a statement about praying when a tragedy strikes) and while Tillet plays up the grouchy old man stereotype (I also caught that Cooper and Charles are also the names of two rivers in South Carolina). Eventually, they decide time apart would do and Cooper goes into the city living of Charleston while Tillet remains in the plantation where he soon dies. With Cooper away, Orry becomes the head of the house with a reputation as a recluse.
One thing anyone might notice is that John Jakes' book shares the same title as Elizabeth Gaskell's novel, published within the time frame of this one, but taking place in Great Britain. To the British, North and South referred to Southern England and the Midlands (with the remarkably similar industrial vs agrarian setting as with the US). Of course, Gaskell was writing about a country girl going up to Manchester and learning of city life not being what it's cracked up to be while going through a plot like that of Austen. Jakes has different plot line in mind, which deals with two families representing the two regions and how they witness the coming apart of the US. Now, this is why I recommend new authors out there to do some research so as to avoid having a used title. Jakes didn't have the internet when he wrote, and I doubt he had even heard of Elizabeth Gaskell, so he can be excused. This is something people today cannot. I mean, we can't have a book about a compass that leads one to the treasure and call it "The Golden Compass", or some kind of tournament themed story that acts like Pokemon and call it "Game of Thrones", and I don't think "Gone With the Wind" can be used as the title of a book about tornadoes or hurricanes, nor can you write about someone going to the University of Notre Dame and call the story "The Hunchback of Notre Dame". So, as I said do some research before settling on a title for your book. If it can help, do what some would do like use a line from a poem or song, like how William Faulkner got As I Lay Dying from The Odyssey and John Updike got In the Beauty of the Lilies from "Battle Hymn of the Republic." You can also use something that was said by a character in what TV Tropes calls "a title drop," like with Harper Lee using the famous quote from her novel as the title.
Following a prologue that establishes the families in the story, the Hazards and the Mains, we are first introduced to our protagonists: George Hazard of Pennsylvania and Orry Main of South Carolina. You'd notice that John Jakes doesn't go the traditional route and have them be descendants of some ancestor who came ashore at either Jamestown or Plymouth (which gave rise to Virginia and Massachusetts, respectively) as most American narratives tend to do. Instead, he focuses on the lesser known Atlantic colonies. South Carolina, and its northern neighbor, is named after King Charles I, with the Latin name Carolus, and with the female naming (just as Georgia is named after King George). Though named for the English king, who was tragically beheaded at the end of the English Civil War, South Carolina was first explored by the Spanish who set up a settlement and then abandoned some slaves in the area. Later, it was founded as an English colony with Charles Town (later called Charleston) as the capital. Even then, many of its inhabitants did not speak English, but French. This is because South Carolina was at one time inhabited by the Huguenots, French protestants exiled from France after King Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes. So, it is an English colony with a lot of Latin influences (name, early settlers), and some of these men set up homes in the murky and humid lands near Charles Town and grew rich off of rice production (through the labor of slaves). Among these French speaking British subjects, the ancestor of Orry appears. Pennsylvania is also a state founded as an English colony with non-English influences. Its name is conglomeration of Penn, named for William Penn, an Englishman who used the royal charter to establish a home of religious freedom, and Sylvania, which comes from the Latin word Sylva, meaning "forest"; this means the Commonwealth's name means literally "Penn's Forest." As with South Carolina, a great many in Pennsylvania didn't speak English. The Quakers and Anabaptists groups that were brought to the land, also escaping religious persecution, were German born, thus they spoke German (leading to people being named the Pennsylvanian Dutch, a corruption of Deutsch). George's ancestor was by another family, where a boy is shown to have run away from an abusive miner of a stepfather and fell in with a man named Hazard, even taking his name.
Orry and George are as different as apples and oranges. One is the son of a rice planter, the other the son of an iron smith. However, they become good friends in the course of the novel. One might say, they are BFFs. They meet in New York, become friends, and enter the West Point Academy. In the time when college education was a privilege to the few, these two take up to entering the US Army and train in the Academy. This seems more convenient than going through college which costs thousands in tuition. West Point charges no tuition; all one had to do was get appointed by his representative or senator, then devote years of service to the Army. Now, such an easy entry doesn't make it easier: it's boot camp and ivy league college at once. Infractions lead to demerits, which affect one's standing, as do grades in the courses. They also have terms for three of the classes (Plebe, Yearling, Cow...) as opposed to Freshmen, Sophomore, and Junior. West Point gives the highest standing cadets places in the engineering and artillery while the lower guys are simply horsemen or infantrymen.
