In the following excerpt, Lucas attributes the flaws in Mary Barton to Gaskell's failure to deal honestly with the social conditions she was attempting to represent.

In the essay that follows, Craik contends that although Gaskell's Mary Barton is concerned with issues of social reform, it avoids a didactic tone in order to emphasize realistic situations and characters.

In the following excerpt, Ganz discusses the authenticity of Gaskell's representation of working-class problems in Mary Barton.

In the following excerpt, Lansbury discusses Gaskell's original version of Mary Barton and the changes she made in response to her publisher's demands.

In the following essay, Stone discusses Gaskell's use of multiple working-class voices in Mary Barton.

In the following essay, Recchio discusses the differences in interpretation of Gaskell's novel between working-class students reading it for the first time and academic literary critics.

In the following excerpt, Childers explores similarities between Gaskell's novel and Friedrich Engels's The Condition of the Working Class in England.

In the following essay, Guest examines Mary Barton as a regional novel.

In the following essay, Bodenheimer contends that Mary Barton can be read as a novel of mourning—one which deals with two primary issues: what to do in response to injustice, and how such responses might traverse the divide between the private and public spheres.

In the following essay, Brown disagrees with those critics who believe the heroine of North and South to be a more skillfully created character than Mary Barton, claiming that Barton is a more independent woman than Margaret Hale.

In the following essay, Fryckstedt examines early industrial fiction that inspired Gaskell's novel, particularly the writings of Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Stone, and Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna.

In the following excerpt, Hopkins explores the conditions surrounding the composition and publication of Mary Barton.

In the following excerpt, Wildt examines the way Gaskell uses color to evoke mood and to portray moral truth in her novel.

In the following essay, Surridge asserts that Gaskell presents working-class males as models of masculinity who are also caring and nurturing individuals, while mill owners are depicted as deficient in both nurturing skills and in manhood.

In the following essay, Culross disagrees with earlier critics who considered the romantic plot in Mary Barton unrelated to its social plot and claimed, therefore, that the novel lacked unity.

In the following essay, Jordan discusses literary quotations and allusions in Gaskell's novel, concentrating on elements of Gothic discourse that appear after the murder of Harry Carson.

In the following essay, Wheeler investigates the various literary sources that may have provided the inspiration for Gaskell's novel.

In the following essay, Stoneman maintains that in Mary Barton, Gaskell creates a dichotomy between working-class ethics, based on mutual aid, and middle-class ethics, based on private property and authority.

In the following essay, Brodetsky praises Gaskell's novel for its powerful depiction of the poverty and suffering of the working-class inhabitants of Britain's industrial cities in the mid-nineteenth century.

In the following essay, Handley examines some of the epigraphs used in Gaskell's novel and their relevance to the meaning of the work as a whole.

In the following essay, Clapp examines differing levels of miscommunication in Mary Barton, including disjunction between individuals and groups in the novel, as well as between the author and the reader.