Mary Barton (1848)

If you are interested in social injustice and the history of worker's rights then this is a nice fit. In the beginning of the story, we meet Mary Barton, who although pretty doesn't appear to have a lot of depth; she is easily distracted by attention to her beauty which plays out in not such a good way. Her father is a union leader and struggles to keep his family fed in a contentious environment for workers and mill owners.

The novel started at a fairly good clip but in the middle it does bog down a bit. Happily there is a rally at the end and I couldn't turn the pages fast enough. Will true love be saved?

I felt like Mary matured throughout the novel, leaving her shallow self behind, and coming out stronger as a person. Her friend Margaret (and grandfather Job) were my favorites in the story. They seemed to provide the sense and grounding that Mary lacked.

This is my first book by Gaskell and I enjoyed her style of writing. Gaskell is able to give great insight into the working class and the individuals who must surely have been part of the landscape during that time. There are many tragedies in each family's story and it really is amazing how resilient humans can be in terrible conditions. There is also the language of the day woven throughout; my edition gave definitions which was really helpful. One of my favorites is the word "disremember" - it seems a natural way of speaking although no one would ever use it today.

On to reading more of her work!


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This was Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel and it shows. It's signficantly less assured than her better known works, [b:North and South|156538|North and South|Elizabeth Gaskell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1349633381s/156538.jpg|1016482], [b:Cranford|182381|Cranford|Elizabeth Gaskell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1311647615s/182381.jpg|1016559] and [b:Wives and Daughters|383206|Wives and Daughters|Elizabeth Gaskell|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1348267609s/383206.jpg|816009]. The eponymous heroine is at times annoying (although she grows in stature as the work progresses) and the narrative has a number of those features which make some readers avoid Victorian fiction: a leisurely pace, wordiness, preachiness, sentimentality and melodrama. The novel starts very slowly. At the half-way mark the pace picks up and it turns into an interesting court room drama, which would be even more interesting if the outcome had not been predictable. The last quarter of the novel falls off somewhat, as Gaskell's preaching kicks into high gear.

That said, Gaskell writes well and is a good storyteller, notwithstanding the signficant implausibility of some parts of the narrative, such as the fact that all it takes for Mary to realise she is in love with Jem is to reject his proposal of marriage. In addition, the setting of the novel - Manchester between 1837 and 1842, torn apart by industrial strife between mill owners and factory hands - is inherently interesting. Gaskell depicts the plight of the poor with sympathy, although her suggested cure for the devastating consequences of working class poverty - an increase in philanthropic and charitable activities by the factory-owning class - reveals her own social conservatism. Gaskell was not arguing for the abolition of either capitalism or the class system.

Notwithstanding the weaknesses of the work, I very much enjoyed listening to the audiobook narrated by the truly wonderful Juliet Stevenson. Even when it was at its most predictable, the narrative still held my interest. It's not destined to be up there with my favourite Gaskell novels, but I still liked it a lot, somewhere between 3-1/2 and 4 stars worth.

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Groovin' to that Manchester sound. Gaskell has a way of pinpointing states of mind without being intrusive. ( )

Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel focuses on the extreme poverty of textile workers in Manchester in the 1830s and 40s and the desperation to which some of them were driven. The author follows two families, the Bartons and the Wilsons, as they descend through various stages of destitution and suffer one tragedy after another. The central character is the Bartons' daughter, Mary, who comes of age during the novel. First Mary's mother dies in childbirth, then her father, John Barton, begins a long moral and physical decline. As hard times beset the textile industry, Barton first has his work hours cut back, then loses his job altogether. Dependent on his daughter's earnings as an apprentice dressmaker, and facing starvation, he spends his few pennies on opium instead of food.

Mary, however, sees hope on the horizon because her beautiful face has caught the attention of the factory owner's privileged son, Harry Carson. Mary Barton naively dreams of a life of riches and comforts as Carson's wife and spurns the attentions of Jem Wilson who is desperately in love with her. John Barton, meanwhile, becomes involved in an organized labor movement, but his depression deepens when their complaints are ridiculed by the factory owners, young Carson among them. A strike fails to bring the owners around, and with the mills shut down the idle workers have almost nothing to feed their families. Disease and malnutrition take a heavy toll while tempers rise. But when Harry Carson is found murdered, the blame is cast on Jem Wilson, Mary's jealous lover.

