A Tale of Manchester Life

Elizabeth Gaskell wrote Mary Barton when she moved to Manchester in 1832.

It was her first novel.

A tale of Manchester Life

Elizabeth Gaskell wrote Mary Barton when she moved to Manchester in

1832. It was her first novel and it was published in 1948. It’s based

on the trade difficulties in the “hungry 40’s”. The words she wrote

were very good evidence as she lived in Manchester and knew what it

was like. At the time it was very strange for a young woman to write

a novel about the lives of ordinary poor people and a working class

heroine in an industrial situation. Her husband William Gaskell was a

minister in a Unitarian church and many mill owners went to the

church. They looked down on her as she wrote about things they didn’t

want to hear but her husband encouraged her to write it. She wrote it

to firstly get over the death of her son and there are a few child

deaths in it. Secondly to get across to mill owners and members of

higher classes what it was like to be working class. She didn’t write

it for the money. She wanted them to fully aware of the situation of

extreme poverty. She used her own experiences at a time when many

people moved to cities for higher wages but then they suddenly

dropped. Strikes happened and poverty became extreme.

John Barton was a member of the working class and worked in a mill.

Before the strike, he lived enough to get by with and represented a

great proportion of the working class population. He was chairman of

the Trade Union. The Trade Union was an association of labourers in a

particular trade, industry. They formed to obtain by collective action

improvements in pay, benefits, working conditions and social and

political status. Working class working class workers met and

protested. He realised that being in the Trade Union those days wasn’t

enough to change anything. Working class members needed the vote. So

he went to the houses of parliament with the Charter points. Chartism

was the protest working class members were involved in; they had a few

points to put across. For them to get the vote, election by a secret

ballot, equal electoral rights, general election every year, MP’s to

be paid a salary and abolition of the property qualifications for

MP’s. He was very naïve in thinking that his points would be put

across. When he arrived he realised that people who were of higher

class and more important than him didn’t care what he thought, they

didn’t want to listen to him and they think he’s stupid just because