Learning About British History Through the Fiction of the Age

Industrial Britain conjures images of workers slaving in 'dark satanic mills', driven to the edge
by horrific conditions and the early trades unions fighting for change.

Classic 19th Century novelists such as Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell wrote
their famous Condition of England novels with the express intention of informing and
educating the British reading public of the scandalous conditions faced by the working
classes in Britain.

The Condition of England Novels

The Industrial Revolution in Britain spawned a whole new genre of novels, the so-called
Condition of England or Industrial Novel. Reading these can often provide the reader
with an insight lacking in textbooks, that of the distinctly personal voice which
humanizes historical facts.

19th Century Novelists and Workers Conditions

Novelists have to do their research before writing books which attempt to address
contemporary concerns. This can be seen clearly in the work of the nineteenth century
novelists who were appalled by the disgraceful conditions often endured by the working
classes both at home and at work and reflected their research and observations in their
fictional characters and settings.

Charles Dickens and Industrial Conditions

In the novel Hard Times, Dickens' sets out to address explicitly the impact of the
industrialisation of Britain. Set within a definite time, the 1840s, Hard Times was
written by Dickens as a direct attack on the way in which the break-neck pace of change
had forced the British working classes into a state of semi-slavery in the factories and
mills.

Charles Dickens Publishes Hard Times in 1854

In January 1854 he carried out research in the Northern English milltown of Preston and
much of what he witnessed there ended up on the pages of Hard Times. Since its
publication in 1854, the names of Gradgrind and Bounderby have become synonymous
with greedy, grasping Capitalism and the cruel impersonalisation wrought by the then
popular theories of Utilitarianism

1
Hard Times Summary

Mr. Gradgrind is a man of "facts and calculations." He identifies a student, called

Girl number twenty, who replies that her name is Sissy Jupe. Gradgrind corrects
her that her name is Cecilia regardless of what her father calls her. Jupe's father is
involved in a horse-riding circus and this is not respectable ‹in Gradgrind's opinion.
He advises Cecilia to refer to her father as a "farrier" (the person who shoes a
horse) or perhaps, a "veterinary surgeon." Sissy Jupe is a slow learner, among the
group of stragglers who admit that they would dare to carpet a room with
representations of flowers because she is "fond" of them. Sissy is taught that she
must not "fancy" and that she is "to be in all things regulated and governed by
fact."

Mr. Josiah Bounderby is Mr. Gradgrind's closest friend, and just like Gradgrind he is
a man "perfectly devoid of sentiment." Bounderby is very wealthy from his trade as
a banker, a merchant and a manufacturer among other things. He has an imposing
figure and his entire body is oversized, swelled and overweight. He calls himself a
"self-made man" and he always tells his friends (the Gradgrinds, primarily) stories
of how he grew up in the most wretched conditions. Mrs. Gradgrind has a very
emotional temperament and she usually faints whenever Mr. Bounderby tells his
horror stories of being born in a ditch or having lived the first ten years of his life as
a vagabond.

Mr. Gradgrind is at first hesitant but he soon agrees with Bounderby that Cecilia
must be removed from the school so that she might not infect the other students
with her ideas. He and Bounderby find Sissy and proceed towards the public-house
where she lives to deliver the news. Looking through the room, Sissy finds that the
trunk is empty and she is suddenly fearful. The other members of the performing
group also live in the public house and they try to explain to Sissy that her father
has abandoned her. He has not left out of ill will, but because he thinks that she will
have a better life without him as her guardian. It was with this intention that he
had her enrolled in Mr. Gradgrind's school. Mr. Bounderby is morally enraged that a
man would actually desert his own daughter. She has no other family in the world.

This certainly changes Mr. Gradgrind's plans‹as he had originally come to the public
house with the intention of dismissing Jupe from the school. Despite Bounderby's
opinion, Gradgrind does not think it is in good taste to abandon Sissy after she has
already been abandoned. Gradgrind gives her a choice to make on the spot: either
she can stay with the Sleary performing group, remain in Pegasus's Arms and never
return to his school, or she can leave Sleary's company, live with the Gradgrinds
and attend school. If she chooses this option, of course, she is forbidden to have
extended contact with the performers‹though they are the only people that she
knows. It is a difficult decision for Sissy to make but at the urging of Josephine
Sleary, Sissy chooses to leave Pegasus's Arms and join the Gradgrinds.

