My reading group has a tradition of choosing a “big” book for our January read. We also like to do a classic each year. This year the two coincided when we chose Elizabeth Gaskell’s first novel, Mary Barton, as our 2026 starting book. I have read several Gaskell novels and stories – plus Nell Stevens’ bio-memoir, Mrs Gaskell and me: Two women, two love stories, two centuries apart (my review) – but her first novel has been a gap, so when one of our members suggested Gaskell, I proposed Mary Barton. And phew, it generated a great discussion!
Most of you will know Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), I’m sure, but I’ll briefly introduce her here. She is a significant English novelist, who is best known for her “social problem” novels, Mary Barton (1848) and North and south (1854-5), and for her more comic novel, Cranford (1864-6). Lesser known is her biography of her friend, The life of Charlotte Bronte, which was controversial, and is covered by Stevens in her book. Relevant to this post is that Gaskell married a Unitarian Minister, and lived in Manchester where she worked with the poor.
So, Mary Barton … Admired, apparently, by Charles Dickens, it is set in Manchester around 1840, a time when the cotton trade was facing a serious downturn, with all the flow-on economic ramifications in a newly industrialising society. It focuses on two working-class families, the Bartons and the Wilsons, and on John Barton’s questioning the distribution of wealth and the master-worker relationship. Early in the novel, Barton’s wife dies, leaving him to raise his daughter Mary. Increasingly concerned about the deteriorating economic conditions facing himself and his co-workers, John becomes involved in Chartism and the Trade Union Movement. Meanwhile, Mary tries to make her own way in the world, as a seamstress. Although she has been loved by Jem Wilson since childhood, she is initially attracted to and pursued relentlessly by Harry Carson, the son of a wealthy mill-owner. When Harry is murdered, the plot thickens and in the novel’s second half the personal and socioeconomic issues come to a head.
Now, the common challenge – how to write about a classic? What can we add to discussions about books that have been extensively analysed by academics and students? Sure, Mary Barton is less studied than the Austens and Dickens, the Whites and Steinbecks, but still …
I could focus on my reading group’s discussion, and I will do some of that, but during our discussions I cannot, of course, explore my own thoughts at depth – or even raise them all – so these together with a couple from our discussion will be my focus.
And I’ll start with form. Mary Barton is a mid-nineteenth century novel, and like novels of that time, it is big and baggy. It was Henry James, who, semi-critically, described some 19th-century novels as “large, loose, baggy monsters”. His specific comment was “what do such large, loose, baggy monsters, with their queer elements of the accidental and the arbitrary, artistically mean?” If I understand correctly, he was referring to big story canvases that lacked “composition” or “form”. This is what I was thinking as I was reading Mary Barton. I jotted down that it felt messy and confused between forms – a social problem novel, a romance or sentimental novel, a melodrama, a morality tale, crime fiction, an adventure story – but this was a time when the novel was still relatively new and finding its way.
As for my reading group, most found it slow to start, and very wordy, with several wanting Gaskell to just “get on with it”. However, the second half, when the pace picks up, grabbed everyone’s attention, resulting in most of us greatly appreciating it.
“the grinding, squalid misery”
Certainly, I forgave the book its “messiness”, because it tells a powerful story about inequality and precarity (discussed in this week’s Monday Musings). Gaskell offers a real and moving insight into the society of the time, and into some of the thinking that was happening. She writes with the compassion that came – at least in part – from her dissenting Unitarian background, and she shocked many of her peers with her realistic portrayals of the grimy sides of life. She had strong moral views but was humanitarian in her application of them. Some in my group felt she was a little tough on the women – particularly John’s straying sister-in-law Esther – but I (and others) disagreed, believing Gaskell was prepared to offer redemption to the fallen woman.
This is not to say, however, that Gaskell didn’t bother me at times. An aspect of this novel is its high level of authorial intrusion. Mostly it conveys information that her characters cannot know – or perhaps that she could not find a way for them to impart – about the wider socioeconomic background. But, at times it is attended by what comes across to a modern reader as a patronising tone. Early in the novel, for example, she – the author-narrator – discusses John Barton who has just lost his wife and who sees only himself, and his kind, as sufferers. She writes:
I know that this is not really the case; and I know what is the truth in such matters: but what I wish to impress is what the workman feels and thinks. True that with child-like improvidence, good times will often dissipate his grumbling, and make him forget all prudence and foresight. (p. 24)
She goes on to explain that while “earnest men” like John Barton had seen suffering, he was a good worker, who felt “pretty certain of steady employment”, and so
… he spent all he got with the confidence (you may also call it improvidence) of one who was willing, and believed himself able, to supply all his wants by his own exertions. (p. 24)
However, when his employer fails, and the other mills start failing, he has nothing to fall back on and “his life hung on a gossamer thread”. Gaskell’s obvious compassion is tempered by a middle-class value judgement regarding being “provident”, which reveals a fundamental lack of understanding of what we recognise as “precarity” wrought by capitalism and industrialisation.
