Abstract
Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) is among the better known of the decade’s social problem novels, highlighting the female voice through its depiction of domestic mechanisms in a specifically working-class and industrialized setting. In the novel, female voices are characterized through romance plots but also through literal renderings of voice, including oral storytelling traditions and song, as well as Esther’s frustration as she struggles to tell her own story in her own voice. At the climax of the novel, public and private modes merge through the female voice, as women are heard offering their testimony in court.
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Notes
- 1.
Martineau’s principal theoretical source was James Mill’s Elements of Political Economy (1821), and she drew on Jane Marcet’s Conversations in Political Economy (1816) for her concept of narrative illustrations of economic principles.
- 2.
For a more detailed analysis of this passage, see Carolyn Lambert, The Meanings of Home in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Fiction. Brighton: Victorian Secrets, 2013, 122–24.
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Lambert, C. (2018). The Female Voice and Industrial Fiction: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton. In: Gavin, A., de la L. Oulton, C. (eds) British Women's Writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, Volume 1. British Women’s Writing from Brontë to Bloomsbury, 1840-1940, vol 1. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-78226-3_9
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