The city vs. the country: A climate of anti-urbanism in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton

Abstract

This paper aims to discuss a contrast between the city and the country in Mary Barton, Elizabeth Gaskell’s first novel. By juxtaposing negative images of early-Victorian Manchester with positive descriptions of rural life and scenery, Gaskell reveals an anti-urban attitude prevalent among a large section of the cultivated middle and upper class. In Mary Barton, nature is an agent of creating an atmosphere of nostalgia for the simple and pure rural world that is disappearing, giving way to a hostile and brutal reality of industrial cities. Strong bonds and human inter-reliance marking rural communities are replaced by aggregation and alienation of human beings in the city. Living in a human-made environment dominated by machine technology of industrial processes, some characters in the novel try to reconnect with the natural world by cultivating rural traditions or seeking in the country an escape from the dreariness of urban existence. Numerous references to nature and its importance for the novel’s characters are a testimony to its ideological significance to Victorian society and an apprehension of unbridled urbanisation.