the “human condition”
The novel ends with a serious discussion between John Carson’s friend, Job Legh, and mill-owner, Mr Carson, with Job trying to explain to Carson, “the effect produced on John Barton by the great and mocking contrasts” he saw in the “human condition” around him. Eventually, after an open-minded conversation, Mr Carson comes to understand at least something of the other side and attempts to improve how the masters do business.
It is regarding this resolution that one of my reading group members made the point that Gaskell does not offer a radical solution to the problem. Gaskell suggests that people understand each other better – “that the truth might be recognised that the interests of one were the interests of all, and, as such, required the consideration and deliberation of all” – rather than proposing a different economic or political system altogether.
I would add, though, that Gaskell did also believe in some practical reforms, one being in education. She frequently mentions John Barton’s lack of education affecting his ability to think through the issues that concerned him. Indeed, near that end, John admits that he had struggled to find “the right way”, because
“No one learned me, and no one telled me … they taught me to read, and then they never gave no books …” (p. 445)
In other words, he knows that education is more than just learning to read. Job tells Mr Carson, “it was most desirable to have educated workers, capable of judging [my emph], not mere machines of ignorant men” (p. 467).
So much more could be explored in this big book, but I’ll end here by saying that while its dramatic plot and well-delineated, rounded characters make Mary Barton enjoyable reading, it is Gaskell’s depiction of ongoing economic realities that makes it well worth reading.
Elizabeth Gaskell
Mary Barton
London: Penguin English Library, 2012 (Orig. pub. 1848, in 2 volumes)
497pp.
ISBN: 9780141974675 (Kindle edition.)
Whispering Gums 
I’ve never read Gaskell but you make this sound very tempting!
It is wordy in that Victorian way Cathy but I think she’s a good read. I suspect though that if you’ve never read her, North and South might be the best start. It’s so long since I read it that I can’t compare the reading experience. It might be a little more polished because it’s not her first. But I think both are great. I’ve read Ruth, Wives and daughters, and Cranford too. Cranford was my first and is a lovely read, but is different from these.
I think I watched North and South on TV back in the 80s but I don’t remember anything about it!
You would have been pretty young then wouldn’t you, Cathy? I wouldn’t be surprised if it didn’t make the same impression on you as it did on me. I also read it around the same time which reinforced it. But still my memory is more impressions and themes than fine details.,
A quick google shows that I was 13!
That’s around what I thought. You can be forgiven for not remembering much!
I’m a big Gaskell fan but I have to admit I didn’t love Mary Barton – I felt that she picked up on most of these themes better in her later novels.
I understand Laura in that this probably suffers from being a first novel but I still loved it. I’d probably recommend North and South first, or Cranford except that Cranford is a bit of an outlier. I think I liked Mary Barton more than Ruth though – but it’s hard to compare with such gaps in reading time!
I agree that Ruth was quite a slog but I think I appreciated her bravery in tackling the topic and its real tragedy (though I read it when I was 18 so I don’t remember it that well!)
Yes, I think Gaskell was amazingly brave in the issues she put out there. She shocked many. I was older when I read it but that was still around three decades ago!
Every time someone reviews a classic or a popular new novel and they write “what to say?” because they assume everyone has heard of the plot, etc., I think, “Noooo!” I’m usually in the dark! I find Henry James’s comment interesting because I immediately thought of novels like Vanity Fair, Bleakhouse, and Middlemarch, all of which added in subplot upon subplot, making the novels feel less focused to me. If the story is about whatever serious issue, why add in the missing person, the forbidden love, etc.? Your post has made me even more excited to read the special edition of Pride and Prejudice that I recently bought (it has sidenotes instead of footnotes) and yearn to read another Charlotte Perkins Gilman novel. I simple ADORE her. I’m curious—do your book club members read your blog? I was wondering if they know they’re “internet famous,” haha.
Thanks Melanie … part of that is because we think people will know the plot but mostly for me it’s what can I add to what’s already been said about the novel.
