Class Blog

Although Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Mary Barton  is typically read as empowering and honoring Manchester’s factory workers, it is not without its critiques, and it does not always paint the poor in a flattering light. 

The most blatant criticism the novel levies at the working men is over their response to the power-loom weavers coming in from out of town to break the strike. It characterizes this event as the beginning of  “the real wrongdoings of the Trades’ Union,” (173) suggesting that the throwing of vitriol on poor men is not the only wrong-doing of the trade union. 

Following this dark turn of events, the narrator’s attitude about the Union members seems to shift. Rather than presenting a proud group convinced of its righteousness, the representatives that meet with the masters in the following chapter are made to seem weak and ineffective.

Although the scene opens with a description of the delegates as “wild, earnest-looking men” (182) and an appeal to the values the unions places on brains and speech over appearance, the remainder of the scene lacks any flattery and the adjective earnest, which is usually reserved for the likes of John barton, is even used to describe the Master’s conversation, thus considerably decreasing it’s weight as a compliment. 

What really emphasizes the weakness of the trade union in this scene are the actions ascribed to them. Throughout the entire scene only two actions could really be described as strong or admirable: When they “ positively decline” (183) the masters counter offer, and when they leave the room “without a bow” (183). The rest of their actions are almost pitiable. Even when the lead delegate does speak it is done in a “high pitched voice, psalm singing voice” (182). 

The most frequent action undertaken by the delegates is to “withdraw.” They word is used three times in the scene. The first two are done at the request of the masters almost back to back. The resulting image is of these men just walking in, and out of the room repeatedly, getting nothing done. The third use comes from the masters who withdraw their offer, a much more powerful move. Then after that point the delegates being sent out of the room is no longer described by withdrawing, instead the narrator comments within parentheses that the delegates “had been once more turned out” (184). So, not only does the narrator’s language become less respectful but, with the phrase “once more,” it characterizes the previous withdrawals as, in fact turning outs, only adding to the pitiable image of the delegates.

“It was scarcely ten minutes since he had entered the house, and found Mary at comparative peace, and now she lay half across the dresser, head hidden in her hands, and every part of her body shaking with the violence of her sobs. She could not have told at first (if you had asked her, and she had commanded voice enough to answer) why she was in such agonised grief. It was too sudden for her to analyse, or think upon it. She only felt, that by her own doing her life would be hereafter blank and dreary. By-and-by her sorrow exhausted her body by its own power, and she seemed to have no strength left for crying.”

–Mary Barton, page 131

This moment occurs just after Mary has turned Jem’s offer of marriage down, and he has left the house in a rush. Mary is left to her own devices as she realizes the weight of her words and has a breakdown. The scene is incredibly tense. The tone created by Jem’s anger shifts to Mary’s despair, leaving a hollow feeling. There are few directly duplicate words in this section- most of them are similar to each other, and they deal with the strain of emotion on the physical body. “Shaking”, “agonized”, “blank”, “grief”, and “crying”, all point towards the aftermath of an emotionally fraught situation. There’s this sense of weariness, of heaviness, that has been weighing on Mary since she started seeing Henry, and now it finally drags her down, both physically and emotionally.

There’s only one mention of a word that stands in stark contrast to Mary’s despair, and that is “peace”. But even then, it is written as “comparative peace”, which is fair. The emotional burdens Mary has been carrying for some time- her father’s luckless attempts for political change, her own wish to avoid Jem while secretly courting Henry, and even stress from events that have long since passed such as deaths of family friends- have finally spilled over, much in the same manner as she lies across the dresser.

There becomes a split between what Mary wants now and what she thought she wanted. On one hand, it is about her heart and her emotions, who she really loves, and on the other, it is about her hope and her logic- she hopes she can marry Henry Carson for a chance at a better life for herself, even if it means tricking herself about what she really feels. It also points to class struggle of the era- the chances of Mary genuinely being able to climb the social ladder were slim in the first place, but now they are gone completely. Not only that, but Mary has made the decision for herself- it was not entirely an outside force that caused this. Perhaps it is more about her dream, the possibility that came with it and the loss of opportunity.

Excerpt: “At all times it is a bewildering thing to the poor weaver to see his employer removing from house to house, each one grander than the last, till he ends in building one more magnificent than all, or withdraws his money from the concern, or sells his mill, to buy an estate in the country, while all the time the weaver, who thinks he and his fellows are the real makers of this wealth, is struggling on for bread for his children, through the vicissitudes of lower wages, short hours, fewer hands employed, &c” (Gaskell 23).

