Opium Quotes in Mary Barton

 

Opium Addiction in Gaskell’s Mary Barton

Elizabeth Gaskell, Mary Barton, (Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Limited, 2012).

Chapter 10

Page 110

‘’Father so often angry, so lately cruel… and then her heart turned round, and she remembered with self-reproach how provokingly she had looked and spoken, and how much her father had to bear; and oh, what a kind and loving parent had had been, till these days of trial… So he held out his arms, and in many tears she told him her repentance for her fault. He never struck her again.’

‘Still, he often was angry. But that was almost better than being silent. Then he sat near the fireplace (from habit) smoking, or chewing opium. Oh, how Mary loathed that smell! And in the dusk, just before it merged into the short summer night, she had learned to look with dread towards the window, which now her father would have kept uncurtained: for there were not seldom seen sights which haunted her dreams. Strange faces of pale men, with dark glaring eyes, peered into the inner darkness, and seemed desirous to ascertain if her father was at home.’

Page 115

‘The morning of the day on which it was to take place he had lain late in bed, for what was the use of getting up? He had hesitated between the purchase of meal or opium, and had chosen the latter for its use had become a necessity with him. He wanted it to relieve him from the terrible depression its absence occasioned. A large lump seemed only to bring him into a natural state, or what had been his natural state formerly.’

Page 132

‘And her father, too – he was a great anxiety to her, he looked so changed and so ill. Yet he would not acknowledge to any ailment…. She could mot stay often to make purchases of food, but gave up the money at once to her fathers eager clutch; sometimes prompted by a savage hunger it is true, but more frequently by a craving for opium.’

Chapter 15

Page 159

‘Would you not be glad to forget life, and its burdens? And opium gives forgetfulness for a time.’

‘It is true they who thus purchase it pay dearly for their oblivion, but can you expect the uneducated to count the cost of their whistle? Poor wretches! They pay a heavy price. Days of oppressive weariness and languor, whose realities have the feeble sickliness of dreams; nights, whose dreams are fierce realities of agony; sinking health, tottering frame, incipient madness, and worse, the consciousness of incipient madness, this is the price of their whistle. But have you taught them the science of consequences?’

 

Everyman's Library, Elizabeth Gaskell Mary Barton, photograph, eBay, 1994, [accessed 14 June 2022]