An Eco-feminist Study On Gaskell’s Mary Barton

The issue of women and the social problem with industrialization in the Victorian Age are commonly considered as the theme reflected in Gaskell’s Mary Barton.Even though the industrialized society has created huge social wealth,“money worship”pervades the whole society.The relationships among people are mostly the “cash nexus”.Accordingly,all kinds of critical voices appear with the development of industrialization.However,few scholars study Mary Barton from the perspective of eco-feminism under the context of industrialization.Therefore,this paper tries to interpret the novel from the eco-feminist perspective by means of reconsidering the relationships between nature and humans and between women and men under the shock of industrialization,and by means of showing concern over the mechanized nature and the suppressed women with binary opposition.This paper undertakes an in-depth analysis of environmental problems and women issue in Mary Barton with the help of Carolyn Merchant’s theory of the organic world view,which is firstly proposed in The Death of Nature by Carolyn Merchant,mainly dealing with the exploration of the harmonious coexistence between nature and humans in the modern society.According to Carolyn Merchant,it is the modern science and technology that have made the nature suffer from the crucial transformation from the organic world view to the mechanistic world view.In Mary Barton,Gaskell exposes such a cruel fact that with the spread of the mechanistic world view the nature is seriously mechanized and the women are severely suppressed for profit.Self,society and cosmos are unified in the mechanical order.The original female principles of the organic nature are either eliminated or used by the mechanically oriented mentality in the exploitive manner.Under the supreme dominion of males,nature and women are lowered as the “others”,whose true voices are deprived.Under her pen,Gaskell presents us the humble status of mechanized nature and suppressed women,expresses their different ways of outcry and protest,and attempts to awaken the people to reconsider the relationships between nature and humans and between women and men.Suppressed by the mechanistic world view,the nature finally wages a war against the mechanical order and revenges itself on humans.Through Gaskell’s creation,a group of female characters act as the pioneers to fight against the mechanistic world view based on the androcentrism.Actually,women’s rescue of men at the end of the novel can be interpreted as the subversion of the mechanistic world view.They refuse to become men’s accomplice in the novel.Nature,women and men should be egalitarian and they should closely rely on each other.Humans are expected to become an integral part of nature.In conclusion,the paper reveals the dominion over nature and women originated from the mechanism in the highly industrialized Victorian society,criticizes the mechanistic world view widely accepted in Gaskell’s times,and advocates people to reconstruct an egalitarian and harmonious relationships between nature and humans,and between women and men.Furthermore,the author of the paper calls on that an ideal model of modern society should be established in the future with the inspiration of the organic world view.