Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life by Elizabeth Gaskell. Edited with an introduction and notes by Shirley Foster. New York: Oxford University Press. 2006. 480 pages.

A tale of Manchester working life set in the 1830s, Mary Barton begins as bucolically as any gritty urban novel can. The Bartons, who are expecting an addition to the family, meet the Wilsons, who are carrying their infant twins, at Green Heys Fields. The charm of these low, flat, treeless tracts lies in their rural contrast to “the busy, bustling manufacturing town [he] left but half an hour ago.” The couples adjourn to the Barton home for tea, where Gaskell lovingly describes every modest luxury such working folk can manage — the bright green japanned tea tray with its scarlet lovers, the cupboard of crockery and glass of which Mrs. Barton is so proud, and the hodgepodge of furniture (“sure sign of good times among the mills”). In honor of their guests, the Bartons send young Mary out for fresh eggs (“one a-piece, that will be five pence”), milk, bread, and Cumberland ham.

Thus Mary Barton commences with a self-conscious air of cautious prosperity, but underneath the pleasure of the occasion are hints of despair to come — Mrs. Barton’s distress over the disappearance of her sister, and the Wilsons’ “little, feeble twins, inheriting the frail appearance of their mother.” In chapters I and II, Gaskell sets up the end of abundance and joy for the Bartons and the beginning of misery for their entire class in the mill city of Manchester.

Mary Barton is a novel of contrasts. While the Bartons take homely pride in their furniture and wares, the Carsons live in a “good house . . . furnished with disregard to expense . . . [with] much taste shown, and many articles chosen for their beauty and elegance.” As Carson’s former employee, Ben Davenport, lies dying in a filthy basement in the company of his wife and children, who are “too young to work, but not too young to be cold and hungry,” Carson’s youngest daughter Amy tells her brother and father that she “can’t live without flowers and scents” and that “life was not worth having without flowers.” They can’t live without food and shelter, and she thinks she can’t live without luxuries. Perhaps the most terrible contrast is between the “listless, sleepy” Carson sisters and the tragedy that interrupts their idle chatter.

The contrast and conflict between the rich and the poor, the men and the masters, is not conventionally based on envy or even class; Carson was once no better and no richer than anyone else. The men don’t aspire to wealth, at least for now. They want to feed their families and perhaps to enjoy the simple comforts the Bartons once shared with the Wilsons. What keeps masters and men apart is not class or money, but a more fundamental unwillingness to acknowledge the other’s humanity. Mr. Carson can’t be bothered to recall who Ben Davenport is, other than one of the many faceless men who worked for him for many years, or to give Wilson more than a useless outpatient order. Instead of approaching the masters, the men, who are powerless as individuals, join groups and send delegates like John Barton to London and Glasgow to try to gain government support for their cause. On their own, they fail.

Neither side is willing to break the communication barrier. Ignoring one of their number who wisely notes, “I don’t see how our interests can be separated,” the masters choose to hide the conundrum they face from the men, who are described as “cruel brutes . . . more like wild beasts than human beings.” Even as the omniscient narrator shows the just causes for both groups’ anger toward one another and tries to avoid demonstrating a preference, she can’t resist retorting parenthetically, “Well, who might have made them [the men] different?” It takes a murder and a near miscarriage of justice merely to open the door to redemption for the man in each side’s leading role.

Mary becomes the fulcrum of the characters and plot, connecting the Bartons to the Carsons, the unforgiving John to the repentant Esther, the worldly men and the more spiritually minded women. Through positive and negative models like Alice, Job, Margaret, Esther, Mrs. Wilson, and Sally, and through her true and patient if frustrated lover, Mary avoids Esther’s fate and is transformed from a heedless young girl into a courageous woman who is able to withstand the pull of her divided loyalties.

Confronted with the undeniable humanity of John Barton and the relentlessness of his unfamiliar poverty, Mr. Carson finally recognizes the need for change. As guardian of the old institutions, however, he struggles with his ambivalence toward taking action. Meanwhile, Mary Barton simply leaves the dead and the past behind to embrace an entirely different kind of future in a new country.

Mary Barton lacks some of the psychological depth and nuances that make Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters more interesting and engaging; here, the characters behave consistently and predictably. Despite the ease of its characterizations and assumptions, though, Mary Barton is a surprisingly stark, unvarnished look at the poorer, seamier side of urban industrial life. Gaskell accomplishes what the masters and men have failed to do — she recognizes the humanity in each of them and hints at its potential if only it is discovered and embraced.

16 September 2009
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell. Edited by Elizabeth Porges Watson. New introduction and notes by Charlotte Mitchell. ISBN 0-19-283209-3. Recommended.

