This is the 3rd book I've read by Elizabeth Gaskell and it is my least favorite. I am thinking she is not an author for me. This is the first book she wrote. ( )

Mary Barton combines two of the Victorian readers' favourite themes: social commentary and melodrama.

Gaskell starts by introducing the reader to the Bartons, a working class family in economic times good enough for them to be enjoying a holiday outing with friends, and then an evening back at their house. She then jumps right into her story, for later that evening, John Barton's wife and unborn child died in childbirth. John and his thirteen year old daughter Mary were left on their own. John became a Trades' Union chair and a Chartist, while continuing to work.

Three years passed, and it was time for Mary to find work. Factory work was deemed unsuitable. Mary's Aunt Esther had gone that route, bought fancy clothes, and run off with an officer, never to be seen since. John Barton wasn't having that happen to his Mary. Going into domestic service was an option Mary rejected, because of the loss of freedom it entailed. Finally, she apprenticed to a respectable dressmaker and milliner. This decision process allows Gaskell to portray the lives young working class women could expect. At Miss Simmonds's place

... where Mary was to work for two years without any renumeration, on consideration of being taught the business; and where afterwards she was to dine and have tea, with a small quarterly salary... a very small one, divisible into a minute weekly pittance. In summer she was to be there by six, bringing her day's meals during the first two years; in winter she was not to come till after breakfast. Her time for returning home at night must always depend on the quantity of work Miss Simmonds had to do.

It was 1839 in Manchester, and things were about to change drastically. One evening, one of the largest mills in the city caught fire. The Carsons' mill was destroyed and all hands were thrown out of work. The well insured owners thought this an excellent time to replace their aging machinery and build anew. The existing slack market meant full warehouses, so the owners would be able to enjoy some leisure time while the new mill was under construction.

The weekly drain of wages given for labour, useless in the present state of the market, was stopped. Gaskell tells of a winter of cold, hunger, and disease in the homes of these workers. Poverty and death forced many into more squalid housing, creating a seemingly endless downward spiral. Meanwhile, other mills were also laying off workers in the slow market. John Barton went to London with a group of fellow Chartists to present a petition to Parliament in support of the movement. Their petition was rejected. Barton returned to Manchester a changed man.

This is where the novel shifts focus somewhat, as Gaskell brings in Mary's story. Mary had a suitor, eminently acceptable to all involved. Mary, however, had her sights set on young Ben Carson, the mill owner's only son. Carson had been flirting with Mary, little realizing that she took him seriously, and actually thought she could rise to be his wife.

A murder and trial alter the whole pace and tone of the novel here. Gaskell's social commentary is still there, in her presentation of a trial for a capital offence with only circumstantial evidence. The tension created for Mary between the identity of the accused and her knowledge of the true murderer's identity carries this second half. It's a melodramatic plot line, but by Victorian standards Gaskell keeps it from getting out of hand, as it echoed some real events.

Elizabeth Gaskell lived in Manchester. Frederich Engels also lived in Manchester in the era of this novel, and it was that city's condition he described in The Condition of the Working Class in England. Although there is no evidence Gaskell had read this work, as a minister's wife, she knew her city and its problems well. The supporting characters are well drawn, and showed the reading classes that working class people had interests too, and were not merely cogs in the machine.

Mary Barton was Gaskell's first novel, published anonymously. Her detailed portrayal of everyday life led reviewers to deduce her gender, but they attributed her identity to the wrong person, so Barton had to reveal authorship. Initial criticism focussed on Gaskell's deliberate use of Lancashire dialect, prompting her husband to append two lectures on it to later editions. There was also criticism from some middle class readers, suggesting Gaskell had been too hard on the owners, whom they felt acted like benevolent patriarchs. Overall though, it received much praise for realism, and launched Gaskell on her career as a novel writer.

Death and poverty and socialism, oh my!

I think Elizabeth Gaskell just made it onto my favorite authors list. This is another amazing novel where she seamlessly weaves a romantic subplot among the more serious issues of the day: workers rights, strikes, and union busting. ( )

It is difficult to express why this Victorian novel (that no doubt contains all the cliche faults one would attribute to lesser Victorian efforts) should be so effective and enduring. Gaskell treats her characters with understanding and respect and, while they could easily sink into caricature, they do not.

The story has a long, overwrought narrative; Mary is unlikable and bounces between a person of extraordinary strength and one who faints and swoons in weakness; Jem is a bit too perfect; and Gaskell interrupts the tale of obvious moral consequence to preach to us its moral lessons. What makes it have the ring of truth is the knowing that the squalor, starvation and loss of life are a daily part of the this world and are not being exaggerated in the least.

I appreciated that Gaskell resisted the urge to make the wealthy factory owners less human than they were. Their lack of understanding or care for the lower classes was portrayed as something they failed to want to see...and how true is that even today. Don't people generally take just that attitude toward the homeless? If I don't look at them I will not have to contemplate their circumstances or consider that there but for the grace of God go I.

I cannot say I enjoyed this book, but I did think it was worth reading. Many of its lessons, while rooted in a harder time and in problems which have been addressed and greatly solved by this age, are ones every man can learn to his benefit even today. ( )

I learned that Elizabeth Gaskell wrote this after the death of her child and as a means of dealing with her grief. All I can say is that is shows in her writing. I had previously read and enjoyed North and South, written later, and Mary Barton has many of the same themes of class and poverty. But the rawness of the emotion, particularly in the first half of the book, I found quite difficult to deal with. It is a bleak, but human portrayal of life in Manchester in the middle of the 19th century. There are multiple references to the effects of the Industrial Revolution; handlooms weavers disappearing and being replaced by power loom weavers; a factory fire not being regretted by the owner because it destroyed the ageing equipment that could now be replaced from the insurance money. Gaskell lived in Manchester and knew mill owners and the conditions of the poor, which gives her descriptions, though hard to imagine, credibility and poignancy. A compelling read. ( )