Workers’ Sickness, Death, and Suffering: A Historical Reading of Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

Abstract

This paper is a historical and socio-political analysis of the novel Mary Barton, by Elizabeth Gaskell, where the novel is seen as an eloquent expression of defalcation, morbidity and mortality of workers in the factory, industrial Manchester, in the Victorian period. Placing the story in the framework of the Chartist Movement, the paper examines the growing distance between the owners of factories and the working populations and the role of economic exploitation and political disregard in the growth of the tension between classes. With a theoretical background on Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Louis Althusser, the paper will examine how the novel reveals the structural dynamic of inequalities of industrial capitalism such as low wages, unemployment, starvation, diseases, and degradation of housing and health of the working classes. Characters like John Barton portray disappointments as well as ideological realization of industrial proletariat and the story shows how deprivation and alienation may lead to social turmoil and violence. Meanwhile, the human price of industrialization is also preempted in the novel in the sections about malnutrition, death of children and psychological hopelessness among the factory families. Even though the novel eventually leads to reconciliation between the workers and the masters, the study posits that the picture presented by Gaskell of industrial Manchester is still a very powerful criticism of the capitalist system and its dehumanizing nature. Through recounting the leading life experiences of the working people, Mary Barton acts as a literary expression of the plight of industry as well as a moral call to social sensitivity, discourse, and change.