Orry and George encounter future Civil War generals as cadets. They see Ulysses Grant and Thomas Jackson among the upper class-men (history will call them "U.S. Grant" and "Stonewall Jackson", respectively). These are two of the real men, but Orry and George meet a fictional upper class-man named Elkanah Bent, basically a combination of Peter Griffin and Himmelstoss in West Point garb. Bent takes an instant disliking of Orry and George and does everything in his power to trip them up so that he can report them and they each earn a demerit. The actions he does are appalling and it's a miracle he doesn't get expelled. Of course, he has friends in Washington who can pull strings and keep him there (yeah, he seems to have a 19th Century Don Corleone somewhere who will give West Point an offer it can't refuse and then Bent is in). In the meantime, Orry and George live in the Academy in what can basically two best friends going to military school plot used in some soap opera and moved into the 19th Century America. Another way to describe it is basically Harry Potter without magic, in military uniform, and without Hermione or Ginny. George and Orry are equal in collecting a demerit and being bullied by Bent, yet George is shown to be an excellent student in the academic side. He scores big in his class work and appears to be able to do that in his sleep, but Orry is mediocre at best, becoming one of the "Immortals". Remarkably, no envy arises in Orry. Then there is the social life where George goes to the hop and has time with women, drinking beer, and smoking cigars (two of those were frowned upon at West Point) while Orry seems more willing to keep studying.
As tradition shows, Orry and George get visited by the Hazards as they become Yearlings, with Cooper coming by at one point. Then they get furlough at the end where Orry takes George down to South Carolina. We took a picture of the South when Cooper visited and took us down to Royal Mount. There come the Mains: Tillet, Clarissa, Ashton, Brett, and Cousin Charles. There is also the stubborn Priam, one of the slaves on the Main lands (no pun intended) and the overseer who bullies him in sight of Charles. From this, the Mains are fleshed out: Cooper shows no love of the South, thinking the society with it is obsolete in the Industrial Revolution while Tillet argues for the paternalistic viewpoint of slave owners (made symbolic in the father and son relationship presented; Cooper is the older son in one of Jesus' parables who doesn't want to do his father's will, yet is present in the South for it while Orry, the younger and more willing, is up in West Point), Charles is the orphaned nephew living in the plantation with scorn coming from many, including his uncle (basically Jakes' answer to Luke Skywalker, with the touch of Harry Potter), Clarissa is the rational mother figure who could rival Ellen O'Hara, while Ashton and Brett are Southern belles with two different characteristics, which will develop more as they become women. We even see how Priam is a ticking time bomb, basically any rebellious black man you can think of placed in the role of his ancestors, and his overseer is willing to push him into that state as Bent does to Orry and George.
The Hazards were already introduced in chapter one. George also has a father named William, his mother, his sister Virgilia, and his brothers Stanley and Billy. The Hazards become noticeable in their introductions: Stanley is hard working though entitled, Billy is adventurous, and Virgilia is rebellious. If there is a good reason behind this simplification of the characters its largely a way of showing that despite the two families being from different states and having different status, with different prospects, and the fact one family owns slaves while the other does not, they are not that too far different. They both breathe the same air, they both face the same family troubles, and they both have deal with troubles back home. In a sense, it makes one wonder why the book wasn't called A Tale of Two States or A Tale of Two Regions, as opposed to simply North and South. The thing is, it seems that John Jakes, a Northerner, is willing to put more on the Southern characters. On the same note, both Jakes and Charles Dickens also feature well off men named Charles in their historic epics.
