Mary Barton

by

Elizabeth Gaskell

Mary Barton: Chapter 8 Summary & Analysis

Summary
Analysis
Three weeks later, Jem visits the Bartons’ in his best clothes with a flower in his buttonhole that he hopes Mary will praise so he can give it to her. Mary largely ignores him and soon flees to her bedroom, where she has more luxurious flowers from Harry. Jem is stuck listening to John talk about working conditions: once, when John was sick with fever, he helped the surgeon at the infirmary by copying his paperwork—and learned that most factory accidents occurred during the last two hours of work when workers were exhausted. John drops hints that the workers are going to do something about this. Jem, preoccupied with Mary, asks no questions and soon leaves.
The novel uses Harry’s and Jem’s flowers to insist on the economic dimension of their courtships of Mary: as romance in Victorian England is an economic proposition—men are expected to support their wives—rich men have an edge in romantic competition. In crude terms, Harry offers Mary more expensive gifts, which reminds her that he’s a better economic proposition than Jem. Meanwhile, John is attuned to the ways poor labor conditions harm workers—but Jem, mired in his personal problems, doesn’t care.
Themes
Employers vs. Workers Theme Icon
Sexuality and Danger Theme Icon
For the past three years, the cost of food has risen while work has gotten scarcer. Many working-class families are slowly starving, which foments hatred of the rich. The workers suspect that Parliament doesn’t know of their misery, so in spring 1839, a massive petition is created about economic conditions in manufacturing areas, and some worker-representatives are selected to bring the petition to Parliament. John is one of the representatives. He’s excited to see London and hopeful Parliament will help.
The Chartist movement (c. 1830s–1850s), which championed legal rights and political participation for working-class men, really did compose a petition to Parliament in early 1839 and bring it to the House of Commons in June 1839. The novel frames the problem in terms of empathy and ignorance: the workers believe that legislators simply don’t know about their plight—but that if they did, they would do something.
Themes
Employers vs. Workers Theme Icon
Empathy vs. Ignorance Theme Icon
The night before John leaves for London, many neighbors stop by. Various men ask John to petition Parliament to end starvation or pass a bill mandating shorter workdays. Mrs. Davenport comes and asks whether Parliament could repeal the law against children working in factories: her son Ben is strong and terribly hungry, and she has no money to send him to school, so she’d like him to go work rather than spend his days as a street delinquent. Several other men offer their own petitions for John to bring to Parliament, and John says he’ll do his best, though he intends to focus on the workers’ miserable poverty.
That John’s neighbors all ask and expect him to bring their opinions to Parliament shows the spirit of mutual aid and community animating the novel’s working-class characters. Meanwhile, Mrs. Davenport’s rather alarming desire that Parliament repeal laws against child labor shows that working-class characters have diverse political views and are not uniformly economically progressive.
Themes
Employers vs. Workers Theme Icon
Poverty and Morality Theme Icon
After the visitors have left, John mentions to Mary that Mrs. Wilson has been looking very sickly—though she hasn’t been strong since a factory wheel damaged her hip in an accident as a young woman. Mr. Wilson married her shortly after the accident, though many thought he ought to have jilted her. John worries what will happen to Mr. Wilson if his wife dies.
Mrs. Wilson’s factory accident points out again how Victorian employers, knowingly or not, accrue wealth from working conditions that harm their employees. John’s casual admission that lots of people thought Mr. Wilson should have jilted his fiancée due to disability shows the penetration of romance by economics: people think wives should be domestic workers, which imperils disabled women in the marriage market.
Themes
Employers vs. Workers Theme Icon
Sexuality and Danger Theme Icon
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Mary has decided not to see Harry while John is away, suggesting that she has a guilty conscience, though she tells herself her marriage to Harry will help John. Harry pays one of Mary’s coworkers, the friendly but wholly superficial Sally Leadbitter, to carry messages for him to Mary. One evening, Harry gives Sally a letter begging Mary to reverse her decision and see him. When Sally enters the Bartons’ house in search of Mary, she finds Mary weeping. Sally teases Mary for crying over her love of Harry. Mary, piqued, says she may not love Harry at all; she’s crying over Mr. Wilson, who suddenly died that very day.
Mary’s guilty conscience over Harry hints that she too sees even the slightest hint of premarital romance as dangerous and sinful, even as she is repressing that viewpoint in herself. Mr. Wilson’s sudden death, meanwhile, insists on the vulnerability and precarity of workers’ lives in Victorian England.
Themes
Employers vs. Workers Theme Icon
Sexuality and Danger Theme Icon
Sally gives Mary Harry’s letter. Mary asks Sally to tell Harry she won’t meet him while John’s gone. While Sally is trying to change Mary’s mind, Margaret enters. Sally quickly leaves. Mary, noticing Margaret’s eyes are red, asks whether she’s been crying. Margaret says yes, but for joy, and shows Mary a gold sovereign: she’s had her first professional singing engagement at the Mechanics’ Institute, and she’s been hired to sing there again. Moreover, she finally admitted to her grandfather (Job) that she was going blind. He wept and began moving objects out of her way in case they tripped her, but he took it gently. Margaret, happily, sings a little of the song she is to perform next; Mary cries and laughingly predicts wealth in Margaret’s future.
Mary’s insistence that she won’t see Harry while John is gone again underlines that she consciously or subconsciously views her flirtation as dangerous. Her joy at Margaret’s success, on the other hand, underlines her generous, community-minded spirit—emblematic of working-class morality in the novel. (The Mechanics’ Institute was a working-class community center with cultural programming.)
Themes
Sexuality and Danger Theme Icon
Poverty and Morality Theme Icon