Harry Carson Character Analysis

So with this consciousness she had early determined that her beauty should make her a lady; the rank she coveted the more for her father’s abuse; the rank at which she firmly believed her lost Aunt Esther had arrived.

“Tell me, Margaret,” said Mary, taking her apron down from her eyes, and looking at Margaret with eager anxiety, “what can I do to bring him back to me? Should I write to him?”

“No,” replied her friend, “that would not do. Men are so queer, they like to have a’ the courting to themselves.”

“How can I keep her from being such a one as I am; such a wretched, loathsome creature! She was listening just as I listened, and loving just as I loved, and the end will be just like my end. How shall I save her?”

What were these hollow vanities to her, now that she had discovered the passionate secret of her soul? She felt as if she almost hated Mr Carson, who had decoyed her with his baubles. […] She had hitherto been walking in grope-light toward a precipice; but in the clear revelation of that past hour she saw her danger, and turned away resolutely and for ever.

For, be it remembered, she had the innocence, or the ignorance, to believe his intentions honourable; and he, feeling that at any price he must have her, only that he would obtain her as cheaply as he could, had never undeceived her[.]

To whom shall the outcast prostitute tell her tale? Who will give her help in the day of need? Hers is a leper sin, and all stand aloof dreading to be counted unclean.

While the men had stood grouped near the door, on their first entrance, Mr Harry Carson had taken out his silver pencil, and had drawn an admirable caricature of them—lank, ragged, dispirited and famine-stricken. Underneath he wrote a hasty quotation from the fat knight’s well-known speech in Henry IV. He passed it to one of his neighbours, who acknowledged the likeness instantly, and by him it was sent round to others, who all smiled and nodded their heads.

A number of pieces of paper (from the identical letter on which the caricature had been drawn that very morning) were torn up, and one was marked.

To avenge his child’s death, the old man lived on; with the single purpose in his heart of vengeance on the murderer. True, his vengeance was sanctioned by law, but was it the less revenge?

Are ye worshippers of Christ? or of Alecto?

The corner of stiff, shining, thick, writing paper she recognised as a part of the sheet on which she had copied Samuel Bamford’s beautiful lines so many months ago—copied (as you perhaps remember) on the blank part of a valentine sent to her by Jem Wilson, in those days when she did not treasure and hoard up everything he had touched, as she would do now.

Gentle, reserved, and prudent herself, never exposed to the trial of being admired for her personal appearance […] Margaret had no sympathy with the temptations to which loveliness, vanity, ambition, or the desire of being admired exposes so many; no sympathy with flirting girls, in short. Then, she had no idea of the strength of conflict between will and principle in some who were differently constituted from herself.

I don’t know that he exactly used the term vengeance in his thoughts; he spoke of justice, and probably thought of his desired end as such[.]

“You’ve set up heroine on your own account, Mary Barton. How did you like standing witness?”

The eyes of John Barton grew dim with tears. Rich and poor, masters and men, were then brothers in the deep suffering of the heart; for was not this the very anguish he had felt for little Tom, in years so long gone by that they seemed like another life!

“Let my trespasses be unforgiven, so that I may have vengeance for my son’s murder.”

“You say our talk has done no good. I say it has. I see the view you take of things from the place where you stand.”

To those who have large capability of loving and suffering, united with great power of firm endurance, there comes a time in their woe when they are lifted out of the contemplation of their individual case into a searching inquiry into the nature of their calamity, and the remedy (if remedy there be) which may prevent its recurrence to others as well as themselves.

So with this consciousness she had early determined that her beauty should make her a lady; the rank she coveted the more for her father’s abuse; the rank at which she firmly believed her lost Aunt Esther had arrived.

“Tell me, Margaret,” said Mary, taking her apron down from her eyes, and looking at Margaret with eager anxiety, “what can I do to bring him back to me? Should I write to him?”

“No,” replied her friend, “that would not do. Men are so queer, they like to have a’ the courting to themselves.”

“How can I keep her from being such a one as I am; such a wretched, loathsome creature! She was listening just as I listened, and loving just as I loved, and the end will be just like my end. How shall I save her?”

What were these hollow vanities to her, now that she had discovered the passionate secret of her soul? She felt as if she almost hated Mr Carson, who had decoyed her with his baubles. […] She had hitherto been walking in grope-light toward a precipice; but in the clear revelation of that past hour she saw her danger, and turned away resolutely and for ever.

For, be it remembered, she had the innocence, or the ignorance, to believe his intentions honourable; and he, feeling that at any price he must have her, only that he would obtain her as cheaply as he could, had never undeceived her[.]

To whom shall the outcast prostitute tell her tale? Who will give her help in the day of need? Hers is a leper sin, and all stand aloof dreading to be counted unclean.

While the men had stood grouped near the door, on their first entrance, Mr Harry Carson had taken out his silver pencil, and had drawn an admirable caricature of them—lank, ragged, dispirited and famine-stricken. Underneath he wrote a hasty quotation from the fat knight’s well-known speech in Henry IV. He passed it to one of his neighbours, who acknowledged the likeness instantly, and by him it was sent round to others, who all smiled and nodded their heads.

A number of pieces of paper (from the identical letter on which the caricature had been drawn that very morning) were torn up, and one was marked.

To avenge his child’s death, the old man lived on; with the single purpose in his heart of vengeance on the murderer. True, his vengeance was sanctioned by law, but was it the less revenge?

Are ye worshippers of Christ? or of Alecto?

The corner of stiff, shining, thick, writing paper she recognised as a part of the sheet on which she had copied Samuel Bamford’s beautiful lines so many months ago—copied (as you perhaps remember) on the blank part of a valentine sent to her by Jem Wilson, in those days when she did not treasure and hoard up everything he had touched, as she would do now.

Gentle, reserved, and prudent herself, never exposed to the trial of being admired for her personal appearance […] Margaret had no sympathy with the temptations to which loveliness, vanity, ambition, or the desire of being admired exposes so many; no sympathy with flirting girls, in short. Then, she had no idea of the strength of conflict between will and principle in some who were differently constituted from herself.

I don’t know that he exactly used the term vengeance in his thoughts; he spoke of justice, and probably thought of his desired end as such[.]

“You’ve set up heroine on your own account, Mary Barton. How did you like standing witness?”

The eyes of John Barton grew dim with tears. Rich and poor, masters and men, were then brothers in the deep suffering of the heart; for was not this the very anguish he had felt for little Tom, in years so long gone by that they seemed like another life!

“Let my trespasses be unforgiven, so that I may have vengeance for my son’s murder.”

“You say our talk has done no good. I say it has. I see the view you take of things from the place where you stand.”

To those who have large capability of loving and suffering, united with great power of firm endurance, there comes a time in their woe when they are lifted out of the contemplation of their individual case into a searching inquiry into the nature of their calamity, and the remedy (if remedy there be) which may prevent its recurrence to others as well as themselves.