Thornton

My heart is still pounding away from the last two scenes of the BBC North & South. Pounding away, I tell you!

I recall a scene from earlier in the movie where Mr. Thornton has fallen asleep at his desk and his mother covers his shoulders with her shawl, and I remember thinking that he works too hard, and he wouldn't have time to keep a wife and childer happy. He might say that he works for their benefit, as his employees do, but if his employees don't work, they starve. If he doesn't work, his wife and sister wear their own cotton instead of imported silk.

And then I realized that Mr. Thornton personifies a conceptual medium between Mr. Darcy of the Romantic era and Ebenezer Scrooge of the Victorians. It turns my head in fascinating circles to imagine Scrooge as a romantic lead. I think I might indulge in that turn.