Mary Barton

One moment of silence, and then the murmurs rose, as the verdict was discussed by all with lowered voice. Jem stood motionless, his head bowed; poor fellow, he was stunned with the rapid career of events during the last few hours.

Carson's murder, Jem's trial, and John Barton's confession form a Manchester tragedy of class rage and redemption with classical inevitability, so plot scores 87.

So while Mary took her own way, growing more spirited every day, and growing in her beauty too, her father was chairman at many a trades' union meeting; a friend of delegates, and ambitious of being a delegate himself; a Chartist, and ready to do any thing for his order.

John Barton, Mary, Jem, and Esther are typed but warmly individuated — the Chartist father against the vain daughter and steady lover — without flattening into pamphlet only, so cast scores 86.

There are some fields near Manchester, well known to the inhabitants as "Green Heys Fields," through which runs a public footpath to a little village about two miles distant. In spite of these fields being flat and low, nay, in spite of the want of wood, there is a charm about them which strikes even the inhabitant of a mountainous district.

Thirty-eight chapters with pastoral openings and union-meeting digressions; the murder trial accelerates but the Green Heys rhythm dominates rather than thriller tempo, so pace scores 83.

Oh! 'tis hard, 'tis hard to be working / The whole of the live-long day, / When all the neighbours about one / Are off to their jaunts and play.

Gaskell's north-country realism — field stiles, factory chimneys, prison dusk — fuses Chartist argument with sensuous Lancashire detail, so prose scores 85.

You can fancy, now, the hoards of vengeance in his heart against the employers. For there are never wanting those who, either in speech or in print, find it their interest to cherish such feelings in the working classes.

Green Heys Fields, Manchester factories, and Chartist meetings form the first sustained portrait of industrial England as a moral ecosystem, so world scores 90.

Close by it is a deep, clear pond, reflecting in its dark green depths the shadowy trees that bend over it to exclude the sun. The only place where its banks are shelving is on the side next to a rambling farm-yard, belonging to one of those old-world, gabled, black and white houses.

The Manchester song and Green Heys Fields establish pastoral contrast before Barton's trade-union chairmanship — inviting in atmosphere rather than shock, so hook scores 84.

Her father was chairman at many a trades' union meeting; a friend of delegates, and ambitious of being a delegate himself; a Chartist, and ready to do any thing for his order.

Working-class industrial fiction with Chartist politics at centre anticipates the social-problem novel and Condition-of-England debate, so innov scores 88.

Not many days after John Barton's funeral was over, all was arranged respecting Jem's appointment at Toronto; and the time was fixed for his sailing. It was to take place almost immediately: yet much remained to be done; many domestic preparations were to be made.

Jem's Toronto appointment with Mary and Mrs Wilson, after John Barton's funeral and Esther's return — sorrow acknowledged, new life begun across the Atlantic, so ending scores 86.