George and Orry graduate from West Point just in time for the Mexican War to break out. You might have noticed something before we get to this point. Instead of starting on the eve of war, Jakes pushes the beginning back to 1842, just nineteen years prior to Fort Sumter. Just why does he do that? Why not be like Herman Wouk who had The Winds of War begin in 1939 and have World War II break out within one hundred pages? Or why not be like Margaret Mitchell who actually started on the eve of the Civil War? Instead, he goes like Leo Tolstoy in War and Peace with the story beginning right as Napoleon has declared himself emperor, even if the Invasion of Russia in 1812 (a mere eight years later) is the centerpiece of the story. There four reasons involved. First it basically allows for the build up and the suspense in the leading up process that precedes the War. Secondly, it allows one to explore the contrasting worlds of the Antebellum South and North. Third, it lets the readers have a chance to see the drama that leads up to the War's outbreak: the Mexican War, the opening of the West, the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Bleeding Kansas Affair, the Dred Scott Decision, John Brown's Raid on Harper's Ferry, the 1860 election, and finally the Secession Winter. Fourth and finally, the book is meant to partly be an adventure story (if lack of a better word) with some soap opera involved, and it requires one to get to known the characters, especially as they are part of the West Point class that make up the leaders on both sides of the Civil War. The modern reader gets that adventure just as he would with Dumas, Stevenson, or Tolstoy where he is transported to a different time period and see far away places that the reader just might know as his backyard. For example, the second half of the novel has scenes that take place in West Texas, which was considered the edge of civilization at the time, now it's home to over a million people.
During the Mexican War, Orry and George run into Bent again, who proves a coward in some instances and a snake in others. In fact, the man is angry with them for staining his record and holds that grudge to the next generation. Orry and George report him to a superior who expresses the shock at the disloyalty among West Pointers. So, they continue on. Orry loses a hand during the Battle of Churubusco, and is mustered out at the end of the Mexican War. George also has his six years as an officer cut short by an early retirement in peace time. This was, after all, a short war and it takes place in a time when the US military would downscale after a war and never re-mobilize until the next one. Of course, that would make George and Orry lucky because many servicemen in the time period of the book would have wound up in some outpost in the Old West or sent to some base in Florida where malaria ran rampant.
Once they come home, we see other parts of the novel take shape. Prior to the war, Orry encountered a woman named Madeline Fabray from Louisiana. He rescues her from a snake in what looks like a scene of chivalry. Orry had claimed he was a one woman man and was searching for someone like her. To him, it was Madeline. Then life comes in to take her away because she was engaged to one of his neighbors, Justin LaMotte, and their wedding happened within a day of their meeting! I certainly feel sorry for Orry, especially in recent days. You meet the right person for you and she or he is already taken (Rotten luck). Justin, and his brother Francis, are shown to be bullies, and older than Orry and Madeline (in fact, it gets pointed out on how Justin worried on his age compared to her while Madeline is said to expect a man Justin's age to behave). They live a life of ease like the Mains, but their plantations, like Justin's Resolute, are run with inefficiency and brute force. They spend more focus on breaking horses and slaves than tending to their plantations, and Justin sees his wife as another challenge like that of horses. Justin tells Francis he won't tolerate her opinions in a matter of a man who feels his manhood threatened and is trying to convince his peers that he is not weak (and we never get any justification). Later, when the LaMottes consummate their marriage it's rape at best (but the joke's on Justin because Madeline wasn't a virgin on her wedding night, and something else is in her that will be mentioned shortly). Madeline eventually comes to not enjoy being married to Justin who threatens her for voicing her opinion at one point and often holds her hostage on others. Eventually, Madeline becomes like Madame Bovary and loses all beliefs in fidelity and sanctity of marriage, which drives her into seeking an affair.
The marriage of Madeline to Justin sort of shows the values dissonance in marriage in the 1840s, where men viewed their wives as property and opinionated women were not tolerated. This also shatters the image of the Antebellum South as a civilized place presented by Gone With the Wind, though I will say even that book subverts it (that's for a different entry), by presenting not only racism in a society build on enforced labor but sexism as well. In one scene, everyone talks with John Calhoun on the matter of secession and Madeline voices her two cents on it (an act that defies convention in the period) and Justin yanks her aside and talks to her as though she were a misbehaving child. He mentions of the Grimke sisters who were just as opinionated as her and they were banished from the South for it. Eventually, it comes to a point that he carries out his threat and isolates Madeline from all contact and starves her into submission.
But, of course, the joke is on Justin because Madeline not only gave away her precious flower before marriage but she is one eighth black, in a time when having African ancestry was scandalous. Of course, Madeline withholds this information with the intention of revealing it at the right time, though it never comes up. Besides, after seeing the movie Mandingo, I wouldn't be surprised if Justin murders her to avenge his honor and then covers the murder up with a disease death that people would have understood.
