======================================================================
= Mary_Barton =
======================================================================
Introduction
======================================================================
'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 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."
Gaskell's desire to accurately represent the poverty of industrial
Manchester is evident in a record of a visit she made to the home of a
local labourer. On comforting the family, Hompes records, the "head of
the family took hold of her arm and grasping it tightly, said, with
tears in his eyes: 'Aye, ma'am, but have ye ever seen a child clemmed
to death?'" This question is almost precisely repeated in the mouth of
John Barton: "Han they ever have seen a child o' their'n die for want
o' food?" in chapter 4.
As well as relying on her own experience, Gaskell is thought to have
used secondary sources on which to base the setting of the story,
including Kay's 'The moral and physical condition of the working
classes involved in the cotton manufacture in Manchester' (1832) and
Peter Gaskell's 'The manufacturing population of England' (1833).
Other details to which Gaskell paid particular attention to ensure the
realism of the novel include the topography of both Manchester and
Liverpool (including the rural environment detailed in the first
chapter, and references to road names and prominent buildings), the
superstitions and customs of the local people and the dialect. In the
earliest editions, William Gaskell added the footnotes explaining some
of the words specific to the Lancashire dialect, and after the fifth
edition (1854), two lectures of his on the subject were added as
appendices. It is widely thought that the murder of Harry Carson in
the novel was inspired by the assassination of Thomas Ashton, a
Manchester mill-owner, in 1831.
'Mary Barton' was first published as two volumes in October 1848.
Gaskell was paid £100 for the novel. The publisher Edward Chapman had
had the manuscript since the middle of 1847. He had several recorded
influences on the novel, the most prominent of which is probably the
change in title: the novel was originally entitled 'John Barton'.
Gaskell said that he was, "the central figure to my mind...he was my
'hero'." He also encouraged Gaskell to include chapters 36 and 37, the
dialectical glosses added by William Gaskell, a preface and the
chapter epigraphs.
The second edition, with Gaskell's corrections, particularly on
typographical mistakes when writing the Lancashire dialect, appeared
on 3 January 1849. The third edition soon followed, in February. A
fourth, without Gaskell's involvement, appeared in October 1850. The
fifth edition, from 1854, was the first single volume edition and
included William Gaskell's lectures on the dialect. Mary Barton uses
the word "wench" a total of 42 times.
Genre
=======
One element of the novel that has been a subject of heavy criticism is
the apparent shift in genres between the political focus of the early
chapters to the domestic in the later ones. Raymond Williams
particularly saw this as a failure by the author: the early chapters,
he said, are the "most moving response in the literature to the
industrial suffering of the 1840s", but in the later, the novel
becomes a "familiar and orthodox...Victorian novel of sentiment".
Williams suggested that this shift may have been at the influence of
her publishers, an idea supported by the title change, which changes
the main focus of the reader from the political upheaval John is
trying to promote to Mary's emotional journey.
However, Kamilla Elliot disagrees with Williams about the weakness of
the domestic genre, saying, "It is the romance plot, not the political
plot, that contains the more radical political critique in the novel."
Style
=======
It is a subject of some debate whether the first person narrator in
'Mary Barton' is synonymous with Gaskell. On the one hand, the
consistent use of tone through the original preface and the novel, and
authorial insets like the first paragraph of chapter 5 suggest the
Gaskell is directly narrating the story. Contrarily, critics like
Lansbury suggest the narrator is too unsympathetic in all Gaskell's
Manchester novels to be her own voice:
Nothing could be more unwise than to regard the authorial 'I' of the
novels as the voice of Elizabeth Gaskell, particularly in the
Manchester novels. The narrator has a tendency to engage in false
pleading and specious argument, while the workers demonstrate honesty
and commonsense.
Hopkins goes so far as to claim that the detail to verisimilitude in
the novel made it the first "respectable" social novel, in contrast
with the lack of believability in, for example, Disraeli's 'Sybil' or
Tonna's 'Helen Fleetwood'.
Prominent in the novel is Gaskell's attempt to reinforce the realism
of her representation through the inclusion of "working-class
discourses", not only through the use of closely imitated
colloquialisms and dialect, but also through "passages from Chartist
poems, working class ballads, proverbs, maxims, and nursery rhymes, as
John Barton's radical discourse, Ben Davenport's deathbed curses, and
Job Legh's language of Christian submission."
Themes
========
Kathleen Mary Tillotson wrote that 'Mary Barton' is "built on the
assumptions of 'Chartism' and 'Past and Present'", two works of social
criticism by Thomas Carlyle.
The first half of the novel focuses mainly on the comparison between
the rich and poor. In a series of set pieces across the opening
chapters, we are shown the lifestyles of the Bartons, Wilsons (most
prominently in the chapter "A Manchester Tea-Party") and Davenport's
respective households compared to the contrasting affluence of the
Carson establishment (in the chapter "Poverty and Death"). A key
symbol shown in this chapter is the use of five shillings; this amount
being the price John Barton receives for pawning most of his
possessions, but also the loose change in Harry Carson's pocket.
Gaskell details the importance of the mother in a family; as is seen
from the visible decline in John Barton's physical and moral
well-being after his wife's death. This view is also symbolized by Job
Legh's inability to care for Margaret as a baby in the chapter
"Barton's London Experience". The theme of motherhood is connected to
declining masculinity: Surridge points out that the roles of nurturing
fall towards the men as bread-winning falls away. Both Wilson and
Barton are pictured holding the infants in the place of the nanny that
can't be afforded as the novel begins, but eventually, both end up
relying on the income of their children, Jem and Mary respectively.
