Elizabeth Gaskell: 'Mary Barton‪'‬

This book shows Mary Barton to be a much more

conflicted novel than it is usually thought to be,

takes issue with patronising accounts of Gaskell’s

views, and promotes her as an author whose grasp

of the political and economic issues of the period

runs deeper than is usually acknowledged. The

Book considers what it meant to be a Unitarian in

the hungry forties, what Gaskell understood of

Chartism and ‘political economy’; and attitudes to

women’s rights. It discusses the many ambiguities

and instabilities in the book – suggesting where the

reader may need to take issue with some of the

standard critical assumptions about Gaskell’s text, and considers how she might be compared to

Dickens – and what Dickens learned from her.And it

discusses some contemporary (i.e. Victorian) and

recent critical approaches to the book. The aim is to

leave the reader with a great deal of respect for a

novel that is sometimes underestimated – while

pointing out some of its real departures from the

best practice of Realist writers, practices that Mrs

Gaskell herself did much to invent.