Mary Barton: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

The next evening, it rains. John returns from London drenched and utterly demoralized: Parliament has refused to heed the working men’s petition. When Mary tells him that Mr. Wilson has died, he simply declares that that’s “better” than the alternative. Mary, alarmed, quickly runs to Margaret and Job’s and asks Job to come comfort her father. Margaret and Job come with Mary to the Bartons’ and do succeed in cheering John somewhat. Though still doomily prophesying that the rich will suffer in the afterlife, John tells his curious audience about various things he saw in London. Yet when Job asks what exactly happened in Parliament, John can’t bear to relate it.

Job, to break the gloomy silence, tells the others about the time he visited London. His only daughter, Margaret’s mother, married a young joiner, Frank Jennings, who moved to London for a better-paying job. After moving, Job’s daughter wrote him letters hinting that she was pregnant. Then Frank’s father visited Job looking miserable and told him their children had caught a fever. The two fathers hurried to London, but by the time they arrived, their children were dead—though their grandchild, Margaret, had just been born and had survived.

Going back to Manchester with baby Margaret, neither Job nor the other grandfather could get her to eat. The last day of their trip, they stopped at a cottage and offered to pay the woman who lived there if she could feed the baby. The woman—looking sad—unlocked a drawer of baby things, took some out, and cleaned and redressed baby Margaret before feeding her. When the woman’s husband came home and acted annoyed at her tending to the baby, Job offered to pay. She refused. When her husband scowled angrily, she said, “For poor little Johnnie’s sake.” Nevertheless, Job slipped some money onto the table before leaving; he believes he will see that woman “in heaven.”

Job’s story ends. He, John, and Margaret notice that Mary has fallen asleep. Almost immediately, she wakes—and claims she was awake the whole time. The others laugh. Job dares Mary to stay awake while he reads John a poem by Samuel Bamford about the sufferings of the poor. After Job recites the poem, John—greatly impressed—asks Mary to copy down the poem for him. The next day, Mary uses the blank half of an anonymous valentine (which she believes Jem sent her) to copy down the poem.