Poverty and Morality Theme Analysis

Mary Barton represents poor people as more likely to act in moral ways than rich people—not because poor people have inherently better moral instincts, but because they are more likely to encounter, recognize, and thus react to others’ needs. Throughout the novel, working-class characters see one another in distress and respond by giving generous aid. For instance, Margaret, a working-class girl with worsening cataracts, sews mourning clothes for an impoverished new widow for free even though the work hurts her eyes. Similarly, factory worker John Barton pawns his few valuables to buy food for his sick former coworker’s starving children. Another example is Mrs. Sturgis, a boatman’s wife who offers Mary Barton a bed for the night despite suspecting (in a disapproving way) she’s a sex worker. Over and over, then, poor and working-class characters help one another as a matter of course. By contrast, rich characters who are removed from regular contact with the needy assume that they can do nothing to help—and so they do nothing. For example, factory owner Mr. Carson assumes and explicitly argues that he can’t help his workers during economic downturns because he doesn’t control the demand for goods and thus for labor; he never considers that he could simply and directly give the starving working-class families around him his own food or money, the way these families share food or money with each other whenever possible. Thus, Mary Barton argues that poor people are likely to perform more good deeds than rich people simply because they have more social contact with their needy neighbors and, as a result, see their neighbors’ problems as practical, solvable issues.