Mary Barton

I read Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell in kind of a mad frenzy.

Initially I was turned off by the book; it's written in dialect and includes long over-wrought poetry at the beginning of every chapter (which I skipped). There was just something off-putting and disappointing about it at first. It was clearly nowhere near as wonderfully, perfectly written as Wives and Daughters. (Mary Barton was Gaskell's first book, and Wives and Daughters her last, and you can see how much she grew as an artist when you compare these two works.)

But in spite of that I quickly got drawn into the descriptions of industrial poverty and human pathos. Mary Barton is a completely lurid, over-the-top soap opera. So much death and squalor, drug use, prostitution, injustice and eventually murder. Although not a great book, it was impossible to put down, and I even, I confess, snuck in reading parts of it on the computer at work.

Also, it was kind of aggressively religious. Christ's love and forgiveness ends up saving the day...

Anyway, I'm thinking North and South is next for me...