SOURCE: Brodetsky, Tessa. “The Industrial Scene—First Reactions: Mary Barton.” In Elizabeth Gaskell, pp. 13-28. Leamington Spa, U.K.: Berg, 1986.

In the following essay, Brodetsky praises Gaskell's novel for its powerful depiction of the poverty and suffering of the working-class inhabitants of Britain's industrial cities in the mid-nineteenth century.

You may tempt the upper classes With your villainous demi-tasses, But Heaven will protect the Working Girl. 

Edgar Smith (1857-1938)

Disraeli's novel, Sybil, subtitled The Two Nations, was published in 1845. It deals with what came to be known as ‘the condition of England question’, and in it he describes the lives of the working-classes of the period. The two nations of the title are the rich and the poor, and Mary Barton, Mrs Gaskell's first novel, is dominated by the same theme, the separateness of rich and poor. These early social novels derived their main force from the exposure...