This excerpt appears in Chapter III of Mary Barton during the narrator’s discussion of John Barton’s involvement in the Trade’s Union. In the excerpt, a multitude of commas and coordinating conjunctions such as “and” and “or” work together to create what becomes a run-on sentence of the narrator’s train of thought regarding the relationship between the employer’s splurging and the weaver’s hard work. When describing the standard employer’s lifestyle, the narrator uses words like “grand” and “magnificent,” conveying the extravagant nature of the employer’s material acquisitions, such as an “estate.” In the next section of the sentence, the narrator discusses the weaver’s perspective, and he uses terms that are indicative of lack to do so. The words “struggling”, “vicissitudes”, “lower”, “fewer” and “short” all demonstrate the weaver’s position at the short end of the stick in the wealth distribution system. While the employer reaps the benefits of the weaver’s hard work, the weaver is the fuel for a never-ending cycle from which he receives nothing.

The formation of this sentence illustrates the uneven cycle or exchange between the employer and the weaver. The description of the employer’s abundant life is substantially longer than that of the weaver’s life. The uneven nature of the descriptions, which puts more emphasis on the employer, indicates that the employer receives many more benefits from the labor cycle than the individuals who do the labor.

How is Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton not more radical? At face value, the novel takes the form of a marriage plot. Although the characters are mostly poor, laboring peoples, the narrative follows the titular Mary Barton as she moves through an industrializing Britain during the early Victorian era. She loves, then she longs. She learns that she doesn’t love. She longs some more, and then she loves again. Some people die along the way, but surely a happy ending ensues. Yet these romances and spectacles only dominate one part of the narrative. In this paper, I argue that Mary Barton performs a balancing act between flashy spectacle and serious, political commentary about class relations. The narrative voice does this through alternating between transparent and opaque language, and in doing so, the novel consistently comments on class issues while repeatedly claiming otherwise. Take, for example, the following passage:

“[The condition of the poor] is so impossible to describe, or even faintly to picture, the state of distress which prevailed in the town at that time, that I will not attempt it; and yet I think again that surely, in a Christian land, it was not known even so feebly as words could tell it, or the more happy and fortunate would have thronged with their sympathy and their aid.” (85)

Within the above section, there is a pattern of absence. Although the narrator claims that the conditions of the working class were “so impossible to describe,” the narrative then goes at length to monotonously not describe the impossible scene. Three consecutive times in only two lines of text, the narrator insists upon this point. Rather than withhold information, the text goes on about this elusive scene, imprinting it upon the reader. Through this repeated protest to speak, the narrative actually does much to convey the opposite. This repetition widens the void left through this absence, and the lacking text leaves the reader with a more vivid image of the distress which the poor endured than general statistics could otherwise provide.

Interestingly, the narrative then follows what had not happened with speculation. Wealthier, “more happy and fortunate” classes “would have thronged with their sympathy and their aid” if only they had known how bad the situation had gotten. It is hard not to read this passage in the context of another character, John Barton, who has often spoke on behalf of Trade Unionists and other contemporary labor groups. Yet here, the text steps out from itself. What first begun as a proclamation about impoverished peoples changes tone completely, as if to distance the narrative from radical positions while still commenting and agreeing with radical sentiments.

Every section that depicts the poor and laboring class seems to lead to some radical conclusion about inequality. Yet the text suggests that class sufferings are wholistically distinct from the very institutions which separate the different classes of Victorian England. At the same time, the very separation of classes allows for terrible hardship without relief. To be clear, I do not argue that Elizabeth Gaskell is a Radical. The ways in which Gaskell portrays working conditions and hints of a strong sympathy towards labor groups, however, raises an important question. How is she not?

Works Cited

Barton, Mary. Elizabeth Gaskell, edited by Macdonald Daly, Penguin Books, 1996.

For my analysis I primarily focused on the line “I’ll do my best, and yo see now, if better times don’t come after Parliament knows all.” found in the first paragraph on page 89 of Mary Barton. While this line alone does not give the reader very much information, when read with the understanding of the information around it, the line stands out like blood on the page. The line itself is a statement of hope in regards to a most likely, unobtainable future. The line hinges a possible path to the better future on the idea that one day Parliament will know all of the struggles and suffering of the working class and, in knowing, will choose to make life better for them. This line is said by John Barton at the end of a meeting that was held in his home. Prior to stating this line, three men including John Barton spoke on the current state of the working class. The first man spoke of the way that the implementation of heavy machinery has harmed the working conditions and, as a result, the overall life experience of the poor working class. He primarily speaks of how the working class are expected to work far longer hours than they were before. He brings to light how, during the industrial revolution, with the increase of machinery and the normalization of a factory, the amount of work went up while the amount of pay stayed the same and with the newly developed machinery, the poor were more likely to dismember themselves and otherwise injure themselves.  