You are right to some degree about “why add in”. But I have a couple of answers. One is that often these “digressions” add often another layer to the main theme. The other is that many of these books were first serialised in the newspapers so they wanted to keep people engaged and looking forward to the next part. Side stories probably worked in that situation. But of course, the modern novel is a very different “beast”. You just have to get into a different expectation (mindset) when you read a “loose, baggy, monster) from the nineteenth century!
I like Gilman too, but have only read the famous one – a few times. It’s short!!!!
As for my blog, some of them do, but I think most don’t. So far no-one’s complained about my portrayal of us!!
Sidenotes rather than notes of the foot !!! – wow ! That’d be SO good. No wonder you’re excited about it !
There’s at least one series of Austen pubs that does serious side annotations. I believe they are excellent.
I shall need to add such superior volumes to my teeny library, ST, which comprises mostly Folio Society (and some authors like you-know-whom) so that they would fit right in !!! 🙂
The editor of the books that have side notes that I use is Patricia Meyer Spacks. The side notes include images of what a room might have looked like, currency today compared to what it was then, and some context for why something might be significant that I would miss in my modern eyes.
Sounds wonderful – images, even !!
I wish I could take a picture and share it with you, but I don’t know how to do that in WordPress comments. Here is a link to my review of Sense and Sensibility, with the same editor. If you scroll down, you can see some pictures. https://grabthelapels.com/2021/08/17/sense-and-sensibility/
I say !!! What a truly delightful issue !! I’m going to have to save some shekels for even one of those … I shall need to choose wisely !
Thanks muchly, GTL !!
You’re so welcome! She has done Sense and Sensibility and Pride and Prejudice. I’m not sure about any others, but I’m sure a Google search will reveal all.
I thought there was a set but I haven’t checked. I’m tempted but I already have two or even three copies of them all. How many do I need!?
I remember this post. That’s a great image to explain what these annotations are like.
Yes, that’s the one people are saying is great including my Austen group members.
I do know whom! I’m glad you still do have some actual books MR.
Not many, but all precious. 🙂
That’s the best collection to have.
XO
It makes sense to me that your post would combine both the other members’ responses but also more detail about your own than can fit into a group discussion. And I can’t remember if this is the Gaskell that Bill read a few years ago but, if it wasn’t, then now I want to read two more of hers. The only one I’ve read is the … apparently controversial? … biography of Charlotte Bronte (which I was surprised to thoroughly enjoy, whereas I’d thought it would be a rather dull, nuts-and-bolts accounting).
Oh I must read The life then, Marcie. I have her complete works on the Kindle so it will surely be there.
I’d forgotten Bill had read one. I will check, because if it is this one I’ll add a link. Thanks for the heads up. BTW I think you would appreciate Gaskell’s social novels. They are wordy but her characters are so well drawn, less black-and-white than Dickens.
Your final summary paragraph reflects my own reaction to this novel. It would be interested to compare Gaskell and Dickens in their depictions of social issues – Dickens seems more to tell us what the problem is whereas Gaskell goes one step further and suggests some solutions (not particularly realistic ones but at least she tried).
I didn’t enjoy it as much as North and South but much more than Wives and Daughters.
Thanks Karen. I’m glad my summation worked for you! I like your assessment of the two. In Dickens favour, by comparison, is the humour and satire he used to tell his stories. How lucky we are to have had both of them telling these stories!
Absolutely.
As a lifelong reader in depth of Dickens and other Victorians and American novelists, I chucked a bit at your description of Mary Barton as loose and baggy. Even Dickens’s shortest novel, Hard Times, at 110,000 words, is longer than Mary Barton at just over 100,000 and far less than Dickens’s giants such as Bleak House and David Copperfield, both of which are more than 350,000.
Dickens did admire her enough to serialize both Cranford and North and South in one of the magazines he edited, Household Words, and she contributed portions of portmanteau Christmas stories to Dickens’s 1860s magazine, All the Year Round. Gaskell wasn’t crazy about Dickens’s heavy hand on the editing, though, but he paid well and his was a most prestigious market for mid-Century British writers of fiction or journalism. Gaskell probably ranks just below (although by a wide margin, perhaps) George Eilot, without a doubt one of the finest writers of the 19th century of any gender or nationality. Regarding Henry James: he was critical of everyone.
I like North and South better than Hard Times because I sense that Gaskell had a better feel for the setting than Dickens did, who used it more as a backdrop for social commentary rather than Gaskell’s more immersive look. Mary Barton was, I thought, a lesser work than that, but one of the few that is still somewhat widely read and kept alive by reviews in thoughtful blogs like yours.
