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Mary Barton
John Barton is husband to Mrs. Barton and father to Mary Barton. A intelligent and strong-willed working-class Manchester man, he hates the rich because his baby son Tom starved to death during an economic downturn and no well-off person even tried to help the family. After his wife Mrs. Barton dies in childbirth, a grieving John throws himself into labor organizing and radical politics. During a severe economic downturn, he participates in a petition to Parliament to help working-class families. When the petition fails, he becomes even grimmer and more pessimistic. During a strike, after mill owner’s son Harry Carson draws a mocking caricature of the starving workers’ representatives, John and some other men resolve to terrify the employers with a murder. They draw lots to decide who will commit the murder. After John draws the murderers’ lot, he borrows a gun from Jem Wilson, shoots Harry to death one night, and briefly disappears. After committing the murder, John Barton is so guilty he is passively suicidal, wanting to die. He eventually confesses his guilt to Harry Carson’s father Mr. Carson and begs his forgiveness. Though Mr. Carson at first wants John executed, he ends up reading his family Bible and deciding to let the ailing John die at home. After John’s death, his friend Job Legh concludes that John was driven to homicidal madness by the lack of empathy or Christian charity the rich show the poor.
John Barton Quotes in Mary Barton
The Mary Barton quotes below are all either spoken by John Barton or refer to John Barton. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
“Not but what beauty is a sad snare. Here was Esther so puffed up that there was no holding her in.”
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“I tell you it’s the poor, and the poor only, as does such things for the poor. Don’t think to come over me with th’ old tale that the rich know nothing of the trials of the poor; I say, if they don’t know, they ought to know.”
Chapter 3
Quotes
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.
Chapter 6
Quotes
“Don ye think He’s the masters’ Father, too? I’d be loth to have ‘em for brothers.”
“Eh, John! donna talk so; sure there’s many and many a master as good or better nor us.”
“If you think so, tell me this. How comes it they’re rich, and we’re poor? I’d like to know that. Han they done as they’d be done by for us?”
Chapter 10
Quotes
“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?”
Chapter 14
Quotes
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.
Chapter 16
Quotes
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.
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Chapter 22
Quotes
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.
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Chapter 35
Quotes
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.”
Chapter 37
Quotes
“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.”
Get the entire Mary Barton LitChart as a printable PDF.
John Barton Quotes in Mary Barton
The Mary Barton quotes below are all either spoken by John Barton or refer to John Barton. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 1
Quotes
“Not but what beauty is a sad snare. Here was Esther so puffed up that there was no holding her in.”
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
“I tell you it’s the poor, and the poor only, as does such things for the poor. Don’t think to come over me with th’ old tale that the rich know nothing of the trials of the poor; I say, if they don’t know, they ought to know.”
Chapter 3
Quotes
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.
Chapter 6
Quotes
“Don ye think He’s the masters’ Father, too? I’d be loth to have ‘em for brothers.”
“Eh, John! donna talk so; sure there’s many and many a master as good or better nor us.”
“If you think so, tell me this. How comes it they’re rich, and we’re poor? I’d like to know that. Han they done as they’d be done by for us?”
Chapter 10
Quotes
“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?”
Chapter 14
Quotes
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.
Chapter 16
Quotes
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.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22
Quotes
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.
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Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35
Quotes
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.”
Chapter 37
Quotes
“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.”