Gaskell provides a moving description of urban poverty in Manchester. She shows how the poor are treated with callous indifference by their employers and government. But she clearly abhors violent emotions and actions. Instead, the downtrodden are to rely on their Christian faith. "Shall toil and famine, hopeless, still be borne?," the author asks. "No! God will yet arise and help the poor!" (It's worth noting that the poor are to turn to God, but not to the Church. There is no mention of a clergyman in the entire novel.) Gaskell has much in common with her contemporary Harriet Beecher Stowe who, in Uncle Tom's Cabin, advises American slaves to refrain from resistance and violence and, instead, pray themselves out of oppression. And Gaskell makes it clear that her only goal is ameliorate poverty, not to achieve equality or social mobility.

In the love story between the beautiful and pious Mary and the brave and noble Jem, Gaskell gives us the standard elements of 19th century romance: near-tragic misunderstandings caused by her unwillingness to express her true feelings and his jumping to the wrong conclusions. They are, of course, lovable characters, but where I think Gaskell is at her best is in showing us how their friends and relatives, loving and honorable though they may be, still have their individual moments of selfishness, jealousy, and doubt. The minor characters are deeper and more human than the two principals.

From the sappy poems used as chapter epigraphs to the author's pious sermonizing, there is much to find fault with in Mary Barton: A Manchester Tale. The novel's strength is obviously its depiction of a place and time that is not only interesting in itself but important in the evolution of the English working class and its treatment. It never hurts to remind ourselves how things were not so very long ago and why labor laws are needed. The plot, which seems to simply go from one tragedy to another in the first half of the novel, becomes considerably more interesting after the murder and even somewhat suspenseful; a bit of perseverance on the reader's part will pay off in the end. As fiction, Mary Barton doesn't stack up against the works of Austen, Eliot and Dickens, and I found Gaskell's later novel Cranford to be much better, but it's still worth a look, especially for those interested in the setting and subject matter. ( )

Where I got the book: public domain freebie on Kindle or was it directly from Gutenberg.com? Anyhow, a perfectly acceptable free copy which is one of the things I love about the internet.

Mary Barton is the pretty daughter of a factory hand who's an ardent Chartist (prototypical trade unionist) in an 1800s Manchester hit by economic hardship. She is loved by childhood friend Jem Wilson but has her eye on handsome Harry Carson, the boss's son. After Harry is assassinated and Jem is accused of the murder Mary is desperate to save him (she had already realized she loved him all along) but can she do so without revealing the real murderer? Because that would also destroy her.

This was Mrs. Gaskell's first novel and it's definitely not written with anything like as much assurance or finesse as her last, Wives and Daughters, which I reviewed last year. The plot moves along somewhat more jerkily and without that edge of sly amusement that I so liked about W&D. But as Victorian melodramas go, it's a corker with lots of deaths and excesses of violent emotion.

Oh, how terrible to think of his crime, his blood-guiltiness; he who had hitherto been so good, so noble, and now an assassin! And then she shrank from him in thought; and then, with bitter remorse, clung more closely to his image with passionate self-upbraiding. Was it not she who had led him to the pit into which he had fallen?

This is, as much as anything else, a story of Mary's redemption from the light-heartedness of her youth to a Woman Fit To Be Loved By a Noble Man. It really struck me how hard women had it back then; Mary's sin is to have been a flirtatious teenager, a state of existence we now celebrate. Even though the Carsons' money was self-made, Mrs. Gaskell seems to think it entirely wrong that Mary should have ever aspired to a bit of social climbing through marriage; double standards much? The example of Esther drives the point home that girls who forget their place come to a Bad End, which must have delighted her middle-class readers but what a bummer for the poor working girl! It's interesting that while much of the novel demonstrates enormous sympathy for the plight of the factory workers, Mrs. Gaskell is not prepared to go so far as to invite them into her social circle.

With all that, it's a cracking good read with some memorable scenes. A true tear-jerker, full of pathos and with many references to the Gospels because there are certainly very strong Christian themes (redemption, forgiveness, charity and the like.) You have to understand the Victorian taste for saccharine scenes and elevated moral standards to appreciate this one, but if you roll your eyes at the over-the-top writing you should still enjoy the story and characters. Not nearly as show-offy as Dickens, Gaskell writes with earnestness and although I missed her later humor, I appreciated the attempt NOT to turn her working-class characters into Punch & Judy amusements for the (presumably superior) reader as Dickens does. ( )