Representation of Prostitution in Mary Barton Summary
The Representation
of Prostitution in Mary Barton summary
In summary,
Gaskell presents the character of Esther, an alcoholic prostitute, as a victim not
only as a woman but of the law. Gaskell reflects societies judgements of
prostitutes through the role of John Barton ‘Esther, I see what you’ll end at
with your artificials, and your fly-away veils, and stopping out when honest
women are in their beds; you’ll be a street-walker, Esther, and then, don’t you
go to think I’ll have you darken my door.’ [1]
Establishing this, Gaskell uses Esther’s poor child as an acceptable reason to
start the profession. ‘My little girl fell ill, and I could not mind my shop
and her too: and things grew worse and worse. I sold my goods anyhow to get
money to buy her food and medicine; I wrote over and over again to her father
for help… I could not bear to see her suffer, and forgot how much better it
would be for us to die together… So I went out into the street one January
night.’[2]
Through portraying Esther as alone, disadvantaged by her wealth and her sex,
Gaskell provokes sympathy in an audience which could rely on lust as the motivation for the profession. Gaskell reinforces this sympathy through Esther’s arrest for
Vagrancy. ‘A policeman came up in time to see the close of these occurrences,
and concluding from Esther’s unsteady, reeling fall, that she was tipsy, he
took her in her half-unconscious state to the lock-ups for the night.’[3]
Gaskell’s method of portraying the reasons why prostitutes were social outcasts and often criminals, is able to provide the explanations that they themselves were often unable to give. 'To whom shall the outcast prostitute tell her tale?' (4) I think it would be most effective in exploring the scene of Esther being arrested for vagrancy.
The arrest sums up not only the disadvantage of Esther’s life but the crime of
being poor in the 19th century.
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| Unknown, The Metropolitan Police During the Victorian Era, thevictorianweb, [n.d.], [accessed 13 August 2022]. |
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