Mary Barton

The heart of the book is the choice the protagonist, Mary Barton, must make between a rich man and a working class man. Of course, that message immediately introduces the restrictions under which women lived in the early Victorian 1840s in Manchester, England, where the story takes place. Rather than having the career and professional choices open to her which are open to the men of her time and place, Mary takes for granted that the choice she is left with is between two men. The book, therefore, is socially conscious but not as gender-conscious as our own era. The focus, in any case, is as current today as it was then--the socioeconomic injustices of a system marked by great and growing disparity between the few rich and the many poor and working.

While the novel certainly provides a detailed portrait of the struggles, the suffering and the hope of the working class in Gaskell's world, her novel is relevant and moving today because it is

. . .
nation of the class conflict is in part sacrificed for a melodramatic plot. Focusing on the class portraits here will allow the reader to see the best of the book and understand the hopelessness which tempted the poor workers in Gaskell's time. In that context, the author's leaning toward radicalism, at least in her fiction, is certainly understandable at the very least. For there is no doubt that John becomes a radical, a Communist, but Gaskell argues that it is the rich and the powerful who have created such radicals. she goes so far as to compare the situation of the working class and that of Frankenstein, in that both were created by arrogant forces which did not know and did not truly care what destruction they were creating, even down upon their own heads: The actions of the uneducated seem to me typified in those of Frankenstein, that monster of many human qualities, ungifted with a soul, a knowledge of the difference between good and evil. the people rise up to life; they irritate us, they terrify us, and we become their enemies. . . . Their eyes gaze on us with a mute reproach. Why have we made them what they are; a powerful monster, yet without the inner means for peace and happiness? John Barton became a Chartist,
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Some common words found in the essay are:
John Barton, Manchester England, Harry Carson, Political Economy, Nevertheless Bartons', Communist Gaskell, Chartist Communist, Dives Lazarus, Mary Barton, Industrial Revolution, gaskell 1970, john barton, class struggle, mary barton, suffering poor, eyes, rich powerful, 1970 45, poor poor, propertied class,
Approximate Word count = 1686
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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