The town library was sometimes the source of Gradgrind's dismay ‹when readers
opted for literature rather than geometry and drama instead of statistics. This sort
of existence has become unbearable for the young Gradgrinds. Tom tells his sister:
"I am sick of my life, Loo. I hate it altogether." He and Louisa are both sulking in
their room and Tom insists that Louisa is the only person in his life who is capable
of making him happy. Everyone else has fallen under the sway of dullness but
Louisa has managed to keep a spark of the interesting alive.

The story turns to the workers of Coketown, a group of laborers known as "the
Hands." Among them lived a decent man named Stephen Blackpool. He is forty but
he looks much older and has had a hard life. In fact, those who know him have

2
nicknamed him "Old Stephen." Stephen has very little as far as intelligence or social
graces and he is very simply defined as "good power-loom weaver, and a man of
perfect integrity." After his long hours in the factory, once the lights and bells are
shut down, he looks for his friend Rachael. On this night, he cannot find her but
just when he is convinced that he has missed her, she appears.

Rachael is also a laborer, she is thirty-five years old and she is a gentle, caring
person. They have been friends for many years and Stephen takes consolation in
this. Whenever his life seems unbearable, Stephen knows that Rachael will make
him feel better. She repeatedly advises him that when life is as unpleasant as
theirs, it is better not to think about it at all. They walk together towards the part of
town where they both live. Here, the houses are extremely small and dirty.
Stephen does not even live in a house ‹he lives in a small room above a shop. He
tries best to keep things as orderly as possible and he is always courteous in
regards to the woman who rents the small room to him.

It seems that this night is full of bad luck for Stephen. He enters his room and he
stumbles against a wretched figure that frightens him. A drunk and disabled woman
is in his room and she is apparently someone that he knows. As the chapter ends,
she laughs at Stephen scornfully. She has returned from some part of the past to
ruin his life and give him even more to worry about. She passes out in a drunken
stupor and Stephen is left to his misery.

Mr. Gradgrind prepares to have his serious discussion with Louisa, who insists upon
remaining dispassionate throughout the entire encounter. Gradgrind tells his
daughter that she is the subject of a marriage proposal ‹and Louisa does not
respond. Gradgrind expects Louisa to convey some emotion, but she is entirely
stoic and reminds Gradgrind that her upbringing has prevented her from knowing
what emotions to express.

Gradgrind explains that it is Mr. Bounderby who has made the marriage proposal
and Louisa refrains from registering any emotional response. When her father asks
her what she intends to do, Louisa turns the question back to him and asks him
what he thinks she ought to do. Gradgrind looks at the situation analytically and
dismisses the fact of Bounderby being fifty years old. The marriage has little to do
with love and is simply a matter of "tangible Fact." In the end, the decision is for
Louisa to make. But as she does not see that any opportunity will bring her
happiness she realizes that it does not matter what she does. She continually
repeats the phrase "what does it matter?" and this frustrates Mr. Gradgrind.

In the end, Louisa is still emotionless and she replies: "I am satisfied to accept his
proposal." Mr. Gradgrind is very pleased and he kisses his daughter on the
forehead. When Mrs. Gradgrind hears the news she is happy but then she works
herself into a fit and soon passes out. Sissy Jupe is present and she is, perhaps, the
only one who is able to sense the difference in Louisa. Louisa keeps herself at a
distance and is "impassive, proud and cold." Sissy feels a mixture of wonder, pity
and sorrow for Louisa.

Mr. Gradgrind is hiring the stranger, Mr. James Harthouse, as an instructor in his
school. He will be one of many who are trained in logic and statistics and eager to
help relieve children of their imaginations. James Harthouse is the younger brother
of a member of Parliament and as he has become an adult, he has failed to find a
vocation or even a steady hobby to fill his hours. After trying several other things,
Harthouse decided that he might as well give statistics a try and so he had himself
coached and instructed in various philosophies.

