The
two criticisms that I chose to look at for this blog are Rosemarie
Bodenheimer’s “Private Grief and Public Acts in Mary Barton” and Patsy Stoneman’s “The Feminization of
Working-Class Men in Mary Barton”. Bodenheimer makes the claim that “Mary Barton is a novel about responding
to the grief of loss or disappointment.
Its pages are filled with domestic disaster; the sheer accumulation of
one misfortune after another is the organizing principle of the first half of
the narrative.”(510) Her essay criticizes Gaskell’s “technical discontinuities”
and ”apparently artless repetition”.
While Bodenheimer chooses to look at Gaskell’s writing inconsistencies
and faults, Stoneman chooses to leave the criticism of the author herself to
the side and look more at past criticisms themselves. Stoneman argues that critics too often “deplore the presence
of ‘extraneous factors’ such as the love story and the murder plot”(543)
Stoneman urges critics to “approach the novel through the ethics of the family,
therefore, we do not detract from its value as an exploration of
class-relations, but instead of seeing it as an ‘industrial novel’ flawed by
political naivety and superfluous sub-plots, we can see it as an attempt to
understand the interaction of class and gender.”(544)
I
personally did not notice in Mary Barton
what Bodenheimer refers to as “the transitions from dramatized scene to
narrative summary [that] are awkward and abrupt”(512) I thought that the novel was
one that could be read with ease.
I do, however, agree that the novel depicts one personal tragedy after
another, and I’d venture to say that most readers generally do too. In regards to Stoneman’s essay, I
really enjoyed the different approach to Mary
Barton. The criticisms
relating to Gaskell’s inconsistencies in her writing seem redundant at this
point, and the approach of looking at the paternal behavior of the characters
to understand the class war was rather refreshing. Looking at this behavior shines light on the basis of some
of the characters’ seemingly rash decisions. For instance, John Barton is so passionate about punishing
the mill owners not only because he is angry that he is losing pay, but one of
his greatest fears is that Mary will have to work in the factory, which he will
absolutely not have. Using this
approach, we can come to understand that some of the decisions (such as the
millworkers conspiring to kill the mill owners) were made in an effort to
protect one another.
I agree with Bodenheimer's claim that the novel jumps around so much in genre and intent that it makes the literature challenging to stay on task with. Usually with authors of this age, I feel like they tend to stick with the same tone and mode throughout the novel. Gaskell breaks away with that and whether it is a good thing or bad thing is wholly up to the reader.
ReplyDeleteWe'll have to talk about Mary Barton vs. Middlemarch in class. In many ways, Mary Barton reads like a first novel and/or the novel of an inexperienced writer, whereas Middlemarch pretty much shows us Eliot with all of her writing powers on display. For me, Middlemarch argues just as strongly as Mary Barton, but Eliot develops and sustains her arguments in a much different manner--lots more layers and interconnecting threads that challenge the reader.
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