Not a novel, not an anthology of short stories, Cranford is perhaps best described as a cohesive series of vignettes. Recounted by a young woman of about 30 from the city of Drumble [Manchester], these stories depict family, friendship, and love lost and found in a village dominated by poor but genteel spinsters and widows. “. . . all the holders of houses, above a certain rent, are women.” Small, rural, and elitist in its way, Cranford is a place out of time, where faded fashions and proprieties still matter.

Gaskell begins Cranford with a series of descriptive statements. Some are accurate, while others prove to be ironic. For example, “Although the ladies of Cranford know all each other’s proceedings, they are exceedingly indifferent to each other’s opinions.” While discovering Cranford and the Amazons who possess it, we also learn the dry perspective and voice of the narrator, who clearly loves the village while gently highlighting the foibles of its female inhabitants. “But I will answer for it, the last gigot, the last tight and scanty petticoat in wear in England, was seen in Cranford — and seen without a smile.”

Like Gaskell’s Wives and Daughters, Cranford is focused on gender roles and the different lives of women and men. The sexes share many characteristics; Captain Brown and Peter Jenkyns display the thoughtful, neighborly solicitude associated with women (with Peter going so far as to don a woman’s dress), while Miss Jenkyns (the woman Peter impersonates) exhibits a manly will and resolution. It is the opportunities they have and the way in which they live that separates the sexes. Captain Brown, Peter, and Signor Brunoni have traveled and seen some of the world, and have even influenced it, while Miss Jenkyns, Miss Matty, Miss Price, the narrator, and their friends are constrained by their gender, gentility, and social code to hearth and home. Here, they perform their small household tasks, including ensuring that their maidservants are not disturbed or distracted by “followers,” or interested young men. The social code that prevents any of them from working in “trade” also determines the hours that can be spent outside the home. “Then there were rules and regulations for visiting and calls . . . ‘from twelve to three are our calling-hours.'”

In such a small, interconnected village, everything that happens is noteworthy, and every decision is important if the occasionally cruel social order is to be maintained. “The whole town knew and kindly regarded Miss Betty Barker’s Alderney,” whose fall into a lime-pit warrants Captain Brown’s advice, “Get her a flannel waistcoat and flannel drawers . . .,” so the narrator can ask the reader incredulously, “Do you ever seen cows dressed in grey flannel in London?” Miss Matty’s decision not to marry against her family’s wishes keeps the peace at great personal cost, and her wistful decision to allow Martha to have a follower recompenses her later when the outside world intrudes into her realm with its ugly realities — one of the many signs that Cranford must and will change. When Lady Glenmire renounces her title and takes the name of Mrs. Hoggins upon her remarriage, Cranford reels with shock and dismay, and it takes Peter Jenkyns, and his broader perspective from India, to reconcile the village and its de facto leader, Mrs. Jamieson, with the new ways.

The narrator, who divides her time between her father in the progressive world of Drumble and the slowly and reluctantly changing Cranford, finds herself under the village’s influence. As an observer, she describes the complex set of rules that govern Cranford society and the social slights they necessitate, not without a sense of regret. She is aware of the absurdity of Cranford society’s beliefs and behavior combined with expediency, such as the occasion of Miss Betty Barker’s party for the Cranford elite. “‘Oh, gentility!’ thought I, ‘can you endure this last shock?'” when “all sorts of good things for supper” appear. “. . . we thought it better to submit graciously, even at the cost of our gentility — which never ate suppers in general — but which, like most non-supper-eaters, was particularly hungry on all special occasions.” More seriously, she pities Miss Matty and her lost love and life, and like her other well-meaning friends determines that she shall be happy.

With the arrival of Signor Brunoni and the ensuing panic over the perceived crime wave that seems to hit Cranford, the narrator loses some of her wryness and seems to become nearly as frightened by the rumors of strangers and robberies as her elderly friends. It is the new outsider, Lady Glenmire, who “never had heard of any actual robberies; except that two little boys had stolen some apples from Farmer Benson’s orchard and that some eggs had been missed on a market-day off Widow Hayward’s stall.” Even while caught up in the panic, however, “I could not help being amused at Jenny’s position . . ..” When she speaks of Jenny’s ghost, the narrator says, “. . . for there was no knowing how near the ghostly head and ears might be . . ..”

Through the narrator, who seems to represent Gaskell’s own perspective, Cranford pokes gentle fun at a time and place that had already become a fairy tale-like setting, where goodness outdoes pettiness, justice prevails over setbacks and hardships, and even the prodigal son (or prince) can return to set things right. In Cranford, Gaskell reminds the reader of a recent past that is both amusing and moving, a time to look upon fondly but without regret for the changes that Peter and the marriage of Lady Glenmire/Mrs. Hoggins bring about. The one constant in life is change, and inCranford change is at least as much for the better as for the worse.

29 December 2007
Copyright © Diane L. Schirf