Mary Barton is the daughter of a good and upright trade unionist, John Barton. She attracts two men, Jem Wilson, a fellow worker, and Henry Carson, son of her father's employer. When the union men decide upon murder John Barton is the chosen assassin of Henry Carson. Suspicion falls, however, on Jem, and...
Mary is torn between her lover and her farther. "Mary Barton" is a social history made real, through the humanity of Elizabeth Gaskell's characters.
The poverty and injustice she portrays are based soundly on her own acute observations of the age in which she lives.