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Chapter 21
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
Once Esther leaves, Mary bars the door and covers the windows. She has recognized the wadding as made of paper from the valentine Jem sent her—the valentine she repurposed to copy a Samuel Bamford poem for John. Thus, the wadding proves to her that John murdered Harry. She goes to search John’s things for the rest of the paper—hoping that she won’t find it, that John gave the poem away to a friend prior to the murder—and finds it in John’s coat pocket, along with bullets and a packet of gunpowder.
The wadding implicates John, not Jem; thus, it comes to represent Mary’s potentially divided loyalties: while she could use the wadding to exculpate the young man she loves, she would have to condemn her own father to do so. Thus, once again, romance leads Mary into intense emotional turmoil.
Themes
Mary is sure that Jem never told John about Harry, so she has no idea what John’s motive for murder was. While she is horrified by her father’s crime, she feels relief that Jem is innocent. She resolves to prove his innocence—somehow without implicating her father. She burns the wadding and, feeling that she must gather all her strength, goes to sleep. The next morning, she wakes up determined to provide Jem with an alibi for the murder.
By burning the wadding, Mary reveals her intense loyalty to her father despite his crime. Her determination to save Jem, meanwhile, seems to derive not only from her love of him but also from her misogynistic guilt and self-blame at having flirted with Harry, which—through no fault of Mary’s own—led to Jem’s arrest.
Themes
Mary goes to Job’s, hears Job and Margaret talking, and realizes they must be discussing not only the murder but Mary’s blamable flirtation with Harry, which Mary never told Margaret about. Mary greets them in a small voice. Job greets her with excessive formality, while Margaret says nothing. Mary says she’s come to ask their help in proving Jem innocent. When Job suggests that Jem did commit the murder because Mary “jilted” him, Mary begs him to help anyway, asking how somebody produces an alibi. Job suggests that the best way to clear Jem’s name is to find the real murderer, terrifying Mary—but then he adds that she needs to figure out where Jem was the night the murder was committed.
It’s not only Jem’s frantic mother Mrs. Wilson that blames Mary for Jem’s arrest; it’s also Mary’s own close friends Job and Margaret. Their cold greetings to Mary and Job’s suggestion that Jem only killed Harry because Mary “jilted” him show that they see Mary’s flirtation as not simply Jem’s motive for murder but also a reason to hold Mary morally responsible for Jem’s supposed violence—an unfair judgment revealing Victorian misogyny and the danger of sex and romance to Victorian girls and women.
Themes
Meanwhile, Margaret still sits silent. Because she has never had her vanity appealed to and finds it easy to do the right thing, she can’t understand why Mary flirted with Harry, judges her harshly as an immodest girl, and thinks of ending their friendship. Then, abruptly, Mary asks whether Margaret was with Alice the night of the murder and heard Jem come home. Margaret says she remembers something about Jem escorting Will partway to Liverpool. Mary immediately resolves to go ask Mrs. Wilson about it.
Here, the novel suggests that Margaret can’t empathize with Mary’s foibles due to a lack of experiential knowledge: Margaret doesn’t know what it’s like to be pretty or to be particularly tempted by the wrong thing, and so she condemns her friend. Interestingly, by contextualizing Margaret’s lack of empathy in her lack of knowledge, the novel suggests that Margaret would empathize with Mary’s foibles if she knew more. Thus, the novel implies that readers, who have been given access to Mary’s consciousness, ought to empathize with Mary and forgive her faults.
Themes
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When Mary reaches the Wilsons’, Mrs. Wilson announces that Jem’s trial is on Tuesday, bursts into tears, and says she’ll blame his execution on Mary. Mary asks where Jem was Thursday night. Mrs. Wilson explains that he accompanied Will partway to Liverpool. Mary says that they must contact Will, who can swear that Jem was with him. She is horribly pained by her conviction that John murdered Harry, but she feels her “first duty” is to focus on Jem.
Yet again, Mrs. Wilson’s insistence on blaming Jem’s legal peril on Mary exemplifies Victorian misogyny and so reveals the dangers for Victorian women and girls of any involvement in sexual or romantic intrigue. Meanwhile, Mary’s sense that her “first duty” is to Jem shows her growing loyalty to him even over and above her father, while her practical determination to secure Jem’s alibi once again characterizes the novel’s working-class protagonists and pragmatically moral and prone to mutual aid.
Themes
