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Abstract

Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) is an English social-problem novel that addresses sociopolitical and economic issues, most notably prostitution. The protagonist Esther’s position as a low-income factory worker forced by circumstance to engage in sex work grants her an ambiguous position in Victorian England’s patriarchal, capitalist society. Since she appears as an active economic agent by exchanging her body for money in the sex industry, Esther seems to have more socioeconomic freedoms compared to married women. However, her freedom as a sex worker is limited by patriarchal capitalism. She becomes an outcast in the capitalist market, where capital is possessed and controlled mainly by upper-class patriarchs. Esther—who stands for untamed, undomesticated, and unproductive women’s sexuality—is stigmatized in a patriarchal society where women are expected to be asexual, virtuous, and domestic. She is exposed to social isolation and even imprisoned in an attempt to “rehabilitate” her supposed perversions. Drawing on Marxist-feminist scholarship, this study examines Esther’s use of her sexual body as capital in the commercial sex market, to show the socioeconomically insecure status of the so-called “fallen woman” in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton.

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