MARY BARTON

Mary Barton

Mary Barton

Introduction

Elizabeth Gaskell, though not a member of the working class, lived with the problems about which she was writing. As the wife of a Unitarian minister in Manchester, one of the industrial capitals of England, she knew the wealthy leaders of her fashionable church, but she also knew the poor. InMary Barton, her first novel, Gaskell hoped to persuade her readers that working-class men and women were not automatons but real people deserving of respect, sympathy, and consideration.

Discussion

Gaskell makes her argument compelling by creating individuals for her novel, not types, and by doing so with marvelous ...