SOURCE: 'Mary Barton," in Elizabeth Gaskell and the English Provincial Novel, Methuen & Co Ltd., 1975, pp. 1-46.

In the essay that follows, Craik contends that although Gaskell's Mary Barton is concerned with issues of social reform, it avoids a didactic tone in order to emphasize realistic situations and characters.

Mary Barton in 1848 is new ground for the English novel. It has new materials, presents new ways of seeing and handling both its own materials, the world in which any writer finds himself, and the human nature which it is an essential part of most writers' task to reveal. Elizabeth Gaskell, by beginning her writing career in other forms than the novel, and by not seeing herself at first as a professional novelist—or even a professional writer—makes as nearly as can be a fresh beginning to the novel as a form. Like the primitive in other arts, she...