The Analysis of Social Stratification in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life from a Marxist Perspective

Abstract

While Industrial Revolution helped England to become a great power in the world, capitalism created a huge gap between the middle classes and working classes. Observing the condition of the society, Marx and Engels created their famous claim of class struggle in The Communist Manifesto. They emphasized the gap between two classes and how to revolt against the capitalist system by the working class. This paper ventures to study the class issue in the Victorian society from the perspective of the Marxist literary theory. It analyses how the capitalist system makes working class people’s life miserable while it enriches the lives of middle class people. In this respect, Elizabeth Gaskell’s novel Mary Barton will be studied together with the links between the novel and The Communist Manifesto.