3
Meanwhile, Tom Gradgrind has become quite wayward despite the rigors of his
education and he is incredibly hypocritical and disrespectful. He makes no effort to
hide his disdain for Mr. Bounderby even as he fascinated by Mr. Harthouse's flashy
clothes and he befriends him for this largely superficial reason. Tom very quickly
becomes a pawn of Mr. Harthouse. After a little alcohol and some tobacco, Tom is
loose-lipped and uninhibited in his criticism of Mr. Bounderby. At one point, Tom
goes as far as to say that he is the only person that Louisa cares about and that it
is only for his well-being that she agreed to marry Mr. Bounderby. Without realizing
it, Tom is laying the seeds for a potential affair between Harthouse and his sister.
As Harthouse becomes more enrapt with Louisa, Tom offers more and more secrets
until he finally falls into a stupor.

Stephen Blackpool is in the company of Mr. Bounderby, Louisa, Mr. Harthouse and
Tom. Mr. Bounderby intends to make an example of Stephen and present him to
Mr. Harthouse as a sort of specimen of the lower classes. Bounderby does not
appreciate Stephen's criticism and on a whim he decides to repay Stephen's loyalty
by accusing him of being disloyal. He goes as far as to say that Stephen has
betrayed both his employer and his fellow employees and he caps his argument off
by firing Stephen "for a novelty."

Mrs. Sparsit watches from her post at the bank and then when the timing is right
she hastily makes her way to the country-house and sure enough she finds Louisa
and James sitting in a garden together. He confesses his love but Louisa remains
resistant. He implores her to at least commit to seeing him but she refuses. He
suggests a change of venue and the entire time, Mrs. Sparsit, hidden behind the
shrubs, gloats to herself that the two young people have no idea that they are
being watched.

Harthouse leaves and Louisa soon follows. Mrs. Sparsit assumes that Louisa has
eloped and that they have a planned meeting-place and so she trails Louisa as best
as she can. It is raining and Mrs. Sparsit is already dirty and muddy from hiding
and crawling through the bush. Sparsit follows Louisa to the train station and thinks
that Louisa has hired a coachman to get her to Coketown faster but after a few
moments Sparsit sees that she is incorrect. Louisa has boarded some train. "I have
lost her" is Mrs. Sparsit's exclamation of defeat and frustration.

Mrs. Sparsit is still stirring up trouble. All of her running back and forth in the
nighttime rain has caused her to get a violent cold but this does not stop her from
completing her mission. She went as far as London to find Mr. Bounderby and
confront him with the news of Louisa's conversation in the garden, and her flight
from the country house‹presumably, to continue her romantic affair. After giving
the news, Mrs. Sparsit collapses in an incredibly theatrical display. Bounderby
brings her back to Coketown and he carries her along with him to Stone Lodge,
where he intends to confront Mr. Gradgrind (unaware that Louisa is also at Stone
Lodge).

Mrs. Sparsit's story is presented and Mr. Gradgrind confesses that he is already
aware of these details and that Louisa has preserved her honor by returning to her
father's house when she did not know how to defend herself from temptation on
her own. Mrs. Sparsit is now considered in the worst light for she has cast
aspersions and criticized Louisa without due cause. She can do little more than
utter an apology and begin crying profusely as she is sent back to town.

Louisa and her father are both convinced that Tom is involved in a bank theft and
Louisa correctly suspects that after she left Stephen's room, Tom made some sort
of false offer to Stephen, in her name, encouraging him to loiter outside of the

4
bank. Mr. Gradgrind agrees that Tom has probably done this, knowing that Stephen
planned to leave town and would be the most logical suspect.

