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Chapter 35
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
Subconsciously, Mary has believed since she got back from Liverpool that guilt was killing John and that death might be a relief to him. After John’s death, she is grief-stricken. Jem, Margaret, and Job support her and begin planning the funeral. When Jem returns home the evening of John’s death, Mrs. Wilson tells him Job informed her of the death and asks how John passed. Jem realizes that Mrs. Wilson hasn’t heard about John’s murder confession and decides not to tell her about it, as he expects that his mother’s peevish temper might lead her to discuss John’s crime in ways that would upset Mary. Yet he doesn’t know whether Mr. Carson will publicize John’s guilt or not. When Mrs. Wilson insists on talking more about John’s death, Jem flees to his bedroom.
Mary’s sense that only death can bring the guilty John relief underscores how, in the novel’s view, sin, violence, and violations of Christian teaching all cause the sinner himself to suffer. Goodness is not only the right but the ultimately more pleasant path to take. Meanwhile, yet again, the aid that Mary’s friends and neighbors offer her in planning John’s funeral exemplify the practical, altruistic morality of the novel’s working-class.
Themes
The next morning, Jem goes to see his ex-employer Mr. Duncombe at the foundry. As he waits for Mr. Duncombe to arrive, many of his ex-coworkers, entering the foundry, snub him. The snubbing makes Jem think that he and Mary had better leave the country: while Jem could eventually live down the accusation against him, Mary would be known forever as a murderer’s daughter if the truth about John emerged. When Jem talks to Mr. Duncombe, Mr. Duncombe agrees that Jem had better leave England and connects him with a job as an “instrument-maker” at an agricultural college in Toronto, Canada.
Though Mary and Jem’s community is working-class and Christian, Jem’s speculations that Mary could never live down her father’s crime suggests that there are limits to the community’s Christian forgiveness and moral generosity: even though Mary herself committed no crime, the community would never fully forgive her for her family connection to a man who committed a violent crime.
Themes
Jem goes to talk to Mary about immigrating. At her house he runs into Margaret and Job, the latter of whom has received a letter from Mr. Carson requesting that Job and Jem come talk to him. Job worries that Mr. Carson may want to trick Jem somehow into implicating himself as an accomplice, but Jem insists on going with Job to see Mr. Carson.
Job’s fear that Mr. Carson is trying to entrap Jem reminds readers that, despite Mr. Carson’s apparent Christian conversion, Mr. Carson harbored violently vengeful feelings for Jem even after he had an alibi. This reminder heightens suspense around the meeting between Mr. Carson and Jem.
Themes
Meanwhile, Mrs. Wilson goes to visit the mourning Mary. When Mary, seeing Mrs. Wilson, begins to lament John’s death, Mrs. Wilson comforts her not only by mentioning Jem but also by promising to love her like a daughter. She had intended to offer Mary some religious platitudes, but her spontaneous expression of love is “heart’s piety […] true religion.”
The narrator’s claim that Mrs. Wilson’s embrace of Mary is “true religion” makes Christianity central to the women’s relationship while also suggesting that apparently faithful Christians may be hypocritical or insufficiently religious if their actions are not motivated by real love.
Themes
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After this moment, Mrs. Wilson almost never vents her temper at Mary. Far in the future, Jem will learn that on this day, Mary mentions to Mrs. Wilson that John murdered Harry on the assumption that Mrs. Wilson already knew; Mrs. Wilson, though peevish in small matters, is generous in large matters, and she never criticizes Mary or John with respect to Harry’s murder. When Jem realizes that his mother has kept silent, he loves and esteems her more than ever.
Mrs. Wilson’s Christian love effects a large and lasting change in her previously irritable behavior toward Mary, just as Mr. Carson’s Christian forgiveness reversed his vengeful attitude toward John. Both incidents reemphasize the power of Christianity (in the novel’s worldview) to change people’s characters.
Themes