During the period of the Compromise of 1850, the Mains and the Hazards flesh out as the nation titters on the brink of break up. Virgilia Hazard becomes an Abolitionist and attends a rally at one point. While Orry is unmarried, thanks to his pining for Madeline, George meets Constance Flynn, to whom he marries, in spite of her Irish Catholic background, which shows that discrimination was felt up North. This was a time when Catholics were viewed with disdain by their Protestant citizens, fueled through Irish immigration and almost brought up in the Mexican War. So, by marrying Constance, George is exposing himself to it. Even his family is slow to warm to her. At least Constance is mild compared to Virgilia, who takes every moment to talk about the South in a vengeful manner, especially with slavery involved. When George brings his family to meet Orry's, Virgilia takes the time to see a slave of James Huntoon, a young lawyer who pays a call to the Mains with a few others for the Nashville Convention, and gets him to freedom. The action is commendable, though two things stand in the way. If we recognize in slavery that a man is someone's property, then what she does to give him freedom is theft. At the same time, she seduces him, in what most would say get some of the Jungle Fever sampling. The latter seems like a confirmation of the pro-slavery men who saw mixing of races involved with abolition. On neither thing does Virgilia apologize.
The debate of slavery provokes tension between Orry and George, to the point that George convinces Orry to let Priam run off unharmed and Orry reminds George that the South doesn't need advice from outsiders. This puts a dark cloud in their friendship.
In contrast, Cooper, Orry's older brother, knows of the slavery curse and wants to modernize the South, yet his father is against it, leading to arguments between the two. In a sense, Cooper comes across an angry cynic who just likes to poison everyone's statements with his rhetoric (like when some Atheist comments to a statement about praying when a tragedy strikes) and while Tillet plays up the grouchy old man stereotype (I also caught that Cooper and Charles are also the names of two rivers in South Carolina). Eventually, they decide time apart would do and Cooper goes into the city living of Charleston while Tillet remains in the plantation where he soon dies. With Cooper away, Orry becomes the head of the house with a reputation as a recluse.
While time is made to develop the characters, I am willing to say that John Jakes gives us some of the most ungodly characters out there. Both the good guys and the bad guys seem alike in the pages to the point that one has troubles routing for. Both groups cuss and profane, both get into violent situations and threaten to beat people up or murder, both cheat on their spouses, both steal things, and just about any other commandment breaking one can think. The only characters who seem to be relatable in matters of finding someone who is not like this are the African Americans, but that is problematic for three reasons: one, most of them are enslaved; two, because of that they are mostly just present as background objects without much personality and only exist to show the horrors of slavery; and three, they hardly contribute to the plot. I know the Magic Negro trope not being used is a good thing and all, but it would have helped make them as people if we had one black character tell the heroes something that was useful. One could have told Orry some pearls of wisdom, one talk to George, or anything. Of course, the only sort of thing like that ever happens is when Virgilia sleeps with one and gets him to run away. This action doesn't really do much except invoke the black lover and Jungle Fever crazed white woman trope, while basically making the whole Abolitionist platform being presented from the point of view of a pro-slavery individual.
Case in point are Madeline and Justin LaMotte. Justin cares more about his fragile male ego and his standing among his peers than his own plantation and his wife's feelings. As a result, he abuses her. Madeline then goes around him to see Orry in what any Christian reader would recognize as borderline adultery. This seems to be something with fiction where the means justifies the ends while having the protagonist a carte blanche when it comes to sins. In the eyes of God, Orry and Madeline are doing wrong, but that seems okay to the reader when considering Justin. This falls under the Orwellian term of doublethink and that is what this is when the hero is permitted to do terrible things and not be called out on it.
The same with Virgillia. In slave owner terms, she is not just sleeping with an inferior being but she is also stealing property by helping him run away. But, that's okay because slavery is wrong and James Huntoon is not a nice guy after all. Again, that's doublethink. Even earlier in the book, Orry and George are willing to be petty. George calls out Orry on his book reading during their time together and aims to wash him of it (their conflicting statements on women maybe something for a feminist to deal with, though the idea of them wanting to be used "like a glove" sounds distasteful). Yet, the noble Orry is willing to chase after a run away slave and bring him to his owners, and has to be told of the wrong through George and Madeline (even if the idea of him being an enlightened sort who was ahead of his time might seem farfetched).
