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Chapter 31
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
Mr. Carson is sleepless the night before Jem’s trial. He is obsessed with obtaining vengeance—or “justice,” as he might think of it—and can’t sit still. At nine on the morning of the trial, he goes to court, where the judge, lawyers, and various spectators have gathered. Job still hasn’t let Mrs. Wilson know he lied about finding Mary and Will; as he enters the court, a clerk hands him a letter from Jem. In the letter, Jem predicts that he will be convicted despite his innocence. He also asks Job to support his mother emotionally after his execution—and to let Mary believe that he, Jem, shot Harry rather than telling her the truth, at least until many years in the future.
The novel refers to Mr. Carson’s obsession as vengeance before sarcastically noting that Mr. Carson might think of vengeance as “justice.” The sarcasm makes clear the novel’s lack of sympathy with Mr. Carson’s desire for violent retribution, which it has throughout represented as undesirable and unchristian. Meanwhile, Jem’s desire that Mary believe he’s guilty further implies that Jem knows John is the murderer and is trying to protect Mary from that knowledge because he loves her—for which reason he is putting himself in danger of execution rather than exculpating himself by admitting (as seems likely) that he lent his gun to John.
Themes
Job goes to the witness room to look for Mary. He finds her with her head in her arms and Mrs. Wilson sobbing nearby—suggesting that someone has told Mrs. Wilson about Will. Job returns to the courtroom, where Jem pleads not guilty. Spectators in the courtroom examine Mr. Carson and search for murderousness in Jem’s face. After a few policemen testify, Mrs. Wilson takes the stand. When she is shown the gun and asked whether it belongs to Jem, she asks Jem what she should do. He asks her to tell the truth. She identifies the gun as Jem’s. Then she turns to the judge, tells him she knows as Jem’s mother that he’s innocent, and admits she will be unable to credit the outcome to God’s will if Jem is executed.
Some characters in the novel, such as Alice Wilson, demonstrate extreme submissiveness to what they see as the will of God. Other characters, like Mrs. Wilson, are Christian believers but cannot submit to accepting every event that occurs as God’s will. Here, Mrs. Wilson’s assertion that she’ll refuse to believe her son Jem’s execution is God’s will shows the (very understandable) limit to her Christian humility and faith.
Themes
After several other witnesses, Mary is called to the stand. Mr. Carson is both interested and repelled by the thought of seeing “the fatal Helen.” As Mary begins to testify, she is terrified. She answers the first few questions in a rote manner. Then the lawyer asks her whether she preferred Harry or Jem. Mary is offended by the prying question, but when Jem lifts his head from his hands to look at her, she puts aside her “feminine shame” to stand up for him against society. She turns to the judge and explains that Harry flattered her, and she thought he might save her from poverty by marrying her—but she realized she loved Jem after rejecting Jem’s marriage proposal, at which point she cut off relations with Harry.
The phrase “fatal Helen” is an allusion to Helen of Troy, the mythological Greek beauty whose abduction by Trojan prince Paris started the Trojan War. Just as Helen was blamed for the war between the Greeks and the Trojans despite her relative lack of agency in the matter, so implicitly Mr. Carson blames Mary for his son’s death despite Mary’s lack of agency in same. Meanwhile, Mary makes explicit here that she saw Harry as an escape hatch from working-class poverty—that he tempted her not sexually but economically. By clarifying this point, the novel may be trying to make its heroine more sympathetic to a conservative and judgmental Victorian audience.
Themes
The judge asks Mary whether she ever saw Harry after rejecting Jem. Mary says she only spoke to him once, to tell him she didn’t love him—but she never mentioned Jem to him. Then the judge asks whether Mary ever told Jem about Harry to make Jem jealous. Mary denies it forcefully. Finally, the judge asks whether Mary knew that Jem knew Harry was pursuing her. Mary says she didn’t and, her physical and mental strength failing, asks whether she can leave the stand. As she descends, Mrs. Sturgis tries to convince her to leave, but Mary, though disoriented and suffering a terrible headache, insists on staying.
At this point, readers are aware that Mary’s romantic links to Harry and Jem in fact have nothing to do with Harry’s murder. Given the actual irrelevance of Mary’s testimony to the case, the judge’s close questioning of Mary illustrates how sexual and romantic intrigue lead to public shame and danger for working-class young men like Mary and Jem even when they have actually done nothing wrong.
Themes
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When Will bursts into the courtroom, Mary shrieks that she and Jem are saved and then has a seizure. Mrs. Sturgis removes her from the court, while Will is allowed to testify. He tells the court that Jem walked with him toward Liverpool all the way to Hollins Green on the night Harry was murdered. When Mr. Carson sees that the jury is beginning to doubt Jem’s guilt, he’s furious—Will’s testimony doesn’t change his own belief that Jem did it. Seeing the furious look on Mr. Carson’s face, the prosecuting attorney attempts to pander to him by asking Will, in cross-examination, how much he was paid to provide the alibi. Will, furious, asks how much money the lawyer received to slander someone telling the truth. Then he says the pilot of the pilot-boat, O’Brien, can corroborate the details of how Will learned he needed to testify. O’Brien does.
Mrs. Sturgis’s prompt aid to Mary shows yet again the pragmatic morality and mutual aid with which the novel characterizes the working class. Meanwhile, Mr. Carson’s insistence on believing in Jem’s guilt despite his alibi shows how an unchristian desire for vengeance has made him irrational. Finally, the lawyer’s insinuation that Will took a bribe to testify on Jem’s behalf shows the contempt that the criminal legal system has for the poor and working-class, while Will’s indignant response asserts working-class dignity.
Themes
Mr. Carson feels utter despair when he considers how unlikely juries generally are to convict people with death sentences even in clear-cut cases. He fears that his son Harry’s murderer is going to walk free. The jury files out, deliberates, returns, and announces its verdict: though they weren’t entirely convinced that Jem was innocent, they weren’t entirely convinced that he was guilty, given his alibi—and they aren’t going to condemn him to death under those circumstances, so they pronounce him not guilty.
Mr. Carson is in despair at the thought that the jury won’t vote to execute Jem—even though Jem has a clear alibi for Harry’s murder. Mr. Carson’s despair shows his vengeful and—in the novel’s worldview—unchristian bloodthirstiness. If he is really afraid that Harry’s murderer will go free, after all, he ought to carefully consider whether the court is trying the wrong defendant.
Themes
Jem sits frozen, utterly shocked. He had predicted his own execution and felt sick of life, in any case, on the assumption that Mary hated him and loved Harry, whom she thought he’d killed. Once he learned that Mary loved him, however, he was full of hope for survival. Now, acquitted, he’s simply stunned. Job, crying, approaches Jem, hugs him, and leads him out of court. Well-wishers swarm him. Finding his voice, he asks, “Where is she?” People lead him to his mother, Mrs. Wilson, who embraces him and says they couldn’t possibly have convicted him after she described his excellent character. Jem hugs his mother back but asks again, “Where is she?”
This passage implies that Jem felt passively suicidal when he believed that Mary loved someone else, yet another detail that illustrates how, in the novel’s worldview, passionate romantic love is potentially dangerous and destructive when not socially controlled. Jem’s repeated question after his acquittal, “Where is she?”, implies that, for Jem, “she” can only refer to one person: his beloved Mary.
Themes