In this moment of despair, again it is Sissy who has orchestrated a plan for
deliverance and rescue. She could easily see that Tom was guilty and she sent him
to Mr. Sleary and her old friends who were only a few towns away. Tom said that
he had very little money and did not know who could hide him and this was the
most reasonable solution as Sissy had read of the circus in the paper just the day
before. It is also favorable that the town is only a few hours from the port of
Liverpool and Mr. Gradgrind hopes that he might be able to get his son passage on
a ship that will send him far away from shame and punishment.

BIOGRAPHY
Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, on February 7, 1812, to John
and Elizabeth Dickens. He was the second of eight children. His mother had been in
service to Lord Crew, and his father worked as a clerk for the Naval Pay office. John
Dickens was imprisoned for debt when Charles was young. Charles Dickens went to
work at a blacking warehouse, managed by a relative of his mother, when he was
twelve, and his brush with hard times and poverty affected him deeply. He later
recounted these experiences in the semi-autobiographical novel David Copperfield.
Similarly, the concern for social justice and reform which surfaced later in his
writings grew out of the harsh conditions he experienced in the warehouse.

As a young boy, Charles Dickens was exposed to many artistic and literary works
that allowed his imagination to grow and develop considerably. He was greatly
influenced by the stories his nursemaid used to tell him and by his many visits to
the theater. Additionally, Dickens loved to read. Among his favorite works were
Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, Tom Jones by Henry Fielding, and Arabian
Nights, all of which were picaresque novels composed of a series of loosely linked
adventures. This format no doubt played a part in Dickens' idea to serialize his
future works.

Dickens was able to leave the blacking factory after his father's release from prison,
and he continued his education at the Wellington House Academy. Although he had
little formal schooling, Dickens was able to teach himself shorthand and launch a
career as a journalist. At the age of sixteen, Dickens got himself a job as a court
reporter, and shortly thereafter he joined the staff of A Mirror of Parliament, a
newspaper that reported on the decisions of Parliament. During this time Charles
continued to read voraciously at the British Library, and he experimented with
acting and stage-managing amateur theatricals. His experience acting would affect
his work throughout his life--he was known to act out characters he was writing in
the mirror and then describe himself as the character in prose in his novels.

Fast becoming disillusioned with politics, Dickens developed an interest in social

reform and began contributing to the True Sun, a radical newspaper. Although his
main avenue of work would consist of writing novels, Dickens continued his
journalistic work until the end of his life, editing The Daily News, Household Words,
and All the Year Round. His connections to various magazines and newspapers as a
political journalist gave him the opportunity to begin publishing his own fiction at
the beginning of his career. He would go on to write fifteen novels. (A final one,
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, was left unfinished upon his death.)

While he published several sketches in magazines, it was not until he serialized The
Pickwick Papers over 1836-37 that he experienced true success. A publishing
phenomenon, The Pickwick Papers was published in monthly installments and sold

5
over forty thousand copies of each issue. Dickens was the first person to make this
serialization of novels profitable and was able to expand his audience to include
those who could not normally afford such literary works.

Within a few years, he was regarded as one of the most successful authors of his
time, with approximately one out of every ten people in Victorian England avidly
reading and following his writings. In 1836 Dickens also married Catherine Hogarth,
the daughter of a fellow co-worker at his newspaper. The couple had ten children
before their separation in 1858.

Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby followed in monthly installments, and both
reflected Dickens' understanding of the lower classes as well as his comic genius. In
1843, Dickens published one of his most famous works, A Christmas Carol. His
disenchantment with the world's economic drives is clear in this work; he blames
much of society's ills on people's obsession with earning money and acquiring
status based on money.

His travels abroad in the 1840s, first to America and then through Europe, marked
the beginning of a new stage in Dickens' life. His writings became longer and more
serious. In David Copperfield (1849-50), readers find the same flawed world that
Dickens discovered as a young boy. Dickens published some of his best-known
novels including A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations in his own weekly
periodicals.