Other times, George seems a weak man for letting Virgillia come to the South even knowing how she would behave around Southerners and not even calling out his family for their hypocrisy their treatment of his wife. The list could go on, with the obvious villains in the book pitted against questionable heroes, which seems to be a common theme in John Jakes. No doubt, its his way of saying we are all sinners and we have flaws. The trouble is with North and South is it becomes hard to tell who is good and who is unjust when the characters' morals are blurred together. But, this is not the worst of it.
While it seems that George and Orry are the protagonists in the book, we see them shifting into the background in the later chapters and it becomes more toward Billy Hazard and Charles Main, the brother of George and cousin of Orry. It also seems that as Ashton and Brett grow, they begin to be more active, mostly to get suitors. Ashton becomes a woman first and is paired with James Huntoon, a fat lawyer turned politician who frequently is likened to an old toad or slug because of his physique. Like with Bent, we are encouraged to dislike Huntoon, though he is more sympathetic, more developed. Bent is just a bully, but Huntoon is crafty and ambitious, though naive and easy to intimidate.
Huntoon is introduced merely to give us a picture of Southern courtship. At first, it may seem a romantic picture until we see him among the fire eaters. Of course, he is also courting the last sort of woman you would ever court. In Ashton and Brett, Jakes brings up the Madonna / Whore complex, with the Whore like Ashton and Madonna like Brett. This is most obvious when Ashton lusts over Billy and later goes into a quickie with Forbes LaMotte, son of Francis. Forbes starts out as a background character but is brought in when it's time for Brett to be courted. He courts Brett, which seems like an insult to Orry's injury that a LaMotte has his sweetheart and now another will take his sister. Forbes feels scared of Ashton, yet he can silence her beau by simply walking up to him and then threatening him. Ashton basically becomes Virgilia's Southern counterpart and Madeline's foil; she sleeps with other men and craves control of her destiny. Where Madeline will suffer abuse and sneak to Orry over it, Ashton keeps one man teased while she goes easily to another. Huntoon is willing to comply to the demands of courtship and he is not getting anything for it, until she accepts his proposal. Forbes, of course, goes with Ashton in secret and she opens her legs for him right away. Brett, meanwhile, saves her virginity for marriage, even as womanhood slowly comes to her. Like Elsa and Anna from Frozen they go through a time of separation in the course of the story.
Then there is Billy Hazard, younger brother of George. At first, Ashton sets her eyes on him and it seems he would have her. However, after she teases him one too many, and discovers Brett's kindness, he leaves her for Brett. You of course know the saying "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" and it is the best way to describe Ashton after Billy dumps her. Ashton responds by closing herself to her sister, and her family, in that order, she sleeps around with others, including Forbes, and then marries James Huntoon just to get back at Billy. As the Civil War comes, Ashton then burns up her love of Billy because he is a Northerner and would like nothing better than to have him killed.
If there is something redundant with Jakes is that he sometimes seems to repeat himself in this book. Best case in point is with the two young men in each family. First, it's Orry and George meeting and attending at West Point. Then we have Billy and Charles. Both are trained in the Academy and come out as officers. Then we have the love triangles with a Main and LaMotte guy occupying an angle: first with Orry, Justin, and Madeline, and then it's Billy, Brett, and Forbes. In the case of the two, the first triangle has it happening with Madeline and Justin already married, while Billy and Brett have the nation coming apart around them, making them the modern day Romeo and Juliet.
George and Constance had their brush, especially from Stanley and Isabel, Stanley's wife, who distrust Constance being Catholic, while Virgillia makes it hard for George to be friends with Orry for her abolitionist stance, and now there's Billy and Brett, who might not wind up together because Ashton saw him first and wants to sink her claws into him, while his status as a Northerner can put him into the sights of Forbes. This as Billy and Charles go to the Academy, graduate, and then get into the US Army. Charles gets the most developing, or rather travels the farthest from the wings, in this section. He grows into a young man, fights his duel, and becomes a respectable sort. He also tangles with Bant on a few occasions. As their careers go, Charles spends time in Texas in handling a Comanche raid while Billy eventually gets sent to Charleston. At this point, the book starts to bring history into the mix, such as Orry and Virgillia witnessing John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. For Orry, the event is a hostage situation, while Virgillia comes out embittered with the South even more. A year later comes the presidential election that changed history. Abraham Lincoln is elected and South Carolina secedes from the Union: the sun came up, the Old Glory came down, and the United States of America comes apart. Cooper witnesses the moment when the legislature in Columbia declares "The Union Is Dissolved" while Billy is stationed in Fort Sumter.
