Mary Barton

by

Elizabeth Gaskell

Mary Barton: Chapter 33 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Back at the Sturgis home, Mary is delirious and hallucinating, convinced Jem is still in danger even when he comes to visit her. From her wild murmurings, Jem—but no one else—realizes that she knows her father is the real murderer. Though unsure of John’s motive—perhaps Harry’s pursuit of Mary, perhaps the struggle between workers and employers—Jem figured out John’s guilt because John borrowed Jem’s gun, the murder weapon, two days before the murder took place. Jem was unwilling for Mary’s sake to prove his own innocence by damning Mary’s father, however.
This passage implies that Mary’s divided loyalties—her desire to protect both her father and Jem—have worn her out so thoroughly that they’ve made her seriously ill. It also makes explicit that Jem refused to save himself from execution by revealing the real murder, John, out of love for Mary, another indication that romantic and sexual love may make people endanger themselves.
Themes
Sexuality and Danger Theme Icon
While Jem is waiting anxiously in the Sturgis house, listening to Mary’s delirious ravings, Job visits. Job has received a letter from Margaret suggesting Alice will die soon; he proposes that he watch over Mary while Jem accompanies Mrs. Wilson and Will back to Manchester to see Alice. When Jem wants to protest, Job tells Jem that Jem owes it to his mother even if he loves Mary. Worried that Mary might betray John’s guilt, Jem hurriedly tells Job that Mary in her illness is mixing up the thought of her father with the trial she just attended. Job says it’s no wonder.
When Job advises Will that he has a duty to his mother—and implicitly to Alice—to travel back to Manchester, the advice shows how working-class morality cuts against ideals of romantic love: as represented in the novel, working-class morality is essentially about giving aid to one’s family and larger community, whereas romantic love is an obsessive, individual fixation on one other person.  
Themes
Sexuality and Danger Theme Icon
Poverty and Morality Theme Icon
Jem takes a last look at Mary, terrified that she’ll die or never recover her wits after finally confessing her love for him. Job, guessing Jem’s thoughts, tells him he has to trust in God. Jem returns with Mrs. Wilson and Will to Manchester, where Alice—still convinced she is back in her childhood—diffuses a peaceful religious atmosphere before dying. At Alice’s funeral, Margaret comforts Will, and though he feels utterly bereft, he also feels a “golden thread” within “the darkness of his sorrow.” Meanwhile, Jem plans to return to Mary in Liverpool the day after the funeral.
Job’s advice to trust in God and the religious peacefulness of Alice’s death both underscore the importance of Christian faith to a good life in the novel’s worldview. The “golden thread” that Jem feels in the midst of grief is presumably his love for Mary; this imagery brings to mind earlier scenes in which Jem and Mary felt inappropriately excited for their love of one another during somber occasions, (like when Jem proclaimed his love for Mary right after his brothers’ deaths).
Themes
Sexuality and Danger Theme Icon
Christianity Theme Icon
When Jem discusses his plans with Margaret on the way home from the funeral, she notes how odd it is that John hasn’t returned even during Mary’s illness. She wishes aloud that John were home. Jem, silently, does not concur. Jem asks Margaret to look after Mrs. Wilson while he is in Liverpool. Margaret doesn’t want to spend too much time at the Wilsons’ for fear it would look like she was throwing herself at Will, but she reluctantly agrees.
Precisely because Margaret likes Will, her modesty and sexual virtue caution her to avoid him—another example of the extremely strict sexual conservatism of the novel’s Victorian milieu, which represents sexual attraction as dangerous and shameful.
Themes
Sexuality and Danger Theme Icon
Get the entire Mary Barton LitChart as a printable PDF.
Mary Barton PDF
Once Jem and Mrs. Wilson are alone at home—Will having retired to a bedroom—Jem announces that he plans to return to Liverpool to see Mary. When Mrs. Wilson asks hostilely who Mary is to him, Jem replies that he’ll marry her if she lives and won’t even be able to speak his grief if she dies. Mrs. Wilson, jealous that her only surviving son loves another, snipes at him that he’s abandoning her—that he’s forgotten how she testified to his innocence at trial. Jem tells her he could never forget but that his love for Mary doesn’t mean he loves his mother any less. He begs her to bless his journey to Liverpool and to look on Mary as a daughter.
Through her sniping, Mrs. Wilson implies that Jem’s romantic love for Mary is incompatible with the family- and community-oriented morality that has characterized the working-class throughout the novel. By contrast, Jem implicitly wants to neutralize the conflict between selfish romantic love and family-oriented morality by marrying Mary, thus making her a member of his family and Mrs. Wilson’s “daughter.”
Themes
Sexuality and Danger Theme Icon
Poverty and Morality Theme Icon
When Mrs. Wilson complainingly asks why Jem can’t just stay home and out of trouble, a frustrated Jem asks her whether she wants him to be happy the way Mr. Wilson was happy with her. Sadly, Mrs. Wilson wishes she had made Mr. Wilson happier; her debilitating accident worsened her temper and sometimes made her nag him. Jem reminds her that she and Mr. Wilson had as happy a marriage as most people manage. Then he asks her, for Mr. Wilson’s sake, to love and accept Mary. Mrs. Wilson, crying, puts her hands on Jem’s head; then she blesses him and asks God to bless Mary for Jem’s sake. Jem, overjoyed, tells Mrs. Wilson that if she shows Mary her true personality, Mary will love her as much as Jem does.
Mrs. Wilson attributes her bad temper to the factory accident that left her permanently weak and in pain. This backstory shows how economic conditions and class exploitation affect the private and emotional lives of the novel’s working-class characters. After all, Mrs. Wilson, who was injured on the job, becomes less kind to her husband than she wants to be. Meanwhile, Jem appeals to Mrs. Wilson’s community-and family-oriented working-class morality to get her to accept Mary; when he asks Mrs. Wilson to accept Mary for his sake, she marshals her Christian charity to bless Mary.
Themes
Employers vs. Workers Theme Icon
Sexuality and Danger Theme Icon
Christianity Theme Icon
Poverty and Morality Theme Icon
Jem goes to visit Margaret. When he tells her about his conversation with Mrs. Wilson, she comments gloomily that he’s hoping for an engagement on Alice’s funeral day: “the dead are soon forgotten!” Jem gently chastises her, saying that new happiness need not mean forgetting the dead, any more than Margaret’s blindness requires her to forget the faces she once knew. At eleven o’clock, after Jem leaves Margaret’s, he sees a weak-looking silhouette—it’s John Barton! After John vanishes into the Barton house, a shocked Jem decides not to tell him about Mary’s illness, unsure how a visit from her beloved father might affect her given her knowledge of the murder.
In this passage, Margaret and Jem model two different views of the relationship between romantic love and community-oriented morality. Whereas Margaret thinks that Jem’s joy in his individual romantic love is selfish in light of Alice’s recent death, Jem argues that he can simultaneously delight in Mary’s love and grieve Alice—that is, simultaneously pursue sex and romance within the bounds of social acceptability while discharging his social and emotional duties to his community. As Jem gets the last word in the debate, the novel seems to side with him.
Themes
Sexuality and Danger Theme Icon
Poverty and Morality Theme Icon