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A review by sidharthvardhan
Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life by Elizabeth Gaskell
5.0
To me personally, this is far superior book than EG's most widely read novel 'North and South'. Thiugh the centeral theme of inequality of wealth and differences between capitalists and factory workers is shared by two books (EG seems to have a love for poor and underdogs), 'North and South' is, at the end of the day, a romantic novel with a 'happily ever after' that seems too fantastic and characters that don't seem capable of evil at all.
Mary Barton, on other hand, has a murder in its center. Thus characters are capable of evil - though often, it is argued, the acts done by them when they were 'not quite themself'; acting like Jungian archetypes.
Moreover, along with a boring romantic story (the adjective 'boring' almost seems redundant before 'romantic story'), there is a tragedy in this book - the act of murder arising out of misunderstandings between workers and capitalists which benifits no one.
Another thing that makes this book better is that Mary Barton is significantly better written and flawed than the goody two shoes heroine of other. The change of heart that the capitalist has in the end of the book is also not that fantastic.
This is EG's first novel and one of reasons why she took to writing was to get over loss of her son and a mourning father is one of most impressive images that occur here.
There are a lot of things that some reviewers consider 'flaws' in book like excessive religious and moralising tones which I don't think as faults. A good book has a part of author's personality in it and this personality can just as frequently be religious or moral. Moreover it is not EG who is religous in the end but characters who are religous and use it to examine their own characters. There are a few chapters I should like to cut to make it smaller but that seems to be my problems with most books.
Mary Barton, on other hand, has a murder in its center. Thus characters are capable of evil - though often, it is argued, the acts done by them when they were 'not quite themself'; acting like Jungian archetypes.
Moreover, along with a boring romantic story (the adjective 'boring' almost seems redundant before 'romantic story'), there is a tragedy in this book - the act of murder arising out of misunderstandings between workers and capitalists which benifits no one.
Another thing that makes this book better is that Mary Barton is significantly better written and flawed than the goody two shoes heroine of other. The change of heart that the capitalist has in the end of the book is also not that fantastic.
This is EG's first novel and one of reasons why she took to writing was to get over loss of her son and a mourning father is one of most impressive images that occur here.
There are a lot of things that some reviewers consider 'flaws' in book like excessive religious and moralising tones which I don't think as faults. A good book has a part of author's personality in it and this personality can just as frequently be religious or moral. Moreover it is not EG who is religous in the end but characters who are religous and use it to examine their own characters. There are a few chapters I should like to cut to make it smaller but that seems to be my problems with most books.