A document from Mary Barton, by Ari Sclar

You went down one step even from the foul area into the cellar in which a family of human beings lived. It was very dark inside. The window-panes many of them were broken and stuffed with rags… the smell was so fetid [foul] as almost to knock the two men down… they began to penetrate the thick darkness of the place, and to see three or four little children rolling on the damp, nay wet brick floor, through which the stagnant, filthy moisture of the street oozed up.

• From the novel, Mary Barton (1848) by Elizabeth Gaskell (set in Manchester, England)

1. How does Gaskell indicate her sympathy for the working class in this passage?

1. Does the passage reflect the existence of class tensions that were influenced by the Industrial Revolution? Explain why or why not.