<b>Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life</b>&nbsp;<i><b>Mary Barton: A Tale of Manchester Life</b></i>&nbsp;is the&nbsp;first novel&nbsp;by English author&nbsp;Elizabeth Gaskell, published in 1848. The story is set in the English city of&nbsp;Manchester&nbsp;between 1839 and 1842, and deals with the difficulties faced by the&nbsp;Victorian&nbsp;working class.<br /><br />The novel begins in Manchester, where we are introduced to the Bartons and the Wilsons, two working-class families. John Barton is a questioner of the distribution of wealth and the relations between rich and poor. Soon his wife dies&mdash;he blames it on her grief over the disappearance of her sister Esther. Having already lost his son Tom at a young age, Barton is left to raise his daughter, Mary, alone and now falls into depression and begins to involve himself in the&nbsp;Chartist,&nbsp;trade-union&nbsp;movement.<br /><br />Chapter 1 takes place in the countryside where&nbsp;Greenheys&nbsp;is now.<br />Mary takes up work at a dressmaker&#39;s (her father had objected to her working in a factory) and becomes subject to the affections of hard-working Jem Wilson and Harry Carson, son of a wealthy&nbsp;mill&nbsp;owner. She fondly hopes, by marrying Carson, to secure a comfortable life for herself and her father, but immediately after refusing Jem&#39;s offer of marriage she realizes that she truly loves&nbsp;<i>him</i>. She, therefore, decides to evade Carson, planning to show her feelings to Jem in the course of time.<br /><br />Jem believes her decision to be final, though this does not change his feelings for her.<br />Meanwhile, Esther, a &quot;street-walker,&quot; returns to warn John Barton that he must save Mary from becoming like her. He simply pushes her away, however, and she&#39;s sent to jail for a month on the charge of vagrancy. Upon her release, she talks to Jem with the same purpose. He promises that he will protect Mary and confronts Carson, eventually entering into a fight with him, which is witnessed by a policeman passing by.