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Chapter 2
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
That night, Mrs. Barton goes into labor. John runs for a doctor. By the time he returns, Mrs. Barton has died. After examining the corpse, the doctor tells John that some “shock to the system” caused her death. The doctor leaves. John bursts into bitter tears, knowing that he’ll have to return to work soon and thinking that the “shock” that killed her must have been Esther’s disappearance. He feels new hatred for Esther.
Immediately after John’s wife dies, he thinks that he’ll have to go back to work soon, revealing that John expects no sympathy, consideration, or aid from his employers (e.g. a day off to grieve). John’s belief that Esther’s sexually connoted disappearance caused Mrs. Barton’s death—a belief that the narrator does not cast doubt on—underscores the strong link the novel draws between uncontrolled female sexuality and danger to the community.
Themes
In the years after Mrs. Barton’s death, John becomes very tender and trusting toward Mary, who handles their domestic arrangements—but he is taciturn and cold toward most other people. He becomes involved in labor organizing—and little wonder, as employees, who think of themselves as creating their employers’ wealth, must question why the workers suffer so much in hard times while employers seem to live richly no matter what. John’s mother died from privation, and in one trade downturn when John was unemployed, his sick, starving baby Tom died too. These experiences made John want “vengeance” against employers as a class. He becomes a Chartist.
John’s backstory further fleshes out his hatred of rich people and the employer class: not only his baby son but also his mother died from conditions associated with poverty. Chartism was a political movement that lasted from approximately the 1830s to the 1850s in England. Chartists wanted all adult men, not only property owners, to be allowed to vote; they also championed other legal reforms that would have made it easier for poor and working-class men to participate in politics.
Themes
When Mary is 16, John decides that she must “do something.” He doesn’t want her to work in factories, and she doesn’t want to become a domestic servant—in part because she knows she’s pretty and, influenced by her lost-lost Aunt Esther, whom she believes became a lady, she hopes to marry up, which she thinks working as a servant will prevent her from doing. Instead, she becomes a dressmaker’s apprentice to a woman named Miss Simmonds, who agrees to train her in exchange for two years of unpaid work. After two years, Mary will receive a tiny weekly salary.
The narrative has heavily implied that Esther’s beauty led her into some sexual impropriety that contributed to Mrs. Barton’s death. As such, Mary’s prettiness and her hopeful interpretation of Esther’s disappearance may foreshadow that Mary’s romantic life may likewise become a source of danger to herself and others. Meanwhile, the rather unfair terms of Mary’s apprenticeship—two years of unpaid labor in exchange for a tiny future salary—underscore the exploitation of working-class employees by their employers in mid-Victorian England.
Themes
