Woman's Work in English Fiction, from the Restoration to the Mid-Victorian Period

by Clara Helen Whitmore

In the early forties, there was much suffering among the "mill-hands"; many were dying of starvation, and consequently there were many strikes and uprisings. These conditions led to her writing her first novel, Mary Barton. The book was written during the years 1845-1847, although it was not published until 1848. The nucleus of it, Mrs. Gaskell wrote to a friend, was John Barton. Since she herself was constantly wondering at the inequalities of fortune, which permitted some to starve, while others had abundance, how must it affect an ignorant man, himself on the verge of starvation, and filled with pity for the sufferings of his friends? Driven almost insane by the condition of society, and hoping to remedy it, he commits a crime, which preys so upon his conscience that it finally wears out his own life.

Mrs. Gaskell in this, her first novel, has left an undying picture of that section of smoky Manchester where the mill-workers live: its narrow lanes; small but not uncomfortable cottages, well supplied with furniture in days when work was plentiful, but destitute even of a fire when it was scarce; the undersized men and women, with irregular features, pale blue eyes, sallow complexions, but with an intelligence rendered quick and sharp by their life among the machinery, and by their hard struggle for existence. The life of the poor had often furnished a theme for the poets, but it was the life of shepherds and milkmaids, above whom the blue sky arched, and whose labours were brightened by the songs of the birds, and the colours and sweet odours of fruit and flowers. But Mrs. Gaskell described the life of the poor in a town where factory smoke obscured the light of the sun, and where the weariness of labour was rendered more intense by the clanging factory bell, and the constant whirr of machinery ringing in their ears. It is a gloomy picture, but no gloomier than the reality.

Disraeli in Sybil discussed the questions of labour and capital in their relations to the history of England, with a broad intellectual grasp of the sociological causes which produced these conditions. He wrote in the interests of two classes, the Crown and the People, with the hope that England might again have a free monarchy and a prosperous people. It is a well illustrated treatise on government, but the principles advocated or discussed always overshadow the characters. He had no such intimate knowledge of the lives of the poor as had Mrs. Gaskell. She conducts us to the homes of John Barton, George Wilson, and Job Legh, shows the simplicity of their lives, and their sense of the injustice under which they are suffering, and their helpfulness to each other in times of need.

How simple and true is the friendship that binds Mary Barton, the dressmaker's apprentice; Margaret, the blind singer; and Alice Wilson, the aged laundress, whose mind is constantly dwelling on the green fields and running brooks of her childhood's home. These women possess the strength of character of the early Teutonic women. They are reticent, not given to the exchange of confidences, but ready to help a friend with all they have in the hour of need. When Margaret thinks that the Bartons are in want of money, she says to Mary, "Remember, if you're sore pressed for money, we shall take it very unkind if you do not let us know." But she does not question her. Later when her great trouble comes to Mary Barton, which she must bear alone, when she must free a lover from the charge of murder without incriminating her father, she shows presence of mind, clearness of vision, and both moral and physical courage.

Jem Wilson, the hero of the story, is as strong as Mary Barton, the heroine. Although Dickens was writing of the poor, he always found some means to educate his heroes, and generally placed them among gentlemen. Jem Wilson's education was received in the factory, and the little rise he made above his fellows was due to his better understanding of machinery. He was a working man, proud of his skill, and of his good name for honesty and sobriety.

The plot of Mary Barton is highly melodramatic, and its technique is open to criticism. It should not be read, however, for the story, but for the many home scenes in which we come into close sympathy with the men and women of Manchester. There is no novel in which we feel more strongly the heart-beats of humanity. It leaves the impression, not of art, but of life.

Mrs. Gaskell turned again to the struggles between labour and capital for the plot of her novel North and South. Between this story and Mary Barton she had written Cranford and Ruth, but her mind seemed to revert, as it were, from the peaceful village life to the stirring mill-towns of Lancashire. The great contrast between life in the counties of England presided over by the landed gentry, and that in the counties where the manufacturers formed the aristocracy, suggested this book. It was published in 1855, seven years after Mary Barton. The plot of North and South is better proportioned than is that of Mary Barton. There are fewer characters, better contrasted. It is a brighter picture, with more humour, but it does not leave so strong an impression on the mind as does the earlier work. Both, however, are more accurate than Hard Times, a book with which Dickens himself was highly dissatisfied. He knew little of the life in the manufacturing districts, but, in a spirit of indignation at the poverty brought on by grasping manufacturers, he caricatured the entire class in the persons of Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. When these men are compared with the manufacturers as represented in North and South, Mrs. Gaskell's more intimate knowledge of them is at once apparent.

Mrs. Gaskell had been accused of taking sides with the working men, and representing their point of view in Mary Barton. In North and South, the hero, Mr. Thornton, is a rich manufacturer, a fine type of the self-made man, but standing squarely on his right to do what he pleases in his own factory. "He looks like a person who would enjoy battling with every adverse thing he could meet with—enemies, winds, or circumstances," was Margaret Hale's comment when she first met him. "He's worth fighting wi', is John Thornton," said one of the leaders of the strike. For although the condition of affairs in the mill-towns had much improved since John Barton went to London as a delegate from his starving townsmen, and was refused a hearing by Parliament, a large part of the book is concerned with the story of a strike, which in its outcome brought starvation to many of the men, and bankruptcy to some of the masters, the acknowledged victors.

Higgins, one of the leaders of the working men, is a true Lancashire man, and like Thornton, the leader of the masters, has many traits of character as truly American as English. His sturdy independence is well shown in Margaret's first interview with him. The daughter of a vicar in the south of England, she had been accustomed to call upon the poor in her father's parish. Learning that Higgins's daughter, Bessy, is ill she expresses her desire to call upon her. "I'm none so fond of having stranger folk in my house," Higgins informs her, but he finally relents and says, "Yo may come if yo like."

But besides the conflict between the manufacturers and their employees, with which much of the book is concerned, there is the sharp contrast between the Hales, born and bred in the south of England, and the mill-owners in whose society they are placed. Mr. Hale, indecisive, inactive, in whom thought is more powerful than reality, is as helpless as a child among these men of action, and utterly unable to cope with the problems they are facing. Margaret, the refined daughter of a poor clergyman, is contrasted with the proud Mrs. Thornton, the mother of a wealthy manufacturer, who would make money, not birth, the basis of social distinctions. But Margaret is even better contrasted with the poor factory girl, Bessy Higgins, who turns to her for help and sympathy. There is hardly a story of Mrs. Gaskell's which is not adorned by the friendship of the heroine for some other woman in the book.