SOURCE: Stoneman, Patsy. “Mary Barton (1848).” In Elizabeth Gaskell, pp. 68-86. Brighton, U.K.: Harvester Press, 1987.

In the following essay, Stoneman maintains that in Mary Barton, Gaskell creates a dichotomy between working-class ethics, based on mutual aid, and middle-class ethics, based on private property and authority.

Most critical accounts of Mary Barton begin with the a priori assumption that it falls into a clear category of fiction, the ‘industrial’ or ‘social-problem’ novel, which defines both its proper subject-matter—class relations—and its proper orientation—political and economic. The ‘faults’ which most critics identify stem from this assumption. Firstly, they deplore the presence of ‘extraneous factors’ such as the love story and the murder plot (e.g. Lucas 1966: 162, 173-4), and secondly, they regret Elizabeth Gaskell's inadequate political grasp, taking her disclaimer that she knows ‘nothing of Political Economy’ (MB [Mary Barton]: 38) as a naïve acknowledgement of unfitness for the...