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Chapter 22
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
Mary rushes home, hoping desperately that she can prove Jem’s innocence without implicating John. She thinks that she’d rather die or go insane rather than choose whether to give up John to save Jem. She knows that Will is supposed to return to Liverpool from the Isle of Man the day before the trial, and she needs to find out where he’s staying and which ship he's sailing out on. She feels that she can’t go ask Jem. Not only is he in jail, but also, he must know that the person to whom he lent his gun is the murderer: since he hasn’t said anything, he must be refusing to prove his own innocence at that person’s expense. Suddenly, she remembers that Will’s ship was called the John Cropper—and realizes that Margaret might remember where Will was supposed to stay.
Mary’s belief that she will go mad if she has to choose between her father and the man she loves underscores yet again how John’s act of violence has divided her loyalties. Meanwhile, in reasoning through Jem’s silence on the matter of the murder weapon, Mary implicitly realizes that Jem won’t tell the police that he lent his gun to John because he doesn’t want to implicate John—suggesting that he’s risking his own execution out of loyalty to his beloved Mary’s father, another way in which his love for Mary imperils him.
Themes
A neighbor enters the Bartons’ and gives Mary a piece of paper the police left for her: a summons to Jem’s trial. Mary, frightened, refuses to believe that she must really testify and decides to take the paper to Job for interpretation. Yet when she finds him at home, he tells her that the paper is indeed a subpoena: she must testify at Jem’s trial. When Mary expresses terror, Job tries to comfort her by suggesting that her testimony won’t have much effect one way or another. Margaret comes home, and the three have a silent dinner together. Afterward, Job asks whether Jem has a lawyer. Margaret says he doesn’t—Mrs. Wilson is too distraught, though she’s convinced Jem is innocent.
The silence that presides over Job, Margaret, and Mary’s dinner together heavily implies that Job and Margaret still misogynistically blame Mary and her flirtation with Harry for Jem’s arrest, underlining yet again Victorian misogyny and thus the social dangers of engaging in romantic or sexual activity for Victorian women.
Themes
Mary announces that Jem is innocent, and Will’s testimony will prove it after she finds him in Liverpool on Monday. Moreover, she announces that God will help her due to Jem’s goodness—even if she herself has “done so wrong.” Margaret’s heart begins softening toward Mary when she sees Mary’s self-blame and determination to help Jem. When Mary asks Margaret where Will stays in Liverpool, Margaret remembers the street and the landlady’s name. Job says he’ll pray for Mary—but he’ll also pay a lawyer acquaintance of his a visit now.
In this scene Mary displays Christian religious faith, which is positively connoted in the novel, while also explicitly condemning herself for the “wrong” she has done—an indirect reference to her flirtation with Harry. That Margaret becomes more sympathetic to Mary at this point suggests that Christian fellow-feeling can partly mitigate a lack of natural empathy between people: Margaret responds to Mary’s Christian faith and desire to help Jem even if she still can’t understand why Mary would have flirted with Harry.
Themes
After Job leaves, Mary gathers her bravery and says that she knows how Margaret must judge her. Margaret tries to say she has no right to judge, but Mary interrupts her, saying that judgment is natural but, according to the Bible, should be tempered with mercy. Then she cries out that she had no idea what would happen when Harry first started flirting with her—and she cares more about him now that he’s dead than she did when he was alive. She feels she is being punished for her sins. Margaret is entirely won over by Mary’s grief and repentance.
Here, Mary directly appeals to Margaret’s Christian beliefs in a bid to temper Margaret’s harsh judgment of Mary’s flirtation. That Margaret does indeed temper her judgment suggests that, in the novel’s view, Christian teachings commanding people to be merciful and forgiving can supplement or replace natural empathy where the conditions for empathy do not exist.
Themes
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Mary asks whether Will’s alibi can save Jem. Margaret suggests that perhaps Mary relies too much on the claim of the distraught Mrs. Wilson that Jem was with Will that night, given the evidence against him: his fight with Harry, the gun, his absence from home, etc. When Mary insists on Jem’s innocence, Margaret says she hopes Mary’s right and offers money she’s earned singing to pay for Jem’s lawyer. She also refuses Mary’s thanks, saying that if people take the golden rule seriously, they should also follow the rule, “Let others do unto you, as you would do unto them”—and not refuse help out of vanity. Jesus, after all, allowed others to help him.
Margaret’s doubt of Jem’s innocence suggests how much danger he is in: if even his friends believe that sexual and romantic feelings might have impelled him to violence, what will a jury think? Yet despite her doubts, Margaret offers to help Jem by paying for his lawyer, showing her practical morality and her generosity, which she couches in terms of the Christian Golden Rule, which enjoins helping people and which, Margaret believes, also requires people to accept help.
Themes
Through the window, Mary sees Job talking with another man across the street. They part. Job, reentering his home, tells Mary that his lawyer acquaintance has referred him to a defense lawyer who’s going to go visit Jem. Mary and Will are supposed to go find the lawyer at 2 p.m. on Monday in Liverpool. Mary, though terrified by the whole situation, thanks Job for his help before she leaves.
By this point, Job and Margaret have both fully committed to helping Jem despite their doubts about his innocence. Once again, the novel insists that poor and working-class characters tend to help one another because they see and respond directly to their fellows’ sufferings and needs.
Themes
