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The love interest narrative in Mary Barton weakens fundamentally the force of the novel as a social commentary. To what extent do you agree with this analysis of Gaskell’s text? During the course of this essay, I will discuss the extent to which the love interest narrative in Mary Barton fundamentally weakens the force of the novel as a social commentary. I will be referring to other social commentary novels such as Hard Times by Charles Dickens, and The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. By using these two novels as markers with which to measure Mary Barton, I hope to discover, whether it is the love interest, or merely Gaskell’s middle class misunderstanding of working class people, that really undermines the novel as a piece of social commentary. Although written nearly a hundred years later, George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier is a great example of social commentary. From the beginning, Orwell sets out to expose the hardship, exploitation, and injustice being suffered by miners in the north of England. Like Gaskell, Orwell came from a lower-upper middle class background. Initially, both writers had no experience of working class life. Gaskell gained her experience of the working classes while helping h