Analysis of the extract from Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Murdering the Innocents is an extract from Charles Dickenss Hard Times. It is focused on the
figure of Mr. Thomas Grandgrinds, a teacher at a school for poor children.
In the first lines, Mr. Grandgrind is described as a man of fact and calculations: he clearly
represents the Positivistic attitude of the Victorians, who believed everything followed precise,
deterministic laws, and did not allow imagination to be part of somebodys personality. The
insistent repetition of his name (Thomas Grandgrind, sir peremptorily Thomas Thomas
Grandgrind) does add irony to a character who strongly believes in the predictability of events, and
indeed he has the multiplication table always in his pocket.
The description of the lesson held by the professor contributes to stress the almost mad behaviour of
the teacher in pursuing his own convictions. In particular, he assumes a patronizing attitude towards
one of his pupils, a young girl called Sissy Jupe. The immediate reproach of the teacher is that she
should not call herself Sissy, since her proper name is Cecilia. The reproach is highlighted by the
imperative form dont call yourself, which implies an imposition, which sounds nearly absurd,
since one should be free to call himself as he/she pleases. The fear the girl feels towards the teacher
is made evident by the use of phrases like trembling voice and curtsey, which do convey her
fear, that however does not seem to upset the unyielding man, who frowns. It is also interesting to
notice that the teacher asks the young girl some questions about her fathers job, but in reality he is
the one who conducts the discussion (He doctors sick horses, I dare say?; He is a veterinary
surgeon, a farrier, a horseman), while Sissy does only answer yes, sir.
When the teacher asks her to give a definition of a horse, she is not able to answer, and Mr.
Grandrings asks Bitzer, another schoolboy, the same question. Then the narration stops to leave
space to a long description of how light lighted the lines of desks, and in particular how it shone on
Sissy and Bitzer. Sissy is described in a more positive way, since she is said to receive a more
lustrous colour from the light, while Bitzers eyes are described as cold and dead (his cold eyes
would hardly have been eyes), and the narrator even says that, if his head had been cut, it would
have bleed white. Here, the absence of colour serves the purpose to stress the boys lack of life: he
is the one who answers that a horse is a graminivourous quadruped, who relies only on given,
certain definitions, but who does not really know what life is. The teacher falls in the same mistake
as the boy, when he tells Sissy Now, girl number twenty, you know what a horse is.
With this last sentence, the teacher does not realize his greatest mistake, which is the presumption to
know the truth through positive certainties. He would have really learnt something about horses if
he had let the girl speak, since she certainly knew more about horses than him. His bold behaviour
makes him seem stupid, at the eyes of an intelligent reader, who knows that Mr. Grandgrind is
wrong when he dares to teach what he does not truly know. This is the greatest fault we may
attribute to Victorians, but also to many contemporaries, even amongst the celebrated professors,
who, in most cases, should come down from their thrones and experience some real life.