Friedrich Engels

According to Engels, what are the different human relations that make up the city? (Look particularly at his portrait of the "town" and the "social war" on p.68-9.)
How does Engels conceptualize the social order and organization of Manchester?

What specific images and metaphors does he use for the physical structure of the city, the relations between people, between classes, and between people and their environments?
What forces are at work in Victorian Manchester? Is there a particular logic to this city?

As you read Engels's work of social investigation, what symbolic properties do you ally with poverty, with concealment, and with dirt? Particularly note Engels's unflinching emphasis on human bodily waste: Why do you think he portrays this 'unpleasant' subject so insistently?

Concealment and exposure, light and darkness
Labyrinths, complex and chaotic dwellings
Separation and compartmentalization
Dirt and waste
Vertical divisions: class strata, cellars vs. homes in the hills, relative degrees of cleanliness and ventilation
Emptiness: homes that are not homes; homes that lack humanity (literally and figuratively)
Stagnation, decay
Animality, brutality
The new and the old
The river, water, drainage

According to Engels, how can we help ourselves? What actions are humanizing and dignifying actions -- utopian actions? Why?

Michel Foucault

According to Foucault, what sort of power relations attend the factory (and other associated disciplinary institutions)? How are these power relations similar to and different from those portrayed by Ure?
Where, according to Foucault, is power located? Critics have faulted Foucault for his somewhat broad use of this term – what do you think?
In Foucault’s account, what has happened to the modern individual? How are individuals ‘disciplined’? How are individual subjects formed?
According to Foucault, what has happened to the modern individual’s body and to its placement in space? What does Foucault mean by “docile bodies”? How do we (or don’t we) encounter ‘docile bodies’ in Ure?
Why does Foucault draw so many parallels between factories, schools, and armies?
In class we discussed the importance of hierarchy in Ure’s corporeal vision of the factory. How does Foucault discuss hierarchy?
What does Foucault mean by the “microphysics of power”?
Closely note Foucault’s discussion of the Panopticon. How is this metaphor of discipline relevant in Ure’s industrial account? How is it not? Does Ure emphasize surveillance and transparency in the same way that Foucault does?

Compare and contrast Gaskell's 'project statement' in her "Preface" to that of Engels.

What are some different interpretations that you can make of her tone in the "Preface"?
How does she read the figure of the crowd differently from Engels?

What different roles do the descriptive drive (the ‘is') and the normative drive (the 'ought') play in Mary Barton? Can you think of moments when what 'is' and what 'should be' overlap in this narrative?

How would we describe Gaskell’s affective (emotional) project? What kinds of working-class feeling does she concentrate upon? What techniques does she use to portray these feelings?

The narrator's frequent first-person ("I") remarks and appeals to her reader
Moments of shifting narrative emphasis (as in the above narrative appeals)
The use of free indirect discourse (moments in which the narrator seems to penetrate the private thoughts of various characters)
Moments of "contrast" (Gaskell's term)
Moments of "shock" (Gaskell's term, again)

Note Mary Barton's different narrative lines. Foremost, of course, are its romantic plot line and its political plot line (Mary's love interests and the unfolding murder/detective story).

How would you describe the relation between these various narrative lines -- especially that between the murder plot and the love plot?
What is the relation between the personal and the political in this work?
Here is a list (far from exhaustive!) of some of the different narratives and genres that appear in Mary Barton.

Romantic (marriage plot)
Political (murder mystery, detective plot)
Melodrama (think of opera, soap operas, or other popular forms with very stereotypical characters -- clearly detectable villains, heroes, innocent maidens in distress, etc.)
Gothic (think of Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights -- dark, creepy accounts of the spiritual and supernatural, often with monstrous characters and menacing overtones of violence.)
Comedy/farce (forms that often use exaggeration for comic ends -- parody, burlesque, etc.)
Tragedy (Gaskell actually compares Mr. Carson Sr.'s passions to those in Greek tragedy)
Pastoral (fantasies of rustic escape, sometimes populated by shepherds)
Domestic (somewhat like the romantic plot line; focused on domestic life, sentimentality, manners, and relationships)
Mythic (ageless tales and larger-than-life figures -- need I say more?)
Journalistic/sociological (think of Engels -- with an emphasis on collectives, environments, communities, statistics)

Try to think of some of the different effects that these narrative strands and genres have on the novel as whole:

Where and how do they appear?
Why do you think Gaskell uses them?
What is their effect on the stylistics of the novel?
Do we come to any conclusions about what type of genre most properly (according to Gaskell!) represents the poor?

In his review of Mary Barton, W. R. Greg criticizes the novel for fostering "[t]he desperate delusion that the evils of society are to be remedied from without, not from within, that the people are to be passive parties, -- and not the principal, almost the sole, agents, -- in their own rehabilitation" (177).

Now that you have finished Mary Barton, do you agree or disagree with Greg? How do Greg’s remarks compare with the attitude(s) Gaskell encourages in her readers?

What sort of portrait does it offer of social life, family life, labor relations, and human suffering?
What kind of commentary does it offer on the future of the community?
Do you read it as a hopeful ending? A mythic ending? A disappointing ending? Why?

As you read Ure, note the different images and metaphors that he uses to imagine industrial relationships.
What sort of logic/ rationale do these figures convey? Why do you think he chooses to use them as he does?
How, exactly, does Ure describe the factory? (Note, especially, the definition offered on pages 13-14.) Why do you think he chooses to portray the factory as he does?
According to Ure, what should ideal labor relations look like?
How would you describe Ure’s attitude towards the machine – the “iron man,” as he terms it?
Take a close look at the frontispiece of Ure’s book. How is the relation between people and technology represented here? Note especially the use of space and perspective.
I mentioned earlier that many of our readings would be informed by the question: “Do artifacts have politics?” What are the politics of Ure’s ideal factory? That is to say, what power relations attend Ure’s “vast automaton” and its mechanical and intellectual “organs”?