The inspiration to write a novel set during the French Revolution came from
Dickens' faithful annual habit of reading Thomas Carlyle's book The French
Revolution, first published in 1839. When Dickens acted in Wilkie Collins' play The
Frozen Deep in 1857, he was inspired by his own role as a self-sacrificing lover. He
eventually decided to place his own sacrificing lover in the revolutionary period, a
period of great social upheaval. A year later, Dickens went through his own form of
social change as he was writing A Tale of Two Cities: he separated from his wife,
and he revitalized his career by making plans for a new weekly literary journal
called All the Year Round. In 1859, A Tale of Two Cities premiered in parts in this
journal. Its popularity was based not only on the fame of its author, but also on its
short length and radical (for Dickens' time) subject matter.

Dickens' health began to deteriorate in the 1860s. In 1858, in response to his

increasing fame, he had begun public readings of his works. These exacted a great
physical toll on him. An immensely profitable but physically shattering series of
readings in America in 1867-68 sped his decline, and he collapsed during a
"farewell" series in England.

On June 9, 1870, Charles Dickens died. He was buried in Poet's Corner of

Westminster Abbey. Though he left The Mystery of Edwin Drood unfinished, he had
already written fifteen substantial novels and countless shorter pieces. His legacy is
clear. In a whimsical and unique fashion, Dickens pointed out society's flaws in
terms of its blinding greed for money and its neglect of the lower classes of society.
Through his books, we come to understand the virtues of a loving heart and the
pleasures of home in a flawed, cruelly indifferent world. Among English writers, in
terms of his fame and of the public's recognition of his characters and stories, he is
second only to William Shakespeare.

6
Major Themes

Surveillance and Knowledge

One of Dickens's major themes centers on the idea of surveillance and knowledge.
As is the case in other novels by the author, there are characters who spend time
keeping secrets and hiding their history and there is another set of characters who
devote themselves to researching, analyzing and listening in on the lives of others.
Mrs. Sparsit and Mr. Gradgrind are both masters of surveillance but Sparsit is more
gossipy while Gradgrind is more scientific. Another operator to consider is James
Harthouse who devotes himself to the task of understanding and "knowing" Louisa.
From all three of these characters we get the idea that knowledge of another
person is a form of mastery and power over them. Besides Louisa, Josiah
Bounderby is another victim of surveillance. Without knowing what she has done,
Mrs. Sparsit manages to uncover the secret of Bounderby's upbringing and his foul
lies about being a self-made man.
"Fancy" vs. "Fact"

The opposition between "fancy" and "fact" is illustrated from the earliest pages of
the novel. Clearly, the Gradgrind school opposes fancy, imaginative literature and
"wondering." Instead, they encourage the pursuit of "hard fact" and statistics
through scientific investigation and logical deduction. But the Gradgrinds are so
merciless and thorough in their education that they manage to kill the souls of their
pupils. Sissy Jupe and the members of Sleary's circus company stand as a contrast,
arguing that "the people must be amused." Life cannot be exclusively devoted to
labor.
Fidelity

The theme of fidelity touches upon the conflicts of personal interest, honesty and
loyalty that occur throughout the novel. Certainly, characters like Josiah Bounderby
and James Harthouse seem to be regularly dishonest while Louisa Gradgrind and
Sissy Jupe hold fast to their obligations and beliefs. In Louisa's case, her fidelity is
exemplified in her refusal to violate her marital vows despite her displeasure with
her husband. Sissy's exemplifies fidelity in her devotion to the Gradgrind family and
perhaps even more remarkably, in her steadfast belief that her father is going to
return for her seeking "the nine oils" that she has preserved for him.
Escape

The theme of escape really underscores the difference between the lives of the
wealthy and the lives of the poor. In Stephen Blackpool, we find a decent man who
seeks to escape from his failed marriage but he cannot even escape into his dreams
for peace. On the other hand, we find Tom Gradgrind who indulges in gambling,
alcohol and smoking as "escapes" from his humdrum existence. And after he
commits a crime, his father helps him to escape through Liverpool. Again, Louisa
Gradgrind desires a similar escape from the grind of the Gradgrind system, though
she resorts to imagined pictures in the fire rather than a life of petty crime. Finally,
"Jem" Harthouse rounds out the options available to the nobility. With all of his life
dedicated to leisure, even his work assignment is a sort of past-time from which he
easily escapes when the situation has lost its luster.

