Social Injustice in Mary Barton Anonymous 12th Grade

Throughout Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton, social injustice is a powerful and prevalent theme. This essay will focus especially on Chapter Six, where John Barton seeks medicine for his equally impoverished friend, Ben Davenport. This Chapter perhaps presents the fact that Gaskell’s novel moves beyond even social injustice to that of basic human kindness. The phrase ‘social injustice’ suggests that a group in society is ignored, which, undeniably, the lower class in nineteenth century England are. Yet, this focus on Barton’s journey to seek medicine presents the divide between classes as literally a matter of life or death, irrefutably more serious than simply being ignored. Barton’s actions also allude to a wider metaphor regarding the class system. As it has been established, the poor are treated as ‘out of sight, out of mind’; it is a hierarchy that is so foundational to their society that not even someone’s life is worth breaking it.

Gaskell uses an extremely simple metaphor to illustrate this start contrast between classes: light and dark. As Barton journeys to seek medicine, he marvels at the lavishness of the ‘lighted shops’ at night: of all shops a druggist’s looks the most like the tales of our childhood, from Aladdin’...