“Go and Do Likewise”: Good Samaritan Hospitality in Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Elizabeth Gaskell’s Mary Barton (1848) employs Biblical parables to interrogate the social inequities faced by Manchester’s urban poor. This analysis investigates Gaskell’s interpretation of the Good Samaritan parable by extending the idea of hospitality beyond sympathy to active intervention designed to help a stranger in trouble. Close readings of four key episodes explore the Good Samaritan parable through Esther’s meetings with John, Jem, and Mary, each of whom know her, dismiss her as a fallen woman, and ignore her warnings about impending danger, in effect failing to provide her with hospitality. The Sturgis couple, although strangers, are true Good Samaritans, extending radical welcome and care to Mary and preventing the events Esther warned of. As a result, both Mary and Jem are transformed, and together they put these insights into practice in society. As is true of the Good Samaritan, unconditional hospitality to the stranger exemplifies Jesus’s call in the parable to “go and do likewise.”