SOURCE: Ganz, Margaret. “The Social Conscience.” In Elizabeth Gaskell: The Artist in Conflict, pp. 49-131. New York: Twayne, 1969.

In the following excerpt, Ganz discusses the authenticity of Gaskell's representation of working-class problems in Mary Barton.

I Mary Barton (1848)

The immediate appeal of Mary Barton is easily demonstrable by the many enthusiastic critical reviews, the large audience of readers, and the accolades of such important literary figures as Dickens, Carlyle, and Walter Savage Landor,¹ but the precise reasons for that appeal are not so immediately evident. The work did appropriately appear at the end of a decade of social unrest and, although it rehearsed only the beginnings of that period (the years 1839-42 in particular) its basic appraisal of social problems had not lost its pertinence.² Sheer timeliness, however, was not fully responsible for its success.

Inevitably led to compare Mrs. Gaskell's work with previous studies of social conditions...