Elizabeth Gaskell: 'Mary Barton'

By: Gravil Richard

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

This provocative book in the Humanities Insights series of study guides shows Mary Barton to be a much more conflicted novel than it is usually thought to be, takes issue with patronizing accounts of Gaskell’s views, by critics who suppose themselves to be more insghtful than she was, and promotes her as an author whose grasp of the political and economic issues of the period runs deeper than is usually acknowledged. The Book considers what it meant to be a Unitarian in the 'hungry forties', what Gaskell understood of Chartism and ‘political economy’; and attitudes to women’s rights. It discusses the many ambiguities and instabilities in the book – suggesting where the reader may need to take issue with some of the standard critical assumptions about Gaskell’s text, and considers how she might be compared to Dickens – and what Dickens learned from her.And it discusses some contemporary (i.e. Victorian) and recent critical approaches to the book. The aim is to leave the reader with a great deal of respect for a novel that is sometimes underestimated – while pointing out some of its disappointing departures from the best practice of Realist writers, practices that Mrs Gaskell herself did much to invent. Richard Gravil has taught in the University of Victoria, B.C., the University of Łódż, Poland, and the University of Otago, New Zealand. His books include Romantic Dialogues: Anglo-American Continuities, 1776–1862 (St Martin’s, 2000), Wordsworth’s Bardic Vocation, 1787–1842 (Palgrave, 2003), and five edited works including Master Narratives: Tellers and Telling in the Nineteenth Century Novel (Ashgate, 2001). He is Director of the Wordsworth Winter School and Summer Conference.