Ik zou dit niet lezen als beginner. Je moet een basiskennis hebben van de cultuur en maatschappij uit die tijd. 

Het is een zeer beschrijvend verhaal.

Ook heel vaag in veel momenten, zeker het begin had ik telkens het gevoel alsof ik een heel stuk gemist had. Maw is het aan de ene kant uitgebreid beschreven en aan de andere kant verwarrend vaag.

Onderwerpen als klasse, arbeidsrecht, sociaal recht, arm vs rijk, vrouwenrechten, overlijden en rouw, opofferingen, levenskeuzes, naastenliefde, geloof, trots en vooroordelen.

Too many deaths and tragedies. Featured more romance than I thought it would but the ending wasn't completely satisfying. A bit more hopeful in tone.

Also, what was with the weird hatred of the Irish? Apparently, they're dull and too simple to be able to operate machines compared to the skilled English laborers. At first I thought the anti-Irish bias was only one character's opinion but multiple characters implicitly disparage the Irish--even the male lead-- so I can only wonder if it might be the author's bias leaking through.

This book does a decent job of illustrating class divides in British society with the contextual nuance of rising or falling in economic and social status. It also demonstrates something I've found to be true in my own experience: that it's easy for someone to disdain a class of people in the abstract and to wilfully misunderstand their circumstances, but when people are receptive to opportunities to interact with - to build relationships or at least trust with and to genuinely listen to - real people with different lived experience, there's a possibility of real perspective change. 

The narrative overtly comments on its thesis about industrial labor and class consciousness. It's less direct, but there's also a running theme of the performance of emotional labor in social systems; Margaret is noted as continuously having to suppress or set aside her own feelings and emotional needs in order to accommodate the people around her, and this is acknowledged as a form of uncompensated labor on which the surrounding social systems depend, and which crosses class divides.

Star deducted for failure to address the context of British colonialism, American slavery, and racism/supremacy culture and their significant implications to the narrative. Most notably,

the book has Irish laborers brought over as knobsticks (scabs) to break the Milton strike, and both the owner class and working class characters express an unanalyzed stereotype that these Irish workers are stupid, poorly-skilled, and lack both long-term judgement and class solidarity in taking over the millwork from the British strikers. Nothing is said about Britain essentially forcing Ireland into famine and why the Irish workers would be so desperate as to accept being imported for cheap labor, or really even what importing laborers who are willing to accept lower wages and poorer conditions says about the manufacturers. There's a conversation about the differences between industrial labor in urban areas and farm labor in rural areas, and that the workers of either type would be poorly adapted to switch roles, but this analyses doesn't seem to be applied to the Irish workers' apparent lack of skill as textile mill operators.

Likewise, it's noted that the British textile industry is experiencing undercutting and uncertainty from American cotton, without the remotest acknowledgement that in the mid-1850s, American cotton labor was performed by enslaved people and the American commodities market was fast approaching a civil war over abolition. This particular flavor of racism is ignored entirely, while a minor incident in the narrative actively perpetuates racist stereotypes of Romani people.