文档介绍：Mary Barton
by Elizabeth Gaskell
作者简介
盖斯凯尔夫人(
),娘家姓,作家,生于伦敦。年同曼彻斯
特唯一神教派牧师盖斯凯尔结婚。她到中年才开始写作,处女作是
《玛丽·巴顿》( )。其他作品有《克兰弗德》
( )、《露丝》( )、《南北》(
)、《妻子与女儿》(
)和夏洛蒂·勃朗特的传记。
2 Mary Barton
Mary Barton 1
PREFACE
Three years ago I became anxious (from circumstances that need not be
more fully alluded to) to employ myself in writing a work of fiction. Living
in Manchester, but with a deep relish and fond admiration for the country,
my first thought was to find a frame-work for my story in some rural scene;
and I had already made a little progress in a tale, the period of which was
more than a century ago, and the place on the borders of Yorkshire, when I
bethought me how deep might be the romance in the lives of some of those
who elbowed me daily in the busy streets of the town in which I resided. I
had always felt a deep sympathy with the care-worn men, who looked as if
doomed to struggle through their lives in strange alternations between work
and want; tossed to and fro by circumstances, apparently in even a greater
degree than other men. A little manifestation of this sympathy and a little
attention to the expression of feelings on the part of some of the work-
people with whom I was acquainted, had laid open to me the hearts of one
or two of the more thoughtful among them; I saw that they were sore and
irritable against the rich, the even tenor of whose seemingly happy lives
appeared to increase the anguish caused by the lottery-like nature of their
own. Whether the plaints made by them, of the neglect which
they experienced from the prosperous— especially from the masters whose
fortunes they had helped to build up— were well-founded or no, it is not for
me to judge. It is enough to say, that this belief of the injustice and unkind-
ness which they endure from their fellow-creatures, taints what might be
resignation to God’s will, and turns it to revenge in too many of the poor
uneducated factory-workers of Manchester.
The more I refl