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Chapter 9
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
Another year passes while the poor suffer, starve, and sometimes die. John, having missed work to petition Parliament, becomes unemployed. Though Mary receives two meals a day from Miss Simmonds, the Bartons have to pay rent, which eats up almost all of Mary’s salary. John and Mary are about to move when the landlord reduces the rent by three pence a week, just barely allowing the Bartons to remain. Yet Mary has to pawn some of their furniture and blankets to afford food. During this period, Mary derives more pride from having a rich, handsome lover. Sally, noticing Mary’s obsession with money, counsels Harry to “bring matters more to a point”—but he refuses, not wanting to wound Mary’s vanity, though he still intends to possess her “one way or another.”
That Harry intends to possess Mary “one way or another” reveals that he doesn’t necessarily intend to marry her—meaning that Mary is in moral and social danger from Harry, as women who had premarital sex were not treated well in Victorian England. When Sally tells Harry to “bring matters more to a point,” context suggests that she’s advising him to offer Mary money, gifts, or some material goods in exchange for sex. The possibility that Harry could try to “buy” Mary implicitly parallels the employers’ economic exploitation of the workers with a rich young man’s economically coercive sexual exploitation of a working-class young woman.
Themes
Harry wouldn’t be so sure Mary was attracted to him if he knew that she spent time with him in part to avoid her unpleasant home life. John is dour and angry; once, when Mary answers back to him, he beats her—though afterward he apologizes, swears never to hit her again, and keeps his word. Mary also hears her father having clandestine meetings with other “desperate” men.
Harry poses a romantic “danger” to Mary because he represents a more comfortable life rather than because she genuinely loves him. Though the passage doesn’t explicitly mention religion, John’s “desperate” actions and violence toward Mary contrast with the hope and peacefulness of characters like Alice Wilson, implying that John is desperate because he is focused on worldly, secular concerns rather than religious ones.
Themes
One evening, John asks whether Mary has gone to see Mrs. Wilson and scolds her for not having done so sooner. Mary decides to visit the next afternoon when Jem will be at work. When Mary arrives, Mrs. Wilson sarcastically pretends to barely recognize her—her grief has worsened her temper. Mary, who has no excuse for not visiting, shamefacedly turns to greet Alice, who (having moved in to help Mrs. Wilson) is knitting by the fire. Mrs. Wilson tells Mary she’ll have to speak up—Alice is going deaf. When Alice agrees and says she’ll likely die soon, Mrs. Wilson tells her not to forecast more deaths and starts crying.
Given the community-oriented nature of working-class morality as represented in the novel, Mary has violated important moral norms by failing to visit and comfort the Wilsons after Mr. Wilson’s sudden death—hence Mrs. Wilson’s anger. Alice’s peaceful prediction of her own death subtly reinforces her characterization as a faithfully religious, peaceful, and resigned person, in contrast with the more troubled, grief-stricken Mrs. Wilson.
Themes
Mrs. Wilson, weeping, recollects to Mary what a good husband Mr. Wilson was and how handsome he was as a young man. Bessy Witter—now Mrs. Carson—wanted to marry him when they were young, though now she and Mr. Carson are so much higher-status than the rest of the working Mancunians. Mary blushes, hoping that Mrs. Wilson will say more about the Carsons but fearing to ask. Instead, Mrs. Wilson reminisces about how badly she did the housework when she was first married—she had worked in a factory since age five and had no idea how to cook. She and Alice agree that married women shouldn’t be allowed to work in factories; their houses get dirty and their husbands are driven to drink in gin shops.
The novel partly undermines its own suggestion that failures of empathy generally derive from ignorance by reminding readers that Mr. and Mrs. Carson have working-class backgrounds. Given that they should understand the struggles of their employees, this detail implicitly asks, why don’t they do more to help their employees? Alice and Mrs. Wilson’s disapproval of working wives, meanwhile, emphasizes how hard life can be for working-class women: they may need to work outside the home to help support their families economically, yet they are also expected to create a welcoming environment for their husbands and blamed for working-class male drinking.
Themes
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Alice mentions that Jem has been promoted and ought to marry soon; moreover, she feels he deserves an excellent wife. Though Mary enjoys hearing Jem praised, she blushes and looks piqued. Seeing Mary’s irritation, Mrs. Wilson—annoyed at Mary for not visiting, and thinking Mary inferior to Jem—lies a little to convince Mary that Jem doesn’t prefer her, claiming that Jem may propose to a shopgirl, Molly Gibson, who’s been making eyes at him. Mrs. Wilson goes to fetch a quilt Molly made her so that she can show Mary. While Mrs. Wilson is gone, Mary commiserates with Alice over her growing deafness. Mrs. Wilson returns with the quilt and insists Mary praise it. Mary, annoyed, leaves soon—and encourages Harry’s flirtation more over the next few days.
Mary likes to hear Jem praised—another detail hinting that she cares more about Jem romantically than she herself knows or admits. Her urge to flirt more with Harry upon hearing that Molly Gibson is chasing after Jem is similar to Jem’s inappropriate declaration of feelings to Mary right after his brothers’ deaths: it suggests that romance makes people act irrationally, inappropriately, and even self-destructively, and it implicitly argues that sex and romance need to be socially controlled.
Themes
A few weeks later, John is returning home at night from a Trades’ Union meeting when a woman he immediately identifies as a sex worker tries to speak with him. He curses her and tells her to go away—until, suddenly, he recognizes her as Esther. Then, furious, he sarcastically reminds her that he told her she’d end up a sex worker. Esther begs him to listen to her “for Mary’s sake”—meaning John’s daughter Mary. John assumes that she means the dead Mrs. Barton, who was also named Mary; even more infuriated, he accuses Esther of having caused Mrs. Barton’s death, shoves her away, and leaves.
John’s cruel reaction to Esther indicates the social danger that premarital sexual activity poses to Victorian woman: unless they are virgins or wives, men feel justified in treating them badly. His vengefulness toward Esther due to Mrs. Barton’s death also indirectly shows how he is straying further from the Christian principles that animate the “role model” characters in the novel (e.g. Alice Wilson).
Themes
Esther falls and struggles to rise. A passing policeman assumes she’s drunk and takes her to jail. In jail, a sick and delirious Esther talks to herself, wondering what to do, since John didn’t listen to her: she wants to save Mary from her own fate, as Mary is “listening just as I listened, and loving just as I loved.” She longs to pray for Mary but believes that God won’t listen to the prayers of a sinner like her. The next morning, the police move her from jail to prison for a month.
This passage connects the danger that flirtation with Harry poses to Mary with the harm that premarital sexuality has clearly caused Esther: Esther’s lament that Mary is “listening just as I listened” suggests that Esther believed some young lover’s promises—a belief that ultimately led her to sex work and social ostracism.
Themes
