ABSTRACT
Mary Barton demonstrates in numerous places the degree to which Manchester represents that state apparatus of capitalist terror, from the disparity between wages and cost of essentials to the most important example, the favoritism demonstrated by the police for the masters when Carson and Jem scuffle, and the policeman automatically comes to Carson's aid. This chapter focuses on the structure of Elizabeth Gaskell's novel; the transformation from social to domestic novel is potentially unique to her book. The novel with the most intriguing similarities is, no doubt, Charlotte Bront's Shirley. The chapter argues that the transformation of this social novel into a domestic one in the second half is structurally determined by John Barton's terrorist act, an act that substitutes itself for the burgeoning class consciousness of the strike. Clearly, Gaskell intends for the reader to reject this sort of violence as even Barton comes to by the novel's end.