James Huntoon marries Ashton and takes part in the formation of the Confederacy. Billy decides to marry Brett, yet the LaMottes and a few others intend to have him killed. Madeline is able to escape Justin's clutches and warns Orry. Charles also sees Texas depart from the Union, where General Twiggs surrendered his forts while Colonel Lee is made to flee to Virginia, as he and others are now in enemy territory. Forbes appears drunk in beating some visitor and attempts to rape Brett. Eventually, it comes to a point of a duel that Billy is made to fight Forbes with and we see the two men competing for Brett resorting to the blade. Orry finds out about Ashton abusing slaves and having a hand in going after Billy. He then disowns her, thus banning James Huntoon from the plantation as well. They leave, but not without Ashton stating the Mains will be watched in the new government. Up north, the Hazards see Lincoln come and not think much about him. Billy and Brett leave South Carolina as Fort Sumter is fired on. As to George and Orry, we are left with them looking over the world and seeing how things have changed. They are now part of two opposing nations in an upcoming war, one that will answer the question: can a nation long endure half free and half slave? That is where the book ends and the War will be taken up in book two, Love and War.
In telling the events leading up to the Civil War, John Jakes does a good job, though he does twist a few facts along the way. From a storytelling perspective, I do think North and South does bog down in the description of society, some of it is meant for the reader who has no idea how things were in the 19th Century, though he has the characters speak in less than dignified sort. The positives is that the adventure side of the story is worth the read, especially when you go through an 800 paged journey to Fort Sumter. At times, it can be felt like Harry Potter for big boys, minus the magic, which is what the scenes in West Point feel. At the same time, it gets into a soap opera term with the family drama in South Carolina. Despite being called North and South, much of the action deals with the Southern characters. Charles, for example, does most of the developing in the course of the novel that it can be argued that he, not Orry, is the hero of the book. In a way, one would wonder why Jakes didn't simply split this into two novels, especially as Jakes repeats himself a few times.
If there is one thing to add with any discussion of the Civil War literature, I should add that there are lessons in this time that must be heeded. Many similarities of the Civil War era and today are remarkable and amazing: we have a republican in office now whose victory is a source of controversy and one state announced it was going to leave the Union (but did not carry it out, for some reason), there is a souring of race relations in the country not seen in decades, we are also seeing such abominations as the event that happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, and so on. Just recently, I have seen pick up trucks with Confederate flags hoisted in the bed driving up an down roads. So many issues now exposed and are threatening to tear the country apart, even now with Islamic terrorists still at large (and the 9/11/01 attacks' anniversary is nigh), North Korea's leader testing nukes and making everyone nervous, and now the South is seeing two powerful hurricanes come in and give a picture of what Noah's flood would have looked. When South Carolina left the Union, the United States was on the path to destruction, believe it or not. People were debating on slavery's legality, the legality of secession, the humanity of blacks, what this country is about, and so on back then and the breaking away of the Southern states was the tipping point of it. Of course, Fort Sumter was fired on and it unified the North against the Confederacy at the sight of the US flag fired upon. Even then, the United States of America was that close to dying and it would take a large conflict across many states with a million American men killed or wounded before it could come out reunified and stronger than before. So far, we haven't seen a Fort Sumter of our own. Charlottesville has made more division than unity.
The Civil War was an epic tragedy, one that could have been prevented at some point, and it is believed to have concluded through the murder of a US president, though the scars still linger on. I do hope and pray that we don't have to witness something like that in order to get this country reunified. George and Orry were good pals and the Civil War really challenged that. We do not need to become like them and have to face the fact that a BFF or bestie is now in enemy territory and aiding your country's enemies, especially since those enemies are also your countrymen.