7
Character List

Bitzer

Bitzer is a classmate of Tom, Louisa and Sissy. As a young adult he works as a

clerk in Bounderby's bank and he unsuccessfully apprehends Tom as the thief.
Stephen Blackpool

Stephen is a poor laborer in one of Josiah Bounderby's factories. He is married to a

drunk woman who wanders in and out of his life. After losing his job at the factory,
Stephen is forced to leave Coketown and find work elsewhere. In his absence,
Stephen is accused of committing a crime that he did not actually commit. When
returning to Coketown to defend his honor, Stephen falls into a pit and injures
himself. He is rescued but he eventually dies.
Mr. Josiah Bounderby

Mr. Bounderby is one of the central characters of the novel. He is a business

acquaintance of Mr. Thomas Gradgrind. He employs many of the characters in the
novel and he is very wealthy. He marries Louisa Gradgrind (several decades his
junior) and the marriage eventually ends unhappily. In the tumult of a bank
robbery investigation, Bounderby's true identity is revealed much to his shame.
Throughout the novel, Bounderby is an emblem of hypocrisy.
Louisa Gradgrind/Louisa Bounderby

Louisa is one of the central characters of the novel. She is the eldest of the
Gradgrind children and the prize pupil of the educational system. When she grows
older, her father arranges her marriage to Mr. Bounderby. Throughout her life,
Louisa is very unfulfilled because she has been forced to deny her emotions. She
has an emotional breakdown after being tempted into infidelity by Mr. Harthouse.
Her marriage with Mr. Bounderby is soon dissolved and she never remarries.
Mr. Thomas Gradgrind

Mr. Gradgrind is the intellectual founder of the Gradgrind educational system and
he is also a member of Parliament. He represents the rigor of "hard facts" and
statistics. It is only after Louisa's emotional breakdown that he has a change of
heart and becomes more intellectually accepting of enterprises that are not
exclusively dedicated to profit and fact.
Mrs. Gradgrind

Mrs. Gradgrind is the ignorant wife of Thomas Gradgrind and the mother of Louisa,
Tom and the other Gradgrind children. She dies in the middle of the novel.
Jane and Adam Smith Gradgrind

The younger children of Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind. They are better off than Tom and
Louisa because Sissy Jupe has assisted in their upbringing.
Tom Gradgrind

Tom is also referred to as "the whelp." He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind and
an employee of Mr. Bounderby. He is resentful towards his sister, Louisa, though
she is only kind towards him. His ultimate misdeed comes when he steals money
from his safe in the bank and then announces the loss as a true theft. In the end,

8
Tom is forced to flee the country to escape punishment. He dies overseas and full
of regret.
James "Jem" Harthouse

The younger brother of a member of Parliament, Harthouse has agreed to spend

some time teaching in the Gradgrind's school. He is lazy and immodest and finds
himself tempting Louisa with offers of romance.
Cecilia "Sissy" Jupe

Sissy is abandoned by her father who is a well-meaning circus performer. He feels

that she will have a better life if he is not able to hinder her progress in society.
Sissy lives with the Gradgrind family but she is a poor pupil at their school. In
contrast to Mr. Gradgrind, Sissy lives by the philosophy of emotion, fancy, hope
and benevolence. In the end, her kindhearted nature softens the rough edges of
the Gradgrind family and they come to be grateful for what she has done for them.
At the end of the novel, Dickens writes that Sissy grows ever more happy and she
eventually has children of her own to care for.
Signor Jupe

The horse-trainer/circus-performer who is the father of Cecilia. He sends her on an

errand to "fetch the nine oils" as an ointment for his aching muscles. When she
returns to their lodging, he is gone.
Mrs. Pegler/"The mysterious old woman"

Mrs. Pegler is the old woman who makes a yearly pilgrimage to Coketown. At the
end of the novel, she is discovered to be the mother of Mr. Josiah Bounderby.
Rachael

The unmarried companion of Stephen Blackpool. She keeps his spirits up while he is
suffering and after he has left Coketown, she takes it as her responsibility to defend
his honor.
Slackbridge

The dishonorable and deceitful leader of the labor movement: The United
Aggregate Tribunal. Slackbridge takes the legitimate concerns of the laborers and
exploits them for his own power.
Mr. Sleary

Is the manager of a traveling circus. After providing for Sissy at the beginning of
the novel he assists Tom's escape at the novel's end.
Mrs. Sparsit

Mrs. Sparsit is a widow who has fallen on hard times. She is retained in Mr.
Bounderby's service until her snooping gets her fired.

