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Chapter 36
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
Harry’s sudden death forces Mr. Carson to think hard about his own life because it makes the wealth and status Mr. Carson has been chasing for years seem suddenly unimportant. Trying to determine what would make his life worthwhile, Mr. Carson realizes that he wants to know what motivated John’s crime. That’s why he asks Job and Jem to visit him. When they arrive, Mr. Carson tries so hard to control his deep emotion that he seems “one of the hardest and most haughty men” they’ve ever met.
In a sense, John and Mr. Carson made the same mistake in reasoning: just as John took Mr. Carson to be a mere representative of his class rather than an individual human being, so Mr. Carson for a long time supposed that gaining and maintaining class status was the most important thing in life. Harry’s murder made both men realize their mistakes. Meanwhile, Job and Jem’s misjudgment of the emotionally struggling Mr. Carson as “hard” and “haughty” shows how a lack of communication—Mr. Carson is hiding his feelings—impedes empathy.
Themes
Mr. Carson tells Job and Jem that he visited Mr. Bridgnorth to ask about the murder and wants a few further questions answered. He encourages them to tell the truth, reassuring them that he won’t repeat anything they say and that, in any case, no one can be tried twice for the same crime. Annoyed, Job snaps that it’s good manners to suppose others truthful until they’ve proven otherwise—and that he and Jem will either tell the truth or refuse to speak. Mr. Carson apologizes and then asks how John got his hands on Jem’s gun. Jem explains that John asked to borrow the gun two days before the murder; Jem didn’t tell anyone after the murder because he didn’t want to get John, his beloved Mary’s father, arrested.
Mr. Carson’s insulting reassurances and Job’s snappish response show that Mr. Carson expects working-class men to lie and that Job is insulted by this class stereotyping—another instance of how the employer class alienates the working class through condescension, rudeness, callousness, etc. Meanwhile, readers are reminded yet again that Jem nearly died to protect his beloved’s father, emphasizing the passion and dangerousness of romantic love.
Themes
Mr. Carson asks Job whether he had any idea that John was guilty before John confessed. Job says he had no idea—he assumed Jem was guilty, as Jem had a motive and John didn’t. Mr. Carson asks whether John knew Harry was pursuing Mary. Jem says John didn’t, and Job adds that the reasons John gave for his crime were motive enough. To clarify, Mr. Carson asks whether Job means John wanted revenge on the employers for their treatment of the workers, especially considering Harry’s actions during the strike. Job says John never spoke to him about that particular case, but that John struggled to reconcile the existence of income inequality with Christianity.
Job’s claim that John struggled to reconcile huge wealth disparities with Christianity reminds readers that Christian doctrine criticizes wealth and the hoarding of wealth: Mr. Carson’s rich and ungenerous life is thus blameworthy in Christian terms—not least because it causes religious confusion and despair among poor men like John, who don’t understand why their supposedly Christian social superiors won’t help them.
Themes
When Mr. Carson asks whether John was an “Owenite, all for equality and community of goods,” Job says no: for John, the problem was that the rich seemed not to care about the material or spiritual well-being of the poor; it drove him crazy to see suffering that the employers could have alleviated if they tried. Mr. Carson denies that employers could alleviate suffering, claiming that employers don’t determine market demand for work. Job concedes this point but states that, nevertheless, rich men just cut back on luxuries in hard times while poor men’s children starve. When Mr. Carson says that economic disruption created by new technology is inevitable, Job again concedes the point but says that the rich still have a God-given duty to help the poor during times of disruption.
An “Owenite” is a follower of Robert Owen (1771-1858), a Welsh philanthropist and labor reformer who founded a short-lived utopian-socialist intentional community. When Mr. Carson asks whether John was an Owenite, he is essentially asking whether John was a socialist who believed in communal ownership of material “goods.” Job denies that John was this much of a political radical: rather, it was the hypocrisy of the nominally Christian but ungenerous rich that drove him to violence. In other words, according to Job, it was the moral failings of the employer class rather than political radicalism per se that drove John to murder. Notably, Mr. Carson claims that employers couldn’t help their employees even though the novel represents working-class characters helping one another with fewer resources all the time. This claim suggests that Mr. Carson thinks of help in terms of alleviating absolutely all suffering, whereas Job (as well as John before him) is thinking of ordinary, practical aid like gifts of food, clothing, time, etc.
Themes
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Mr. Carson says that Job is right but asks how his point relates to Mr. Carson’s own behavior. Job says that the employers must answer to their own consciences about whether they do enough to mitigate the suffering of the workers by whose labor the employers accrue wealth. John thought the employers didn’t do enough, and it drove him to insanity and murder, though he truly repented.
When Mr. Carson asks how the general point about callous employers reflects on him, it implies he has the inklings of a guilty conscience about his own failure to help the working-class people around him. In response, Job says Mr. Carson must answer to his own (implicitly Christian) conscience but reiterates that the unchristian behavior of the employer class motivated John’s violence, suggesting that Mr. Carson and his social class do have something to answer for.
Themes
After a long pause, Mr. Carson thanks Job and Jem for coming. He also editorializes that neither he nor Job has changed the others’ mind about employers’ ability to help workers. Job replies that workers care less about employers’ ability to help than they do about employers’ “inclination” to help—even if employers tried and failed to help, it would matter to the workers that they’d tried. He also argues that his and Mr. Carson’s conversation has been productive even if they don’t agree because they now know each other’s point of view. He says that he’ll pray for Mr. Carson in the future and says goodbye. Job and Jem stand and bow, newly sympathetic to Mr. Carson as one who is fighting his way through deep grief and pain.
Job frames the conflict between the employers and their working-class employees as an essentially personal and emotional one rather than a matter of structural class conflict: the employees just want to know that their employers have an “inclination” to help their employees—even if that inclination doesn’t result in entirely effective action. Job also suggests that mutual understanding and empathy are goods in themselves: even if he and Mr. Carson don’t agree, it’s good that they now know one another’s thoughts.
Themes
Some people, after suffering a great pain, move from considering their individual circumstances to thinking about how to prevent the same pain from afflicting other people. Mr. Carson becomes one such person. Due to his superficial personality traits, people who know him only a little still think he’s chilly and standoffish, but people who know him well realize that he badly wants to save others from the pain he suffered and to improve relations between employers and workers: “to acknowledge the Spirit of Christ as the regulating law between both parties.” He effects much labor reform in Manchester.
Mr. Carson’s earlier claim that the employer class couldn’t help the working class suggested that he fundamentally misunderstood what kind of help the working class wanted: not a total alleviation of suffering, but some good-faith practical aid. Having come to empathize with working-class suffering through his own tragedy and through his dialogue with Job, Mr. Carson reforms as an individual, centers “the Spirit of Christ” in his dealings with employees, and thereby ends up improving working conditions in Manchester generally. This outcome implies that labor conditions would improve if employers were morally better individuals—it is a personal rather than structural take on political and economic change.
Themes
