Summary
I looked at three reviews for this blog, Henry Fothergill
Chorley’s from Athenaeum (1848), an unsigned
review from Prospective Review (1849),
and Charles Kingsley’s from Fraser’s
Magazine. Chorley thinks Gaskell’s story “is superior to melo-dramatic
seductions, and has described misery, temptation, distress, and shame as they
really exist” (365). The unsigned review is largely in praise of the novel, but
the author has some issues with the way that both Mary and John Barton are
characterized. He says that Mary has two “elements” that make up her character—the
naive and good Mary who saves Jem and the flirt who carries on with Harry
Carsons (378). Kingsley’s review is the most literary, which makes sense given
that he was a university professor and a novelist (and a priest and a
historian), and he praises the novel for its realism in depicting the lives and
circumstances of the poor in industrial cities.
Asking England’s wealthy if “they
want to know why” people become communists, turn against their rulers, kill themselves
and commit murder, become addicted to opium and alcohol, starve, and—finally—turn
against God and church, he counsels them to simply read Mary Barton. All three reviewers praised the novel’s realism; even
the criticism of characterization in the unsigned review is set within the
larger context of the novel’s overall strengths.
Analysis
I’d like to focus my analysis on the criticism of Mary’s
character in the unsigned review. The author doesn’t like what he calls the “unnatural
combination of the two elements that go to make up her character,” and would
prefer if Gaskell stuck to the “genuine” Mary Barton, “the simple-hearted and faithful
mistress of Jem” (378). I don’t agree with his reading of Mary as a divided
character at all; in fact, were Mary simplified as the author suggests, she
wouldn’t be interesting. Not only that, but one of the central conflicts of the
novel—Mary’s relationship with Harry—would be eliminated, and there would be no
reason to believe that Jem killed Harry in a jealous rage.
Mary’s character makes a lot of sense to me as it is. She’s
a beautiful young woman who has no real protection in the world. Her mother is
dead, her father prefers to let her find her own path over choosing one for her
(keeping her out of factory work, excepted), and she doesn’t have any female
role models or guardians. Even though she earns an income, she’s seen her
family slide more and more deeply into poverty. And then there’s the “ghost” of
Esther; no one knows—until halfway through the novel—where she’s been all these
years. All we know is that she, like Mary, was beautiful, and that her beauty
helped her to escape the Manchester slums. In a similar situation, what young
woman wouldn’t want to marry the son of a wealthy factory owner? The same “simple-hearted”
nature that the anonymous reviewer praises is what enables Mary to believe that
Harry courts her because he plans to do the right thing and also marry her. The
reviewer cites Mary’s quick change of heart as evidence of her flawed
character, but I find that part of the novel to be very believable, too. It’s
the turning point for Mary—the moment at which she realizes what’s truly
important to her—and once her eyes are opened, she never hesitates or wavers in
her feelings for Jem and Harry again.
On some level, I think the reviewer probably took issue
with Mary as a mixed character (i.e. one who is neither all good nor all bad). By
the middle of the 19th-century, though, this argument just doesn’t
work any longer. It was one thing for Samuel Johnson to make it in the middle
of the eighteenth century, when novels were still new and the effect on readers
untested, but one hundred years later, if rings false.
Gaskell,
Elizabeth. Mary Barton. Ed Thomas Recchio. A Norton Critical Edition.
New York: W. W. Norton, 2008. Print.