The second man spoke of a rich man who wore two shirts when most other people in the surrounding community could barely afford the one shirt. He even brings up how the weaver and seamstress of the rich man could not afford to be well dressed. This man discusses how the average man could barely afford to live while the upper class was continuing to profit off the labor of those same poor working class people. This issue that the second speaker boldly brings to light is something that was utterly devastating for the poor people of the time. John Barton, the third speaker, recaps the previously discussed topics in a somewhat detached way. He also regularly says that he believes that if only parliament knew what was happening they would not stand for the way that the poor working class people were living. This hope however, completely ignores the words of the second man who speaks on how the wealthier man knew how the poor were living and did nothing. This approach to the situation paints the gruesome life and suffering of the poor as one of hope and potential for better. The fact that John Barton had to have ignored the words of the second speaker in order to have this hope, paints the living conditions of the working class as one that would require ignoring key aspects of their life just to have hope in a better future.  

In the third paragraph on page 168 of Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Mary Barton, negative words are used five times, one of which was the word “never” (Gaskell, 168). These negatives are all spoken by Mr. Harry Carson and shows that he has an air of authority. He is speaking down on Jem, literally and figuratively. At the same time, he is telling a police officer, a person who is supposed to have more power than Carson, what to do. This authority leads Mr. Carson to believe that he has the ability to do as he wants. 

This interaction occurs when Jem decides that he wants to speak with Mr. Carson. The interaction goes poorly and ends with Carson hitting Jem with his cane and Jem laying in the mud with Carson physically standing over him. Carson has now forced Jem to be under him in multiple ways. Jem is a poor worker who comes from nothing. Harry Carson on the other hand comes from wealth and power. His father is the employer of George Wilson, Jem’s father, and has given Harry Carson a comfortable life. Jem is looked down upon by the rich, and Carson forces Jem to have to look up to him rather than seeing each other equally. Carson then tells Jem that he “will never forgive or forget insult” (Gaskell, 168). The insult that he is referring to was Jem speaking to Mr. Carson as if they were equals. Carson uses their class divide to separate the two men and as a defense for his attack.

Mr. Carson’s authoritative behavior does not stop there. He emphasizes the class divide between him and Jem verbally as well. Mr. Harry Carson is a part of the upper class and believes that his father’s employees should settle with the minimal pay that they receive or lose their jobs (Gaskell, 172). Carson once again has a negative viewpoint on that matter. To him, the poor should not gain more money but rather be content in their miserable lives. His higher place in the social class of Victorian England leaves him with a negative view of the lower class and with that belief of them being below him in many regards.

Patterns and Contrasts in Vocabulary

• Passage: Chapter 3, Pg. 20

“The doctor stumbled upstairs by the fire light and met the awestruck look of the neighbour, which at once told him the state of things. The room was till, as he, with habitual tiptoe step, approached the poor frail body, that nothing now could more disturb. Her daughter knelt by the bed-side, her face buried in the clothes, which were almost crammed into her mouth, to keep down the choking sobs. The husband stood like one stupefied. The doctor questioned the neighbour in whispers, and then approaching Barton, said, “You must go down stairs. This is a great shock, but bear it like a man. Go down.” He went mechanically and sat down on the first chair. He had no hope.”

In the passage before my focused reading, John Barton frantically calls for the doctor to help his sick wife who is dying fast. The doctor doesn’t answer right away, so the tone of the passage before and during my selected paragraph is very chaotic, clumsy, and frantic as john is racing against time to help his wife. The frantic nature in which Gaskell writes about the movement of the people in the scene is important in the portrayal of sadness and drama in the scene. Gaskell uses a variety of words like “stumbled, mechanically and tiptoe,” to describe the movement of John, and the doctor in the scene. The contrast of the franticness at the beginning of the scene when the doctor is clumsily stumbling up the steps to help John’s wife, to the end of the paragraph when John sees his dead wife and “walks mechanically” emotionless, like a robot downstairs to grieve. I also made note of a series of repetitions within this passage, particularly with the word “down.” The somber tone, setting, and reality of the scene seems to link well with the word “down” and how it is used to describe the daughter trying to “keep down the choking sobs” by cramming her mother’s clothes in her mouth. In addition to this, the doctor urges John to go downstairs and “bear it like a man” away from the daughter and his deceased wife. The word down is used to describe the grief in this scene and is also attached to death in the burial sense, as one moves the body down into the earth. Lastly, I feel the word “down” can be understood as feeling, (“I’m feeling down in the dumps.”) What I am really trying to say here is that I think there are several sections of lines that work in tandem with one another, particularly from the beginning of the passage where there is still hope that Mary’s life can be saved, to the end of the paragraph when she dies, grief sets in, and John walks away “mechanically” and emotionless to sit down and grieve downstairs by himself. The ending of the passage gives an image of John sitting downstairs alone with “no hope.” Overall, Gaskell’s use of different words to describe the movement of characters in the scene as they try and help Mary, and the use of the word “down” to describe the grieving process after her death, enhances the emotion and sadness in this passage from chapter 3 and sets the tone for the rest of the section.