9
Book I, Chapters 1-5

Book the First: SOWING

Chapter One: The One Thing Needful

The novel begins with a short introduction. Inside a classroom, "the speaker"
repeats the exclamation "Now, what I want is, Facts." He presents the argument
that the formation of a child's mind must be rooted in the study of fact. The
schoolroom is as hard and plain as the teacher's teaching style. All of the children
are focused on him. Besides "the speaker" there is also "the schoolmaster and the
third grown person" who stand before the pupils.

Analysis:

This chapter has little narrative content (only three paragraphs), but its imagery is
intense. From the very beginning, Dickens establishes himself within a
contemporary debate on the nature of learning, knowledge and education. The
description of the classroom is definitely satire, a critique of utilitarianism, and
similar philosophies that suggested the absolute reliance upon calculations and
facts in opposition to emotion, artistic inspiration and leisure.

The novel is divided into three "books" entitled Sowing, Reaping and Garnering.
This agricultural motif is introduced by the "sowing" of facts as "seeds" into the
fertile minds of the young boys and girls. "The one thing needful" is the seed of
"fact" and even though the insistence upon "hard facts" seems infertile and
unyielding, the motif of sowing makes the classroom a literal kindergarten. To be
more precise, the imagery of "sowing" and horticulture varies from the children as
the planted field and the children as plants themselves. At one point, "the Speaker"
charges the instructor to "plantŠand root out" in order to form the children's minds.
Later, the children are described as "little vessels then and there arranged in
order," not unlike the wisps of hair on the side of the Speaker's head, humorously
described as "a plantation of firs."

The sum of Dickens' imagery contrasts the words of gardening and horticulture with
the actual scene depicted: "plain, bare, monotonous Šinflexible, dry and dictatorial."
Dickens means to say that there is no true sowing taking place in the "vault of a
schoolroom." Against the archetype of youth (spring, sowing, fertility), the older
men are "square;" eyes are described as having "found commodious cellarage in
two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall." Dickens' hyperbole makes architecture
out of the physical description of The Speaker (who seems rather villain-like).
Dickens wants to demonstrate that the idea of the child's mind as a "vessel" that is
"ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured" ‹this creates adults whose brains
are described as mere "cellarage"‹space for facts.

While Dickens de-personifies the Speaker (he is more of an object and a symbol
than an actual person), various objects in the schoolroom, in particular the
Speaker's clothing, take on personality and activity of their own. The Speaker's tie
is "trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp." The Speaker
has trained the tie to be as unaccommodating as this school system. The sum of
Dickens' images, from sowing to strangulation, should clearly foreshadow the "hard
times" that are ahead.

The two important allusions to note are both Biblical ones: the use of the word
"sowing" does not only correspond to the old proverb "you reap what you sow" but

10
it has a particular resonance with Dickens' largely Protestant English audience.
While the Bible makes arguments for diligent "sowing" in practical and spiritual
matters, Dickens' inevitable argument is a defense for leisure ‹against the constant
diligence, the dependence upon hard facts and the unaccommodating grasp that
are later re-cast as the "Protestant Work Ethic" by Max Weber, a philosopher. The
second Biblical allusion is along the same lines: one of the New Testament parables
makes mention of good Christians as "vessels" who are to be "filled" by God, much
as the "dictatorial" Speaker has an "inclined plane of little vessels" that he will fill
with his "imperial gallons." Here, the Speaker's imagery and intentions seem so
superhuman and yet, misanthropic (anti-human) that he becomes not a parallel but
a foil of the Christian messiah (another educator) to whom Dickens alludes. The
speaker demands power without the benevolence, patience or sacrifice that is
expected of the role.

