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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mary Barton, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Employers vs. Workers
Sexuality and Danger
Christianity
Poverty and Morality
Empathy vs. Ignorance
Summary
Analysis
One May evening, workers from Manchester make an excursion to beautiful fields outside the city. During that excursion, resolute-looking John Barton and his weeping, pregnant wife, Mrs. Barton, run into friends, Mr. Wilson and Mrs. Wilson, carrying their twin babies. Mr. Wilson greets John and asks, in a near whisper, whether he’s heard anything about Esther. While the women sit and rest, the men stroll on together, and John tells Wilson that he believes Esther has run off—her beauty (which she shares with her sister Mrs. Barton) and resulting vanity having become moral dangers to her.
When John says that Esther’s beauty and vanity are dangers to her, he implies that she has “run off” to engage in some kind of premarital romance—and that such a romance is inherently perilous for a working-class woman in Victorian England like Esther. Thus, from the novel’s beginning, it connects sexuality with danger for its female characters.
Themes
Mr. Wilson marvels that Esther moved out of the Bartons’ house in the first place. John Barton says that financial independence is the “worst” part of factory work for girls. When Esther spent her income on clothing and started coming home late, he warned her—for her own good—that she’d end up a sex worker. Her anger motivated her to move out of the house into a rented room. Nevertheless, Esther and the Bartons remained on friendly terms, and Esther last visited the Barton household the previous Sunday.
John seems to think that financial independence is the “worst” part of factory work for girls because it gives them more latitude to engage in sex-adjacent behavior: buying pretty clothes, staying out late, etc. John believes (and the narrator does not contradict him) that female sexuality ought to remain under the watchful eye and the control of male heads of household.
Themes
Mr. Wilson asks whether Esther’s demeanor had changed during her last visit. John says that at one point, Esther asked Mary whether she’d like it if one day Esther turned her into a lady. He scolded Esther for giving Mary the idea—he’d rather his daughter worked than live a life of selfish leisure. When Mr. Wilson, tickled, comments that John has never liked “gentlefolk,” John snaps back that no rich person gave him food when his son Tom was starving to death. Moreover, he doesn’t believe that rich people are ignorant of poor people’s suffering—and if they are ignorant, they should educate themselves.
This passage hints that John thinks Esther may have been a bad influence on his daughter Mary, suggesting that uncontrolled female sexuality is dangerous not only to uncontrolled women but to the people around them. The passage also introduces a strong motive for working-class John to hate rich people and the employer class: at one point, John had a son who starved to death because people with resources were either too unempathetic or too culpably ignorant to help him.
Themes
Mr. Wilson wants to hear more about Esther. John explains that on Wednesday, the Bartons received a visit from Esther’s landlady, who brought Esther’s things because Esther had said that she was moving back in with the Bartons. According to the landlady, Esther left on Tuesday night. Upon hearing this story, Mrs. Barton screamed and fainted. John tells Mr. Wilson that he feels terrible for his wife, who has suffered so much since their son Tom died. Mr. Wilson suggests that his sister Alice, neighbor to the Bartons, might visit Mrs. Barton sometimes and keep her company. Then Mary Barton, a pretty 13-year-old, bounces up to them. When Mr. Wilson’s son Jem rushes past and kisses her, she slaps him, blushing.
When John expresses a worry—that Mrs. Barton is suffering—Mr. Wilson immediately suggests that someone in their shared social circle, his sister Alice, could help. This suggestion exemplifies the communal care that poor and working-class characters show one another throughout the novel, even as rich characters largely ignore working-class suffering. In another vein, no adult seems bothered either by Jem “stealing” a kiss from Mary or by Mary hitting him—which suggests a view of sexuality according to which boys pursue girls however they like, while girls are forced to be moral “gatekeepers” preventing inappropriate sexual activity.
Themes
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