Elizabeth Gaskell: 'Mary Barton'

The Book considers what it meant to be a Unitarian in the hungry forties, what Gaskell understood of Chartism and' political economy'; and attitudes to women's rights. It discusses the many ambiguities and instabilities in the book - suggesting where the reader may need to take issue with some of the standard critical assumptions about Gaskell's text, and considers how she might be compared to Dickens - and what Dickens learned from her.And it discusses some contemporary (i.e. Victorian) and recent critical approaches to the book. The aim is to leave the reader with a great deal of respect for a novel that is sometimes underestimated - while pointing out some of its real departures from the best practice of Realist writers, practices that Mrs Gaskell herself did much to invent.