Mary Barton (1848)

Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life was the first novel by English author Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of Manchester between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the Victorian working class.

Plot summary

The novel begins in Manchester, where we are introduced to the Bartons and the Wilsons, two working-class families. John Barton is a questioner of the distribution of wealth and the relations between rich and poor. Soon his wife dies—he blames it on her grief over the disappearance of her sister Esther. Having already lost his son Tom at a young age, Barton is left to raise his daughter, Mary, alone and now falls into depression and begins to involve himself in the Chartist, trade-union movement.

Chapter 1 takes place in the countryside where Greenheys is now.

Mary takes up work at a dressmaker's (her father had objected to her working in a factory) and becomes subject to the affections of hard-working Jem Wilson and Harry Carson, son of a wealthy mill owner. She fondly hopes, by marrying Carson, to secure a comfortable life for herself and her father, but immediately after refusing Jem's offer of marriage she realizes that she truly loves him. She, therefore, decides to evade Carson, planning to show her feelings to Jem in the course of time. Jem believes her decision to be final, though this does not change his feelings for her.

Meanwhile, Esther, a "street-walker," returns to warn John Barton that he must save Mary from becoming like her. He simply pushes her away, however, and she's sent to jail for a month on the charge of vagrancy. Upon her release, she talks to Jem with the same purpose. He promises that he will protect Mary and confronts Carson, eventually entering into a fight with him, which is witnessed by a policeman passing by.

Not long afterward, Carson is shot dead, and Jem is arrested for the crime, his gun having been found at the scene. Esther decides to investigate the matter further and discovers that the wadding for the gun was a piece of paper on which is written Mary's name.

She visits her niece to warn her to save the one she loves, and after she leaves Mary realizes that the murderer is not Jem but her father. She is now faced with having to save her lover without giving away her father. With the help of Job Legh (the intelligent grandfather of her blind friend Margaret), Mary travels to Liverpool to find the only person who could provide an alibi for Jem – Will Wilson, Jem's cousin and a sailor, who was with him on the night of the murder. Unfortunately, Will's ship is already departing, so that, after Mary chases after the ship in a small boat, the only thing Will can do is promise to return in the pilot ship and testify the next day.

During the trial, Jem learns of Mary's great love for him. Will arrives in court to testify, and Jem is found "not guilty". Mary has fallen ill during the trial and is nursed by Mr. Sturgis, an old sailor, and his wife. When she finally returns to Manchester she has to face her father, who is crushed by his remorse. He summons John Carson, Harry's father, to confess to him that he is the murderer. Carson is still set on justice, but after turning to the Bible he forgives Barton, who dies soon afterward in Carson's arms. Not long after this Esther comes back to Mary's home, where she, too, soon dies.

Jem decides to leave England, where, his reputation damaged, it would be difficult for him to find a new job. The novel ends with the wedded Mary and Jem, their little child, and Mrs. Wilson living happily in Canada. The news comes that Margaret has regained her sight and that she and Will, soon to be married, will visit.

Characters

Mary Barton – The eponymous character, a very beautiful girl.

Mrs. Mary Barton – Mary's mother, who dies early on.

John Barton – Mary's father, a millworker, an active member in trade unions.

George Wilson – John Barton's best friend, a worker at John Carson's mill.

Jane Wilson – George Wilson's wife, short-tempered.

Jem Wilson – Son of George and Jane, an engineer and inventor who has loved Mary from his childhood.

John Carson – Wealthy owner of a mill in Manchester.

Harry Carson – Son of John Carson, attracted to Mary.

Alice Wilson – George Wilson's sister, a pious old washerwoman, herbalist, sick-nurse.

Margaret Jennings – Neighbour of Alice, blind, a sometime singer, a friend to Mary.

Job Legh – Margaret's grandfather, a self-taught naturalist.

Ben Sturgis – An old sailor, who looks after Mary during her stay in Liverpool.

Will Wilson – Alice's nephew (Jem's cousin), whom she raised after the death of his parents. A sailor, he falls in love with Margaret.

Esther (gives her name as Mrs. Fergusson of 145, Nicholas Street, Angel's Meadow) – Sister of Mrs. Mary Barton, she is a fallen woman; her function is to pose an awful 'what if' concerning young Mary's fate.

Background and composition

In beginning to write novels, it was Gaskell's hope that they would provide some solace from the pain of the loss of her son Willie. The idea, according to her early biographer Ellis Chadwick, was first suggested by her husband William Gaskell to "soothe her sorrow". In an 1849 letter to her friend Mrs. Greg, Gaskell said that she, "took refuge in the invention to exclude the memory of painful scenes which would force themselves upon my remembrance."

However, it is clear from her preface that the suffering she saw around her was the motivational factor for the content of the novel: "I had always felt a deep sympathy with the care-worn men, who looked as if doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work and want[...] The more I reflected on this unhappy state of things between those so bound to each other by common interests, as the employers and the employed must ever be, the more anxious I became to give some utterance to the agony which from time to time convulsed this dumb person."