ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the hunger and social ambitions of John Barton and his daughter, Mary Barton, in order to critique the notion of progress within the narrative of political economy. He takes the money Mary earns for food with 'an eager clutch; sometimes prompted by savage hunger, it is true, but more frequently by a craving for opium', and gradually the latter overpowers the former, with Barton refusing to eat the meals Mary provides. Throughout Mary Barton, the food choices people are able to make to sate their hunger are just as crucial as the fact that they are hungry in the first place. It is therefore significant that throughout Mary Barton, there is no cross-class eating. Hungers, both physical and social, are written in the home space, from the indigent, hopeless starvation of the Davenports, to the Bartons' social hunger that degenerates into the physical.
