Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell

He flung her, trembling, sickening, fainting, from him, and strode away. She fell with a feeble scream against the lamp-post, and lay there in her weakness, unable to rise. A policeman came up in time to see the close of these occurrences, and concluding from Esther's unsteady, reeling fall, that she was tipsy, he took her in her half-unconscious state to the lock-ups for the night. The superintendent of that abode of vice and misery was roused from his dozing watch through the dark hours, by half-delirious wails and moaning’s, which he reported as arising from intoxication. If he had listened, he would have heard these words, repeated in various forms, but always in the same anxious, muttering way.

"He would not listen to me; what can I do? He would not listen to me, and I wanted to warn him! Oh, what shall I do to save Mary's child? What shall I do? How can I keep her from being such a one as I am; such a wretched, loathsome creature! She was listening just as I listened, and loving just as I loved, and the end will be just like my end. How shall I save her? She won't hearken to warning, or heed it more than I did; and who loves her well enough to watch over her as she should be watched? God keep her from harm! And yet I won't pray for her; sinner that I am! Can my prayers be heard? No! they'll only do harm. How shall I save her? He would not listen to me."

In this passage of Elizabeth Gaskell's "Mary Barton", Esther expresses her hatred and shame for her situation. Through the language Gaskell uses, the reader is truly able to feel the anguish which she feels. Words such as "loathsome creature", "wretched", and "sinner", expresses the amount of anger she has towards herself, the amount of exaggeration Gaskell uses for what is actually only truly seen as taboo, shows what the author is thinking. In which, Gaskell expresses her feelings towards “the fallen woman”. The liberal idea of women doing as they please and working for themselves, is so taboo that society sees Esther as this terrible human being when she is simply being a human being. The amount of victim blaming Esther is putting on herself due to the overwhelming society pressures, is expressed in the passage above. Although, the fact that Esther is expressing that she doesn’t want anyone to end up just like her, could be taken in two ways. One being a conservative reading and the other a liberal, Esther could not want anyone to end up just as she for she does not want anyone to feel the discrimination and sexism she is surrounded by at all times or, Esther could not want anyone to experience this as well because she truly feels as if she is in the wrong, that she is doing something wrong. In conclusion, the author leaves room for ambiguity, yet Gaskell seems to be expressing her feeling towards the wrongful conviction of “fallen woman” through Esther.