Mary Barton Book download in PDF, ePub & Mobi

Mary Barton is a novel written by Elizabeth Gaskell in 1848. This is Elizabeth Gaskell's first novel.

Set in Manchester, the story begins in the year 1837. Mary Barton is the teenage daughter of John Barton, a working class laborer and involved in social struggles for workers' rights.

She is young and beautiful, which attracts the glances and insinuations of many men. Among them is the wealthy son of a factory owner. As a teenager, Mary is somewhat childish and ambitious. She believes that one way to improve her lot in life and that of her family is to pursue someone of a higher class than herself.

The novel offers a poignant insight into the working class in Victorian-era Manchester. It was intended for middle-class readers who were unaware of the hardships the working class endured and their poverty and suffering.

"There are some fields near Manchester, well known to the inhabitants as "Green Heys Fields," through which runs a public footpath to a little village about two miles distant. In spite of these fields being flat, and low, nay, in spite of the want of wood (the great and usual recommendation of level tracts of land), there is a charm about them which strikes even the inhabitant of a mountainous district, who sees and feels the effect of contrast in these commonplace but thoroughly rural fields, with the busy, bustling manufacturing town he left but half-an-hour ago."