[24C]⋙ Descargar Gratis Mary Barton Oxford World Classics Elizabeth Gaskell Shirley Foster 9780192805621 Books

Mary Barton Oxford World Classics Elizabeth Gaskell Shirley Foster 9780192805621 Books

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Mary Barton Oxford World Classics Elizabeth Gaskell Shirley Foster 9780192805621 Books

Mary Barton may be a grueling, knotty read at times, but it nonetheless is a fine example of the Victorian novel, and it is well worth any intellectual effort required to read it. The author covers some of the same ground as Charles Dickens -- the ills associated with the industrialization of England -- as he did in Hard Times, but Gaskell does a far better job of inhabiting her characters, thus making them more vivid than any Dickens character. Gaskell gives her characters life like no other writer.

The book is thematically rich and not merely a polemic against the evils of industrialization. It is a love story. It is a political story. It is an economics study. It is a story about class. It is a murder mystery. It is a story about the actual lives of working class people as they struggle with the industrialization of England.

Although Gaskell is guilty of following some of the Victorian tropisms -- stilted and tormented language, ornate sentence structure -- it is not obvious in this text. This book is one that should be read slowly so that the reader may benefit from the author's genius. The language at times is almost poetic.

This is a Norton Critical Edition, which I always recommend if it is available. The text of Mary Barton itself is 339 pages, but the volume adds some 200 additional pages of supplemental material. The critical apparatus is particularly strong in this volume including an early plan for Mary Barton written out by Elizabeth Gaskell, three plays based on the novel, and a wealth of contemporaneous and current criticism.


Tags : Mary Barton (Oxford World's Classics) [Elizabeth Gaskell, Shirley Foster] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Set in Manchester in the 1840s, <em>Mary Barton</em> depicts the effects of economic and physical hardship upon the city's working-class community. Paralleling the novel's treatment of the relationship between masters and men,Elizabeth Gaskell, Shirley Foster,Mary Barton (Oxford World's Classics),Oxford University Press,0192805622,Literary,Fathers and daughters;Fiction.,Manchester (England);Fiction.,Triangles (Interpersonal relations);Fiction.,19th century fiction,Classic fiction,Classics,FICTION Classics,FICTION Literary,Fathers and daughters,Fiction,Literature - Classics Criticism,Literature: Classics,Triangles (Interpersonal relations),Working class women

Mary Barton Oxford World Classics Elizabeth Gaskell Shirley Foster 9780192805621 Books Reviews

Mary Barton, just turning seventeen, and her father John comprise a grieving household, having recently lost Mary’s mother and namesake Mary. Because Manchester mills are amidst a downturn, millworker and foreman John Barton is out of work, poverty is pinching the household and young Mary needs to find a job, unprepared as she may be. In the few steps she takes out her front door she passes into a different century than the one Elizabeth Bennett lived in for Pride and Prejudice just 45 years earlier.
There were no millhands in Pride and Prejudice, let alone millhands’ daughters; no mill owners trying to maximize profits by minimizing costs; no desperate out-of-work husbands with wives and children facing starvation. Elizabeth Gaskell’s 1848 Manchester was the first modern industrialized city, and young Mary Barton was about to get a deep crash course in life as it is actually lived. Pride and Prejudice was then; Mary Barton is now.
She does find work. She does bring home enough pay to keep her and her father alive. She is pursued by the predatory son of a mill owner whose intentions are emphatically non-honorable. She comes to know love with a young man her peer from her own neighborhood.
There is a murder followed by a trial. Mary discovers she can make a difference in that trial’s outcome. She ventures out on her self-appointed mission, persists through difficulties, goes alone into dangerous places, brings back the goods and is recognized in public as having made a difference. This young lady is somebody.
Dutiful as she is, however, she cannot keep her father John Barton from harm. He is a casualty in the class war between millworkers and mill owners. Not that he dies, but he can’t lead his side to a win, he falls into PTSD, he becomes desperate.
That older generation, the generation of the parents, seem so bound up with traditional class interests they can hardly tolerate each other occupying the same city streets. They never have gotten along at all well, and now with the added pressure of industrial culture and a greatly exaggerated need for cooperation, the chances of them learning to get along feel worse than ever rather than better.
It’s like the whole world is at stake, the whole world is watching and young Mary Barton is among the first humans to learn by experience what this new world is about. It’s a sprawling narrative and Elizabeth Gaskell manages it pretty effectively. The resolution at the end feels more hopeful than realistic. Gaskell allows her narrator to comment too many times on characters’ decisions and motivations, yanking our focus away from the heart of the matter. But the characters feel genuinely substantive, the language they use on each other sounds mostly like real humans in action, and the central theme of love in many of its various forms pulls the human hive of Manchester together quite satisfactorily. Getting along remains a goal, and love provides the satisfactions.
I don't generally read Victorian fiction, but I do regularly visit Manchester and wanted to read some Elizabeth Gaskell. I had watched two BBC dramatizations of her work and opted to break the binding of MARY BARTON. It's a very strong and compellingly written piece, although much better with some of the social history than the eventual plot that focuses on a murder (come on, say it like John Houseman, "Muuuurder") and Mary Barton is the only one who fights for the truth to come out. The joy for me was Gaskell's brilliant portrayal of the northern English people. There are great scenes in Manchester and Liverpool. I do wish that the ending didn't wrap up so fairy tale neatly in the last page or two. Oh well, considering that I was entertained and educated for the other pages, I'd just have to say, "Luv, what a fine novel."

(I read a Norton Critical edition of the novel and have no idea about its faithful transfer to an ebook format.)
Mary Barton may be a grueling, knotty read at times, but it nonetheless is a fine example of the Victorian novel, and it is well worth any intellectual effort required to read it. The author covers some of the same ground as Charles Dickens -- the ills associated with the industrialization of England -- as he did in Hard Times, but Gaskell does a far better job of inhabiting her characters, thus making them more vivid than any Dickens character. Gaskell gives her characters life like no other writer.

The book is thematically rich and not merely a polemic against the evils of industrialization. It is a love story. It is a political story. It is an economics study. It is a story about class. It is a murder mystery. It is a story about the actual lives of working class people as they struggle with the industrialization of England.

Although Gaskell is guilty of following some of the Victorian tropisms -- stilted and tormented language, ornate sentence structure -- it is not obvious in this text. This book is one that should be read slowly so that the reader may benefit from the author's genius. The language at times is almost poetic.

This is a Norton Critical Edition, which I always recommend if it is available. The text of Mary Barton itself is 339 pages, but the volume adds some 200 additional pages of supplemental material. The critical apparatus is particularly strong in this volume including an early plan for Mary Barton written out by Elizabeth Gaskell, three plays based on the novel, and a wealth of contemporaneous and current criticism.