"God made us rich and poor---of what do these complain?"

          Manchester 1842: Filth, starvation, rags, barefooted hordes of ragged women and children eating from piles of refuse, living in cellars with three families in a 10x12 room, two families to one bed (if there was a bed), mostly just laying on dirty rags. Alleys of putrid wretchedness, damp with illness and sickening ghostlike beggars. “A physically degenerate race, robbed of all humanity, degraded, reduced morally and physically to bestiality” Engels (75). Or should we compare Manchester with Babylon and Thebes, Carthage and Rome? Well, Vaughn swears that “nations come to abound in great cities”(47) and “cities are at once the great effect, and the great cause, of progress in this department of knowledge”(50). How can such a polarity of views exist? This then becomes the discrepancy between the apparent social immobility between classes which produces two separate truths and perceptions of The City.

            Elizabeth Gaskell hands us a novel, which tries to combine these two perceptions. Yet, she creates an even more ghastly view than Engels, as we see “into” the character’s motives, from both Mr. Carson, the bourgeois and John Barton, the starving working class who, living in polar opposites of The City, viciously enforce Gaskell’s theme that one must wear another man’s shoes before any change can happen. Gaskell presents this romantic theme, but Engels presents a possible solution; “that if all proletarians announced their determination to starve rather than work for the bourgeoisie, the latter would have to surrender to monopoly”(88). And, since, Engel’s solution is an impossibility, for what man would choose to starve and die than work for meager wages? the only possible solution we are given is Gaskell’s fictional romance. In any case, she tries to give hope.

            The Davenport’s home is a clear and concise representation of Engel’s cellar dwellings, where two children and a husband die of cholera. (Ch.VI) It is in this scene where Mr. Wilson is determined to make a difference for Mr. Davenport who was a “steady, civil worker” for Mr. Carson. In the “luxurious” library where father and son “lazily enjoyed their nicely prepared food” Gaskell emotes the obvious differences of the social spheres. When Carson wonders to Wilson “who is this Davenport?” the reader is plenty aware of the “machine” like qualities that Carson has bestowed upon his workers. To dehumanize his workers is just one factor that Gaskell uses to show Engels’ Competition facts to be true; that 100 men are fighting for one position at a factory and the manufacturers do not, even for a moment, feel the need to respond to human ills or deaths of workers, as the spots are filled before a coffin has been made for the deceased.   

            This is also the scene that produces a true activist in John Barton who becomes a Trades’ Union leader, and goes to Parliament, with the voice of the workers. Unfortunately, Parliament won’t listen to him, which sets into motion the motives of revenge of the workers, which just so happens to intertwine his daughter’s love triangle into the sordid events.

            My question to the class: What is Gaskell saying about Parliament, and law-making (Ch.15), when given my chosen theme esp. regarding the master’s son’s death and his meeting with Job and Jem (Ch.35)? Is this a truly romantic idea, or is it the means necessary to evoke empathy into lawmakers? and finally, was Gaskell posing John Barton’s action as another possible solution to Engel’s impossible proposed solution?