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Chapter 26
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mary Barton, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Employers vs. Workers
Sexuality and Danger
Christianity
Poverty and Morality
Empathy vs. Ignorance
Summary
Analysis
Utterly horrified, Mary begins addressing her absent father John in disjointed phrases, finally concluding that it will “come right in the grave.” When Mrs. Jones speculates that Mary is going insane, Mary pulls herself together and asks about Will’s ship. Mrs. Jones explains that Will didn’t know the ship’s departure time had changed till he arrived in Liverpool. He boarded the boat the previous night to be ready for the morning tide. Mrs. Jones calls her son Charley, who confirms he saw a steamboat towing Will’s ship downriver that morning. Mary, horrified, bemoans that someone will die because Will is not present to provide an alibi. Charley, stirred to action, says they should try to catch Will by boat before high water arrives and allows his ship to sail over the high sandbanks at the river’s mouth.
When Mary believes that she won’t be able to secure an alibi for Jem, she begins speaking aloud to John, who isn’t there. This speech may suggest that she is considering implicating her father to save Jem, indicating her divided loyalties; however, her claim that the situation will “come right in the grave” suggests that she cannot see a good resolution to the situation in life, only in an implicitly Christian afterlife. Meanwhile, Charley’s enthusiasm for helping Mary—though he only just met her—continues the novel’s representation of working-class characters as essentially and unselfishly willing to help one another.
Themes
Mary asks Charley where she should get a boat. Charley volunteers to take her to the pier where she can hire one. He runs off, Mary following. While they hurry, Charley asks Mary her name, her relationship to the man who needs an alibi, and her hometown. When they reach the pier, Charley asks a sailor to climb a mast and see whether Will’s ship is still on the river. The sailor, who approves of Mary’s apparent modest poverty, agrees and discovers that the ship is still on the river. Mary and Charley hurry to the water, where watermen, sensing Mary’s desperation, make her promise them all her money and her shawl as payment for boating her to Will’s ship.
The sailor who finds out for Mary that Will’s ship is still on the water approves of her modesty and poverty, suggesting that he helps her out of working-class solidarity. Yet the watermen exploit Mary’s desperation to take economic advantage of her; thus, not all the working-class characters display solidarity with one another or conform to the practical, helpful morality that usually characterizes working-class relations in the novel.
Themes
