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Chapter 28
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Mary Barton, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Employers vs. Workers
Sexuality and Danger
Christianity
Poverty and Morality
Empathy vs. Ignorance
Summary
Analysis
At 2 p.m., Job is supposed to meet Mary and Will at Mr. Bridgnorth’s Liverpool office but doesn’t find them. Mr. Bridgnorth tells Job that he interviewed Jem in the morning and found him uncooperative: Jem simply refused to answer some of Mr. Bridgnorth’s questions. Yet when Job asks whether Mr. Bridgnorth thinks Jem is guilty, Mr. Bridgnorth says no—but he thinks Jem knows some secret about the murder that he won’t share: when he asked Jem how Harry came to be shot with Jem’s gun, Jem wouldn’t say anything.
Jem’s refusal to speak to his own lawyer about the murder weapon strengthens the implication that he is trying to avoid casting guilt on his beloved Mary’s father. Jem’s dangerous self-sacrifice for Mary’s sake shows yet another way that love, romance, and sex can end up imperiling working-class Victorian men as well as Victorian women and girls.
Themes
After a long wait during which Mary and Will don’t arrive, Mr. Bridgnorth tells Job he has to go to the courts—and in any case, perhaps there was a miscommunication and that’s where he’ll find Will. After Mr. Bridgnorth leaves, Job walks to Mrs. Jones’s. When Mrs. Jones explains that Mary came by but that Will had already sailed, Job asks where Mary is now. Mrs. Jones says she doesn’t know, though her son Charley would. Then Charley walks in. When his mother asks him about Mary, he explains that she went boating after Will’s ship. Job promises Mrs. Jones and Charley a sixpence if Charley will bring Mary to his address, supposing Mary comes back to the Jones’s—but Mary doesn’t.
Themes
