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Chapter 16
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
Two days later, a Thursday, Will visits Mary at the Bartons’ and says he must say goodbye: his ship sails on Tuesday, and he still needs to visit family on the Isle of Man. When Mary suggests he travel part of the way with John, who’s going to Glasgow for the Union, Will says he plans to walk to Liverpool that night to catch his boat. Abruptly, Will asks after Margaret. When Mary says Margaret seems happy, Will says he wishes he could “comfort” and “cherish” her somehow—as it is, she seems so superior to him that he can’t imagine proposing. Mary laughs at him a little; though Will laughs too, he says Mary’s laughter proves she’s never been in love. Mary blushes and tears up, but Will doesn’t notice.
Will, a positively connoted character, sees the duty of a lover to “comfort” and “cherish” his beloved—in stark contrast with Harry Carson, who wants to “possess” or “obtain” his love object (Mary) as if she were a consumer item. Thus, while the novel generally represents romance and sex as dangerous, it gives Will’s chaste and respectful love of Margaret as a counterexample illustrating what “good” romance looks like.
Themes
Will says that he might receive a promotion to second mate on his upcoming voyage, after which he’d “have something to offer Margaret.” He asks Mary whether she thinks Margaret might return his feelings. Mary says he should ask Margaret, not her—but she advises him to speak to Margaret before he leaves. He says he can’t, but he shows Mary a tacky little accordion he bought and asks her to give it to Margaret once he’s gone. After Mary promises, Will asks her to look in on the ailing Alice from time to time.
Again, in contrast with Harry Carson, who wants to possess or obtain Mary “cheaply,” Will believes that he shouldn’t approach Margaret romantically until he has “something to offer” her economically. Through this contrast, the novel suggests that good and honorable men want to support their beloveds materially, while bad men want to give their beloveds as little as possible.
Themes
John enters, looking grim and distressed. When Will announces that he’s come to say farewell, John gives him a gruff goodbye—so Will shakes hands with Mary and leaves. Mary tries to make conversation with John and tempt him to eat, but he answers her tersely and claims to have gotten used to starving. Then Job comes in to pay John a visit before John catches the train to Glasgow. John, annoyed, stomps upstairs, but Job stays and chats with Mary. He admits that he only belongs to the Union and adheres to the strike because the union men would violently pester him if he didn’t—on the whole, he’d rather accept bad pay: “half a loaf is better than no bread.”
Job’s claim that “half a loaf is better than no bread” indicates that, if he knew that the employers were offering such low wages to ensure that everyone got paid at all, he would be on the employers’ side. Assuming that other workers might share Job’s view, the novel is bolstering its implicit argument that the employers made a mistake not by offering their workers exploitatively low wages but by arrogantly failing to explain the reasons behind the wage decrease.
Themes
John comes downstairs and says goodbye to Job and Mary. When Mary begs John to pause and eat something, he brushes her off and leaves—but when she stands in the doorway, crying, he turns around, hugs her, and blesses her. She begs him one more time to eat, but he says he can’t and leaves. Afterward, without knowing why, Mary feels devastated. Meanwhile, as a miserable John walks away, his thoughts turn to his baby son Tom.
Previously in the novel, John has alluded to his baby son Tom, who starved to death, as an example of the sort of suffering that the rich employer class doesn’t understand and has failed to alleviate it. When he thinks of Tom here, it suggests he is fortifying himself to take some action against the employers.
Themes
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Margaret, crying, enters the Bartons’ and announces that Alice has just had a stroke. Mary asks where Jem was, and Margaret replies that he went out and hasn’t come back. She went and told Mrs. Davenport what happened, and Mrs. Davenport tended Alice while Mrs. Wilson fetched a doctor. Job laments that Will left just before this happened. Job and Margaret leave the Bartons’ house. Mary, left alone, feels a sudden fear that Harry will learn she’s unprotected—and a sudden despair that Jem may no longer love her.
Mrs. Davenport’s immediate aid to Mrs. Wilson after Alice’s stroke shows once again the community-minded morality and mutual aid that characterize the working-class community in the novel. Meanwhile, Mary’s fear that Harry will know her father has left reminds readers that Harry is a sexual and social threat to Mary, not merely a former boyfriend.
Themes