The second half of the book deals mainly with the murder plot. Here it
can be seen that redemption is also a key aspect of the novel; not
least because of the eventual outcome of the relationship between
Messrs Carson and Barton, but also in Gaskell's presentation of
Esther, the typical "fallen woman". The selfless nature she gives the
character, on several occasions having her confess her faults with
brutal honesty, is an attempt to make the reader sympathize with the
character of a prostitute, unusual for the time.
Indeed, throughout the novel Gaskell appears to refer to her
characters as being out of her control, acting as not so much a
narrator but a guide for the observing reader. Another aspect of the
passivity of the characters is, as some suggest, that they represent
the impotence of the class to defend or even represent, themselves
politically. Cooney draws attention to this in the scene in which the
factory is on fire - a scene the reader anticipates to be domestic
fails in its domestic role (one might imagine Jem's heroism to prompt
Mary to discover her true feelings) actually sees the crowd passively
at the mercy of ill-equipped firemen and unconcerned masters.
Several times Gaskell attempts to mask her strong beliefs in the novel
by disclaiming her knowledge of such matters as economics and
politics, but the powerful language she gives to her characters,
especially John Barton in the opening chapter, is a clear indication
of the author's interest in the class divide. She openly pleads for
reducing this divide through increased communication and, as a
consequence, understanding between employers and workmen and generally
through a more human behaviour based on Christian principles, at the
same time presenting her own fears of how the poor will eventually act
in retaliation to their oppression.
Gaskell also describes an Italian torture chamber where the victim is
afforded many luxuries at first but in the end, the walls of the cell
start closing in and finally they crush him. It is believed that the
story has been influenced by William Mudford's short story "The Iron
Shroud". Stephen Derry mentions that Gaskell uses the concept of the
shrinking cell to describe John Barton's state of mind but also added
the element of luxury to further enhance it.
Death plays a significant and unavoidable role in the plot: it has
been interpreted both as mere realism (Lucas points out the average
mortality rate at the time was 17) and autobiographically as the
cathartic relief of grief over her son's premature death. The image of
a dying child was also a trope of Chartist discourse.
Reception
======================================================================
The novel was first published anonymously, but its authorship was
widely known within a year.
Early reception of the novel was divided, with some praising its
honesty and fidelity to facts and others criticising it for presenting
a distorted picture of the employer-employee relationships. The
'British Quarterly Review' said it was a "one-sided picture", and the
'Edinburgh Review' that the division between employers and employed
was exaggerated. They were echoed by the 'Manchester Guardian' and the
'Prospective Review', however the 'Athenaeum', the 'Eclectic Review',
the 'Christian Examiner' and 'Fraser's Magazine' took a different
stance. The 'Athenaeum's' otherwise positive review raised the
question of whether "it may be kind or wise or right to make fiction
the vehicle for a plain, matter of fact exposition of social evils".
Thomas Carlyle wrote a letter to Gaskell in which he called it "a Book
seeming to take its place far above the ordinary garbage of Novels".
Part of the sensation the novel created was due to the anonymity with
which it was published. Gaskell claimed that on occasion she had even
joined in with discussions making guesses at the authorship.
Adaptations
======================================================================
There have been a few stage adaptations (mostly loosely so and mostly
in the 19th century) and one adaptation in each of radio and
television. There have been no films, although one of the stage
adaptations has been filmed a number of times.
Radio
=======
In 2001, the BBC broadcast a 20-episode serialisation of Mary Barton.
Television
============
The BBC broadcast a four-episode series in 1964. All four episodes
('Fire', 'Violence', 'Murder', and 'Trial'), are believed lost,
although it has been hypothesised that copies may still exist in BBC
Archives. Directed by Michael Imison, it featured Lois Daine (Mary
Barton), George A. Cooper (John Barton), Barry Warren (Jem Wilson),
Gwendolyn Watts (Margaret Legh), Brian Peck (Will Wilson) and Patrick
Mower (Harry Carson).
In 2012, there were reports that the screenwriter Heidi Thomas (who
wrote the script for the BBC serialisation of 'Cranford') was working
on a TV adaption of Mary Barton for the BBC, but nothing seems to have
come of this.
Theatre
=========
The first adaptation occurred soon after publication, by the
playwright John Courtney at The Old Vic, then called the Victoria
Theatre, in 1851. While the novel targeted middle and upper class
readers, Courtney's production engaged a specifically working-class
audience - according to the playbill, it was 'written expressly for
this Theatre', meaning the local working class community.
In the years following, there were then a number of stage productions,
based more or less loosely on the plot and themes of the novel: Colin
Hazlewood, 'Our Lot in Life', 1862; Dion Boucicault, 'The Long
Strike', 1866 (at the Lyceum, in which the political plot was removed
and which also incorporated elements of 'Lizzie Leigh'); J P Weston,
'The Lancashire Strike', 1867; George Sims, 'The Last Chance', 1885;
and, best-known, Stanley Houghton, 'Hindle Wakes', 1912, of which
there have been four film versions.
In 2016 Rona Munro wrote a 2-act version, which premiered at the Royal
Exchange, Manchester. It was directed by Sarah Frankcom and designed
by Liz Ascroft, and featured Kellie Bright in the lead role.
See also
======================================================================
* 'North and South', one of Gaskell's later novels with a similar
theme
License
=========
All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA
License URL:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Original Article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Barton
