Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1848

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Preface-Chapter 8

Chapters 9-15

Chapters 16-24

Chapters 25-32

Chapters 33-38

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

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Discussion Questions

Symbols & Motifs

Leisure and Employment

Leisure and Employment emphasizes the great divide between classes in industrial cities during this period. In the first chapter of the novel, Barton highlights the importance of being employed rather than idle when he says he would rather see his daughter “earning her bread by the sweat of her brow, as the Bible tells her she should do [...] than be like a do-nothing lady [...] and going to bed without having done a good turn to any one of God’s creatures but herself” (12). To the working people of Manchester, especially Barton, employment is a moral imperative as well as essential to keep individuals and their families alive. Employment is also often used by characters as a means of distraction. John Barton uses busyness to deflect from his sorrow at deaths in the family. When Mary learns of her father’s crimes, it is said she “unconsciously sought after some course of action in which she might engage. Any thing, any thing, rather than leisure for reflection” (304).

Creating a deliberate contrast, the wealthier characters of the novel rejoice in their leisure time. After Carson Mill burns down, as Barton predicts, the Carsons take the time that the mill is shut down for rebuilding to relax and enjoy their leisure time. Gaskell describes the Carsons being “able to lounge over breakfast with a review or newspaper in hand; to have time for becoming acquainted with agreeable and accomplished daughters, on whose education no money had been spared” (66). At the same time, the narrator remarks, “There were homes over which Carson’s fire threw a deep, terrible gloom; the homes of those who would fain work, and no man gave unto them—the homes of those to whom leisure was a curse” (67), juxtaposing the lives of the mill owners and workers directly. The novel uses the contrasting consequences of a single event to show the distinct divide between the classes caused by industrialization and the owners’ lack of empathy toward their workers. It is part of Gaskell’s radical vision as an author that she criticizes the leisured classes—the very people she relied on to purchase novels and subscriptions.

The Death of Children

Throughout the novel, many characters are confronted with the deaths of their children, a recurring motif that supports the novel’s sharp delineation of class. This motif also ultimately links the classes together, causing rivals like Barton and Carson to finally empathize with one another via shared humanity. Death is a constant presence in the novel, especially that of children and mothers in childbirth. Before the beginning of the novel, the Bartons have lost their oldest son, Tom, and Barton loses his wife and unborn child, and another son from illness after his wife’s death. Similarly, the Wilsons face the consecutive deaths of their twin boys when they are unable to support them through their fevers. Child mortality is a subject that Barton and the Chartists often discuss, using it to contrast the lives of the rich and the poor. When Wilson tries to tell Barton how Carson is struggling after the fire at his mill, Barton replies, “Han they ever seen a child o’ their’n die for want o’ food?” (76). The narrator often notes, “though it may take much suffering to kill the able-bodied and effective members of society, it does not take much to reduce them to worn, listless, diseased creatures, who thenceforward crawl through life with moody hearts and pain-stricken bodies” (131). The children of working-class families in the novel die because they don’t have the food, medicine, and shelter that would help them survive, something Gaskell saw firsthand when she was living in Manchester and which she emphasizes in her Preface to the novel. This is one of the things that makes Barton hate the wealthy the most, driving him to murder Harry Carson. Yet when Carson tells him how he feels about Harry’s death, Barton can’t help but be reminded of the death of his own son as the narrator remarks, “Rich and poor, masters and men, were then brothers in the deep suffering of the heart; for was not this the very anguish he had felt for little Tom” (415). Though the ways the children of the working and the wealthy die emphasize the divide between the classes, the fact that even men as different as Carson and Barton have this in common causes them to empathize with one another and understand that they have a shared point of human experience on which to build.

Manchester

The setting of Manchester is symbolically representative of the complexities of industrialization and progress in the urban North of England. Manchester and other real and fictional industrial cities are frequent settings for Gaskell’s novels, and her own experience living there gave her first-hand insight into the industries, people, and communities that made manufacturing towns new and particular societies in Victorian Britain. The novel’s first scene is set outside Manchester in the English countryside. The first chapter is one where all the working people of Manchester have come out to celebrate a day off, and the tone is light and happy compared to the later chapters. This change of setting provides an opportunity for juxtaposition: On the return to Manchester in the following chapter, the narrator describes the city as close and confusing, saying, “although the evening seemed yet early when they were in the open fields—among the pent-up houses, night, with its mists, and its darkness, had already begun to fall” (15)”

Manchester is described as distinctive and complex, and though the lodgings of the characters are worse for wear, the narrator always points towards domestic pride and effort rather than their dilapidated state. The narrator treats the people of Manchester much like how she treats the city, focusing on their talents and beliefs and challenging the contemporary stereotypes often directed toward people of northern manufacturing towns. Through the city of Manchester, Gaskell shows just how complex and misunderstood the issues of its people can be, as the workers’ strikes were not looked upon sympathetically by people outside the city who had no experience of the conditions.