What Is Elizabeth Gaskell's Novel "North And South"� About?

This novel draws on the author's own experience in so far as it describes the "culture shock" of a young woman, raised in a comfortable, rural home in the south of England, who goes to live in a northern industrial town. Gaskell, while actually brought up in Cheshire, found the lifestyle and customs of Manchester quite different. Her heroine, Margaret Hale, is shocked by the dirt and poverty of the new family home in a cotton-spinning city, and by the way that the mill-owners treat their workers. Her friendship with one working family leads her into conflict with John Thornton, a hard but fair mill-owner, who has worked is way up from poverty and has little sympathy with workers' demands) and his inflexible mother. After a series of misunderstandings and dramas (at one point the pair face an angry mob together) Margaret and John fall in love and are united.