I’ve been curious to read Elizabeth Gaskell for some time and I have a geeky habit whenever reading a classic author for the first time to start with the first book they ever published and then read all of their books in the order that they appeared. Or, at least, that’s the aim. I’ve tried doing this with authors such as Iris Murdoch, George Orwell and Vladimir Nabokov and I’ve still not got around to reading some of their final novels or skipped ahead to read a novel I’m more interested in. In any case, there’s often an assumption that a writer’s first book will be weaker than their subsequent ones because they haven’t fully found their voice as an author yet. However, “Mary Barton” is so confidently and skilfully done. It’s a sympathetic portrait of working class families in Manchester and begins in 1839.
The central romance of the novel concerns heroine Mary’s torn affections between Jem, an honest hard-working labourer, and Harry Carson, a scheming wealthy mill owner’s son. A bungled proposal of marriage and a dramatic incident sends her on a perilous journey to save a man from being convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. Along the way, Mary has a heart-wrenching reunion with her aunt Esther who has become a street-walker. These characters are richly brought to life with dialogue filled with Mancunian speech (as well as Liverpudlian when the characters travel there.)
The main criticism I’ve seen made about this novel is that it’s a book of two halves. The first is concerned with detailing the plight of the working class including starvation, poor living/working conditions, alcoholism and appeals to reform labour laws which are rebuffed by the government. The second is more plot driven as it concerns the fallout of a violent crime performed as an act of protest against the gentry. I agree that the novel does have a different feel in these two parts yet they both work well. I also appreciated the switch to be more involved with story because in the first part it sometimes felt like the characters spoke too self-consciously about their struggles as a way for the author to make points about the working class. But on the whole I thought the characters were rendered sympathetically and realistically. The story also dramatically demonstrates the complex points of opposition between different classes. It’s poignantly done and I’m eager to read more of Gaskell’s fiction in the future.
