Literary Review of Mary Barton

Before looking at Ruth, we have a novel very different from Mary Barton in Cranford. While Mary Barton is a novel of the poor people's struggle to survive in a changing society which needs them as workers yet turns a blind eye to their suffering, Cranford is concerned with the struggle of an old-fashioned society against the changes being forced upon it by the new industrialism. In Cranford there are two main characters who grow and change together: a young woman called Mary Smith, and her older friend Matilda Jenkyns. Through their friendship, these two women symbolize the union of the new England with the old Victorian values. It is apparent that industrialism is making it difficult for the old ways to continue, especially the "code of gentility" which is a major force in the lives of the women, and men, of Cranford. However, we understand at the end that it is possible for the old to co-exist with the new as Mary Smith merges the values and behaviors of the older generation with her Drumble background.
Originally, Cranford was published in eight parts in Charles Dickens' journal, Household Words. The first installment appeared in 1851 with more following in 1852 and finishing in 1853. As Peter Keating suggests in his introduction to the Penguin edition of Cranford, the delay in the installments was due to the writing of Ruth, published in 1853 (Keating 8). Cranford is different from the other novels by Elizabeth Gaskell in that it is the depiction of a small English village and is concerned with the everyday occurrences in the lives of mainly older ladies, rather than the story of a great social problem threatening the lives and security of the characters.
The narrator of the story is a young woman called Mary Smith. We are not given much information about Mary except that she once lived in Cranford but moved to the big city of Drumble with her businessman father. In fact, we know so little of Mary that it isn't until late in the book that her name is even