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Making or Breaking Community (1) Elizabeth Gaskell's novel Mary Barton can hardly be referred to as the exceptional literary masterpiece. Nevertheless, from a certain point of view, the value of her novel is higher than the value of other books, written about the same time by different authors. This is because, in her novel, Gaskell creates a very realistic image of Victorian society, often at the expense of over complicating the plot. In order for Mary Barton to be read as rather documentary than a fiction, author includes a detailed description of peoples clothing, food and different household items, so that reader gets a three dimensional image of settings, where action takes place. There are undeniable socialist undertones in Gaskell's novel. Victorian society is shown as being divided along the class lines.
The social conflict in Mary Barton is explained as the result of economic exploitation. According to Gaskell, this is what prevents people from having a sense of communal belonging. John Barton, for example, is described as a typical proletarian, who understands that social dynamics are defined by the class struggle, even though that he cannot formulate this idea politically. However, Gaskell is far from suggesting that only a revolutionary restructuring of Victorian society can improve a social situation in Britain. Instead, author promotes the idea that people, who belong to lower social strata, should simply become more pious, which will make them happy.
The obvious naivety of such approach undermines the literary value of Gaskell's book. Gaskell was striving to realistically portray the life of poor people, while being a daughter of English aristocrats. We can say that she is sympathetic to workers cause, but only for as long as this does not pose a danger to her own well-being. In fact, Gaskell's portrayal of Mary Barton as someone who remains respectful of society's traditional values, despite the fact that these values are repressive, implies that authors worldview was based on the ideas of stoicism.
Gaskell achieves an extraordinary realism in her portrayal of Victorian times, because she was able to adapt historical authenticity to readers own view of Victorian era. When reading about people, dressed in 19 th century clothing, we usually do not relate to them psychologically, for as long as they remain static. However, once Gaskell sets her characters in motion, the reality of Victorian England becomes self-evident. This is because, even though that Gaskell's characters continuously struggle with poverty, their strong sense of family values never weakens. Thus, it is obvious that Gaskell was aware that class struggle does not define the inner being of every particular individual.
At the same time, she failed to realize that it is not the religion that provides people with a common ground for reconciliation, but scientific and social progress. At the time, Gaskell wrote her novel, the Socialist ideas were gaining popularity among many people. As history shows, very often peoples idealistic strive towards social equality was being exploited by Marxists for their own agenda. Since Gaskell was a very pious person, she also wanted to turn this peoples strive into something that would benefit Church. This is why, in her novel, we can find a lot of criticism, which is being directed at greedy employers, but there is no a single proof of Gaskell being critical towards religion. The psychological factor, as something that defines peoples behavior, is being rather neglected by Gaskell.
Mary Burton was specifically written for women, this is why author pays such a great attention to details, while depriving novels characters of psychological depth. Despite its apparent realism, Gaskell's novel lacks reasonableness, which prevents us from comparing Mary Barton to novels of Charles Dickens, for example, even though that both authors exploited the same themes. (2) The reason why Charlotte Bronte's novel Jane Eyre remains as one of the most widely read womens novels is that the literary finesse in it is combined with authors understanding of the essence of social processes in Victorian England. Jane Eyre is presented to us as woman who has to continuously overcome numerous obstacles that were established for her by the repressive code of social ethics. In their turn, these ethics are shown as something that derives out of the essence of Christian morality. Even though that Bronte does not proclaim it openly, her negative attitude towards conventional religion is obvious, throughout the novel. For example, Mr.
Brocklehurst represents the hypocritical nature of evangelical Christianity. On one hand, he says that being poor pleases God, on the other, he suffers from the fact that he is not rich, which prompts him to steal money from his students. We cannot suggest that Bronte was an advocate of womens liberation, in contemporary sense of this word. Nevertheless, her novel contains a certain ideas, which are later going to be associated with feminism. Jane Eyre is described as an independent woman, who lives with accordance to her beliefs.
She is respectful of social customs, however, readers get a feeling that she has a potential of stepping over the notions of conventional morality, in order to attain happiness. Namely these notions, Bronte considers as being repressive in their core. Jane strongly associates happiness with family values. In this respect, she reminds Mary Barton from Gaskell's novel. However, she is shown as someone who will not be content with the role of husbands servant.
In addition, Bronte's view of the family is more fundamental, because she considers it as something that has important social function. Many of Janes progressive ideas, in regards to politics and religion, come as a result of her being able to receive education. Throughout the novel, Jane continues to stress out the importance of education, because it allows individuals political views to have value. Bronte promotes the idea that it is a science and not the religion that can help us to understand what defines the essence of socio-political trends in society. Bertha Masons mental illness is described as simply a fact, without author trying to moralize on the subject.
This point out to the fact that Bronte's worldview was much more progressive than she even wanted to admit in her book. She clearly promotes the idea that social ethic can only be referred to as moral, if it does contradict the laws of nature. In its turn, it also gives Bronte's book a philosophical value, which cannot be said about Gaskell's novel. Bronte views individual as the part of family, family as the part of community and community as the part of nation. She does not discuss human behavior, while taking it out of social context.
At the same time, she shows that it is also wrong to think that only social circumstances define peoples act. It is very noticeable that in Bronte's novel, the morally despicable characters are also physically unattractive. Even though that the laws of genetics were not discovered yet, at the time when Bronte was working on Jane Eyre, she appears as someone who possessed an intuitive knowledge about the fact that physical ugliness and moral depravity derive out of each other. Therefore, we cannot refer to Bronte's masterpiece as being politically correct, in contemporary sense of this word. Still, this is exactly the reason why it has a literary value. Victorian era is associated with glory and depravity, at then same time.
While the geopolitical dominance of White people in the world was undisputed, within Victorian society people were being divided by their class affiliation. There is one similarity between Bronte's and Gaskell's novels neither author promotes Socialist cause, even though that they both criticize social inequality as being artificially induced. The best indication of novels literary value is its popularity among readers. Mary Burton was never able to attract much of public attention, because it lacks a stylistic finesse and plots intensity.
Jane Eyre, on the other hand, is now considered as being one of the best examples of Victorian literature, which is being translated in 20 languages, due to Bronte's much better understanding of Victorian reality. Bibliography: Bronte, Charlotte Jane Eyre. 2007. Project Guttenberg EBook. 15 May. 2007. web Gaskell, Elizabeth Mary Barton. 2000. Project Guttenberg EBook. 15 May. 2007. web
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