Exploring Gaskell and Chartism

 After creating the print and trying a new style, it was important to solidify the idea of John Barton as an educated man in contradiction to Gaskell's depiction of why Barton is addicted to opium. 

Reading on Chartism and Mary Barton 

Gregory Vargo, 'Questions from Workers who read: Education and Self-formation in Chartist Print Culture and Elizabeth Gaskell's 'Mary Barton', Victorian Literature and Culture, 44.1, (2016), pp.133-161. 

‘Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, today the best-known literary work to treat Chartism.’

Northern Star 28 December 1850 ‘a powerful and truthful exposition of the evils inherent in the factory system.’ ‘the graphic manner in which the writer placed before the public the domestic, moral, and social results of factory life, brought down from the upholders of the factory system many sneers at her political economy and her sentimentalism; but none denied the unquestionable genius and superior discrimination of character and motives which pervaded the work.’

‘Gaskell’s philanthropic work at the Cross Street Chapel… as well as her study of reports on the lives of the Manchester poor by the Unitarian Domestic Mission Society, taught her that moral failings alone could not account for the degrading and dangerous conditions that afflicted the city’s working classes.’

‘Gaskell’s narrator oscillates between sympathy and judgment, hopefulness and despair.’ P.3

‘At the end of the 1850’s, the Chartist W.E. Adams took the Rev. Gaskell’s Mechanics’ Institute course.’ P.4

‘The Chartist Circular, in turn, excerpted Howitt’s writings on the colonies while the Northern Star reprinted poetry from Howitt’s Journal.’ P.6

‘Fox’s circle celebrated working-class literature and culture, supported Chartism as a movement seeking intellectual and political liberation, and actively sought to build alliances with working-class radicals.’ P.6

‘Chartist periodicals, a possibility curiously neglected in the critical literature, though Mary Barton depicts them as an important part of working-class culture.’ P.6

‘they challenged what should count as education, the context in which instruction should occur, and the ultimate goal of learning.’  Working-men and why they didn’t respond to education from the upper classes. P.8

‘the radical press defined education as inherently political, true education as movement towards liberation. In this light, the press saw itself as a crucial agent of learning, the proper educator of the people. This notion continued to animate the Chartist press in the 1840’s.’ what Barton is reading. P.8

Northern Star commented itself that Lovett’s pamphlet of Chartism creates ‘a system of education which puts their useful knowledge to shame.’ P.9

The education offered to the working-classes sought out controversial topics, ‘but treated them in a non-polemical, putatively objective manner. Essays on industrial technology and on the colonies were presented absent the debates raging about emigration, colonial rule, and the ‘factory question.’ P.11

‘safe natural sciences, banning the discussion of politics, religion and plays and novels deemed too controversial.’ Brad Bevan, Leisure, Citizenship and Working-Class Men in Britain, 1850-1940, (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2005), p.19.

Deirdre d’Albertis Gaskell’s novels ‘ricochet almost uncontrollably between orthodoxy and radicalism… even as each is ultimately resolved through an uncomfortable or, alternatively, an excessive resort to conservative ideologies of the State, Christianity, science or the home.’ P.15

The reading reinforced the idea of Barton as an educated man, and Gaskell's knowledge around Chartism. It could be perceived that her conclusion of opium addiction as a lack of education is not an academic education but a moral one. This will be explored more in a summary of the Gaskell's representation of opium addiction.  

The National Archives, The Northern Star 1838, TS 11/500.