Thanks Carl. I was aware of some of that about Gaskell and Dickens, but I didn’t know about the actual page lengths. My Mum was a huge Dickens fan and I’ve read several, including Bleak House which I loved. I do like Gaskell’s more “real” characterisation overall, but then Dickens does humour more doesn’t he? I think you are right to chuckle, she wasn’t as “loose” as some. I haven’t read Eliot for a long time but Middlemarch is a great book.
Getting a bit later, do you have any thoughts on George Gissing?
I have a collection of Household Words compiled under themes but I’ve only read one of the volumes, I’m afraid.
No, I don’t know any of Gissing; I started to read New Grub Street but lost interest; those more realistic novels of the 1880s and later don’t interest me much, although I do make exceptions for Hardy and Forster, who are two of my all-time favorites. You couldn’t really call either of them a realist–Hardy tried to recapture the past (most of the time) or tried to infuse too much sexual honesty too early, and Forster is, with the exception of A Passage to India, almost shamelessly lost in the rich (some would say heavy, but not I) symbolism of the 19th. I read more deeply rather than widely…so from my knowledge of Hardy, Eliot, or Forster, could I interest you in Under the Greenwood Tree, Daniel Deronda, or Maurice ? All three of those are less famous works by famous authors, but each has rich and interesting aspects characteristic of the traits for which those three authors have better-known examples.
You could except I’ve read and loved Daniel Deronda, though it had slipped my mind, as it was a long time ago, and I read Maurice, almost as long ago. I love Forster too, and have read several over the years.
I’ve read quite a bit of Hardy but not that one. I remember it on my mother’s shelves. Maybe my reading group would like to do a Hardy one day though I’d like to move into authors I’ve read less of, which is where Gissing comes in.
BTW I liked New Grub Street … but it was over 20 years ago that I read it. I have always wanted to read more.
Are you a Wharton fan?
I never warmed up to Wharton. I’ve read Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth and they were okay. I read Custom of the Country during lockdown and didn’t like it. Undine Spragg was insufferable—Scarlet O’Hara without charm or charisma. Now I like those spunky women—Becky Sharp is one of my all-time favorite characters. Re Hardy: Under the Greenwood Tree is a perfect book club book—it’s short, sweet, and has all of the Hardy themes (except the lust side of sex) in one small package. If you ever visit Hardy country as I have, it’s a must because the church in that book is totally based on the church where Hardy (minus his heart, which is interred in Poet’s Corner next to the whole corpse of Dickens) and his two wives are buried. And it opens up the discussion of what Hardy was trying to do—to freeze in time the “liminal” space between agrarian society and the industrialization of rural Dorset. And it has charming scenes and is totally packed with life symbols. It’s a perfect place to start a Hardy journey (along with Madding Crowd and the luminous poem “The Oxen”).
I never warmed up to Wharton. I’ve read Age of Innocence and The House of Mirth and they were okay. I read Custom of the Country during lockdown and didn’t like it. Undine Spragg was insufferable—Scarlet O’Hara without charm or charisma. Now I like those spunky women—Becky Sharp is one of my all-time favorite characters. Re Hardy: Under the Greenwood Tree is a perfect book club book—it’s short, sweet, and has all of the Hardy themes (except the lust side of sex) in one small package. If you ever visit Hardy country as I have, it’s a must because the church in that book is totally based on the church where Hardy (minus his heart, which is interred in Poet’s Corner next to the whole corpse of Dickens) and his two wives are buried. And it opens up the discussion of what Hardy was trying to do—to freeze in time the “liminal” space between agrarian society and the industrialization of rural Dorset. And it has charming scenes and is totally packed with life symbols. It’s a perfect place to start a Hardy journey (along with Madding Crowd and the luminous poem “The Oxen”).
I adore Wharton. I think House of Mirth is a great story, and I think Undine Spragg is about the best character name ever, though Dickens can compete a little. I think she’s supposed to be insufferable, isn’t she?
I have read The oxen and a bit more of Hardy’s poetry, but again a long time ago. In my recent big downsize, I believe I kept my little Hardy book, though I moved on most of my poetry books. (I can’t check the Hardy because I’m away from home.) I will add Under the Greenwood Tree to me group’s suggestion list though we probably won’t do another classic this year. I haven’t really been to Hardy country, but I have been to Austen country, Bronte country, the Lakes and Stratford on Avon.
My American reading group – when we lived there for a few years – did Far from the madding crowd, and it went well. My Aussie group did Jude the Obscure, but that was a long time ago,