Summary: For this blog, I chose to focus on Graham Handley's "Notes on Echoes and Epigraphs," as well as John Lucas' piece, "Carson's Murder and the Inadequacy of Hope." As could be surmised from the latter title, the death of Harry Carson was a prominent theme throughout both - Handley also chose to focus on it. Handley analyzed the epigraphs - the quotes which preceded each chapter - and their origin as well as their relationship to the chapter as a whole. In particular, he focuses on the one that alludes to a poem called The Ancient Mariner, and that piece's connection to John Barton. Lucas prefers to write about Carson's death, which cannot be written about without mentioning Barton.
Analysis: Handley begins by citing Elizabeth Gaskell when the author called John Barton central to the novel. She says that he was "the character around whom all the others formed themselves," and her "hero." In short, he was the character who could have or should have been viewed as the paragon within the book. We as readers generally appreciate his actions, and at the end, have a large amount of sympathy for the dying man. Handley points this out as well. One strong similarity between The Ancient Mariner and the character of John Barton is how they both "tell their tale" to one whom they have wronged.*
Lucas, in his piece, sees Barton as less admirable. Lucas accuses Gaskell of overt political tendencies aligning with "liberalism," and states that they sully the book's overall quality. After making note of the same Gaskell quote, wherein she aligned herself with John Barton, Lucas goes on to write about how the murder was "set up" to make the reader sympathize with Barton. Additionally, he credits the inclusion of the murder at all to close-mindedness no the part of Gaskell, saying that she can not "simplify a complexity which has become too terrific for her to accept consciously." He is describing the fear of violence among the upper-classes, realized fictitiously by John Barton.
The reason that I find these analyses of John Barton interesting returns to the question we discussed in class. That is, "what's the solution?" We talked of Gaskell identifying problems but not offering any way to make them better. I wonder if we could see J. Barton's actions as her potential solution. I'm hesitant to assume that that was her intent, because it would be too subtle and also uncharacteristic (given what little we know of her and the context of the rest of the book). However, she does state (in a roundabout way) that she approves of Barton's actions and hopes that the reader will sympathize. Ultimately, while I don't think Mary Barton was intended to be a call-to-arms, I think it's interesting that one could reasonably interpret it as such, given the right context.
*This is my interpretation of what occurred in the poem. I haven't read it, only picked up on the similarities that the author pointed out.
Cool blog! I agree with you. The why that she utilizes her characters and the situations that she puts them in seems like she HAS to be doing something with them from the political sense...she is trying to make some sort of point, but what? I definitively think that there could be literally endless interpretations of what she may or may not being doing from each individual character, the community, the era and all the instances within this book. The criticism about the epigraphs is an interesting approach. I will admit that as I got further into the book I started to merely skim those and then at one point even quit reading them. That was an interesting technique that Gaskell chose to include in her writing, but as a reader of todays time, those are not something very common to see before EVERY chapter. So because of that, I think that I quit paying attention to them because as I reader I kind of felt like they were confusing me and distracting me. However, I am curious if I would see the book in any different light if I was to reread the whole book (knowing now what becomes of everything). I wonder if it would change anything about the book reading it the second time?
ReplyDeleteI also thought examining the epigraphs was a cool approach. Like Hannah, I stopped paying attention to them too because, even though I liked how they kind of foreshadowed what was going to happen in the chapters, they were sometimes hard to understand for me. It's funny that John Barton was supposed to be the central character of the novel originally because I don't think I would have liked it as much without Mary front and center. It made me think a lot about narration and how Gaskell wrote the novel as if there were many main characters. Overall, it seems like the story was about the entire little community that Gaskell was trying to give a voice to.
ReplyDeleteI paid more attention to the epigraphs this time than I have previously, but I also found myself reading them less and less as the novel went on. They just didn't seem to add a whole lot, but it's probably important to give them some consideration. Eliot uses similar techniques and even has her narrator break into the narrative at one point to point out that he/she isn't like narrators in novels like Henry Fielding's Tom Jones. Novelists in the 18th and 19th centuries seem much more comfortable with both interrupting and steering their narratives through the use of intrusive narrators.
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