Flowing
Like many nineteenth-century writers, Elizabeth Gaskell is a pretty big fan of long, flowing sentences. In just the second paragraph in the book, she gives us this whopper:
"They had been talking about wedding dresses, and wedding ceremonies; and Captain Lennox, and what he had told Edith about her future life in Corfu, where his regiment was stationed; and the difficulty of keeping a piano in good tune (a difficulty which Edith seemed to consider as one of the most formidable that could befall her in married life), and what gowns she should want in the visits to Scotland, which would immediately succeed her marriage; but the whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy […]" (1.1.2)
And that's only the first half of the sentence. Whoa, Nelly. So is this just a lack of editing on Gaskell's part, or what?
Actually, it was a sound financial decision on Gaskell's part to be long-winded. The journal that first published North and South paid by the page. Gaskell was no dummy and knew that the more she wrote, the more she got paid. It was easiest, of course, to lengthen each individual sentence rather than to cram in more characters and plots… especially because North and South focused around the trials of one particular character: Margaret Hale.