George and Constance had their brush, especially from Stanley and Isabel, Stanley's wife, who distrust Constance being Catholic, while Virgillia makes it hard for George to be friends with Orry for her abolitionist stance, and now there's Billy and Brett, who might not wind up together because Ashton saw him first and wants to sink her claws into him, while his status as a Northerner can put him into the sights of Forbes. This as Billy and Charles go to the Academy, graduate, and then get into the US Army. Charles gets the most developing, or rather travels the farthest from the wings, in this section. He grows into a young man, fights his duel, and becomes a respectable sort. He also tangles with Bant on a few occasions. As their careers go, Charles spends time in Texas in handling a Comanche raid while Billy eventually gets sent to Charleston. At this point, the book starts to bring history into the mix, such as Orry and Virgillia witnessing John Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry. For Orry, the event is a hostage situation, while Virgillia comes out embittered with the South even more. A year later comes the presidential election that changed history. Abraham Lincoln is elected and South Carolina secedes from the Union: the sun came up, the Old Glory came down, and the United States of America comes apart. Cooper witnesses the moment when the legislature in Columbia declares "The Union Is Dissolved" while Billy is stationed in Fort Sumter.
James Huntoon marries Ashton and takes part in the formation of the Confederacy. Billy decides to marry Brett, yet the LaMottes and a few others intend to have him killed. Madeline is able to escape Justin's clutches and warns Orry. Charles also sees Texas depart from the Union, where General Twiggs surrendered his forts while Colonel Lee is made to flee to Virginia, as he and others are now in enemy territory. Forbes appears drunk in beating some visitor and attempts to rape Brett. Eventually, it comes to a point of a duel that Billy is made to fight Forbes with and we see the two men competing for Brett resorting to the blade. Orry finds out about Ashton abusing slaves and having a hand in going after Billy. He then disowns her, thus banning James Huntoon from the plantation as well. They leave, but not without Ashton stating the Mains will be watched in the new government. Up north, the Hazards see Lincoln come and not think much about him. Billy and Brett leave South Carolina as Fort Sumter is fired on. As to George and Orry, we are left with them looking over the world and seeing how things have changed. They are now part of two opposing nations in an upcoming war, one that will answer the question: can a nation long endure half free and half slave? That is where the book ends and the War will be taken up in book two, Love and War.
In telling the events leading up to the Civil War, John Jakes does a good job, though he does twist a few facts along the way. From a storytelling perspective, I do think North and South does bog down in the description of society, some of it is meant for the reader who has no idea how things were in the 19th Century, though he has the characters speak in less than dignified sort. The positives is that the adventure side of the story is worth the read, especially when you go through an 800 paged journey to Fort Sumter. At times, it can be felt like Harry Potter for big boys, minus the magic, which is what the scenes in West Point feel. At the same time, it gets into a soap opera term with the family drama in South Carolina. Despite being called North and South, much of the action deals with the Southern characters. Charles, for example, does most of the developing in the course of the novel that it can be argued that he, not Orry, is the hero of the book. In a way, one would wonder why Jakes didn't simply split this into two novels, especially as Jakes repeats himself a few times.
If there is one thing to add with any discussion of the Civil War literature, I should add that there are lessons in this time that must be heeded. Many similarities of the Civil War era and today are remarkable and amazing: we have a republican in office now whose victory is a source of controversy and one state announced it was going to leave the Union (but did not carry it out, for some reason), there is a souring of race relations in the country not seen in decades, we are also seeing such abominations as the event that happened in Charlottesville, Virginia, and so on. Just recently, I have seen pick up trucks with Confederate flags hoisted in the bed driving up an down roads. So many issues now exposed and are threatening to tear the country apart, even now with Islamic terrorists still at large (and the 9/11/01 attacks' anniversary is nigh), North Korea's leader testing nukes and making everyone nervous, and now the South is seeing two powerful hurricanes come in and give a picture of what Noah's flood would have looked. When South Carolina left the Union, the United States was on the path to destruction, believe it or not. People were debating on slavery's legality, the legality of secession, the humanity of blacks, what this country is about, and so on back then and the breaking away of the Southern states was the tipping point of it. Of course, Fort Sumter was fired on and it unified the North against the Confederacy at the sight of the US flag fired upon. Even then, the United States of America was that close to dying and it would take a large conflict across many states with a million American men killed or wounded before it could come out reunified and stronger than before. So far, we haven't seen a Fort Sumter of our own. Charlottesville has made more division than unity.
The Civil War was an epic tragedy, one that could have been prevented at some point, and it is believed to have concluded through the murder of a US president, though the scars still linger on. I do hope and pray that we don't have to witness something like that in order to get this country reunified. George and Orry were good pals and the Civil War really challenged that. We do not need to become like them and have to face the fact that a BFF or bestie is now in enemy territory and aiding your country's enemies, especially since those enemies are also your countrymen.
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