The speaker is instructing the schoolteacher on how to instruct and this adds to the
irony and deliberate confusion of the short scene. The Speaker's anonymity, the
power of his voice, and his pointed "square forefinger" all combine as a symbol of a
man with God-like authority. No one teaches the children, but the Speaker plays
schoolteacher to the schoolteacher; and he is the only one who speaks. There is no
dialogue in the chapter, only the Speaker's reiterations and the bystanders' silent
assent.

The role of power in education is a theme that is treated throughout the novel, and
the balance between leisure and diligence is definitely dependent upon the methods
of force and power demonstrated. Later chapters will expand upon another theme
that is only foreshadowed here: the wrestle between Romanticism and
Utilitarianism. While Utilitarianism focuses on hard facts and calculations,
Romanticism is more spiritual, tends towards the artistic and the poetic and makes
aesthetic valuations that Utilitarianism finds irrelevant. Dickens does not wholly
endorse the Romantic point-of-view, but with his (artistic) livelihood potentially at
stake, he does use a number of rhetorical devices to defeat the principles of
Utilitarianism. After all, who could read novels, if they were only after "hard facts?"

As for rhetoric, Dickens' use of absolutes and hyperbole must be remembered; the
arguments he puts into the mouths of the Utilitarian philosophers are characteristic
but they are exaggerated. The brilliance of Dickens' caricatures ‹as seen in his other
novels, especially Our Mutual Friend‹is in itself an argument against "hard facts" for
his skewed depictions of skewed power-relationships offer the truth at the heart of
the matter, if not the "hard fact." This first chapter is prefatory, and in the second,
Dickens introduces the names of the characters and their town as a further element
of caricature.

A final point to be noted concerns the nature of Dickens' narrative structure. One
interesting dynamic the reader must bear in mind comes from the fact that Dickens'
work was originally serialized ‹each of these short chapters came as an installment
in a magazine. Dickens stays close to the classical trilogy/tripartite structures by
dividing the work into three books that have an inherent narrative: after sowing
comes reaping, after reaping comes garnering (though one can often reap and sow
and leave it at that). The reader can compare the larger three-part structure with
the smaller chapter-to-chapter structure. While we know that Reaping follows
Sowing, Chapter One ("The One Thing Needful") is not so continuous with Chapter
Two ("Murdering the Innocents").

As the novel progresses, Dickens will not need to bring in new characters as often
as he will in the first chapters; additionally, the chapters become more coherent
and continuous as the novel gets closer to its end. The number of installments

11
Dickens was to write had already predetermined the length of the novel! As we see
in Chapter One, Dickens uses tactics of suspense: withheld information (what is the
geographical setting?); foreshadowed doom ("unaccommodating grasp"); unnamed
anonymous figures ("the speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown
person") and a cliffhanger at the conclusion (literally: "the inclined plane of little
vessels then and there arranged in order, ready Š"). Dickens must use suspense so
that his reader will buy the next serial.

Chapter Two: Murdering the Innocents

Chapter Two begins with the introduction of Thomas Gradgrind, "a man of
realitiesŠfacts and calculations." He always introduces himself as Mr. Gradgrind and
spends his time in constant cogitation. He is the Speaker, previously unnamed and
he now takes it as his duty to educate the children ("little pitchers before him"). He
identifies a student, called Girl number twenty, who replies that her name is Sissy
Jupe. Gradgrind corrects her that her name is Cecilia regardless of what her father
calls her. Jupe's father is involved in a horse-riding circus and this is not
respectable‹in Gradgrind's opinion. He advises Cecilia to refer to her father as a
"farrier" (the person who shoes a horse) or perhaps, a "veterinary surgeon."

The lesson continues with Gradgrind's command: "Give me your definition of a

horse." While Girl number twenty knows what a horse is, she is unable to define
one. Another child in the class, a boy called Bitzer, easily defines the animal by
means of biological classifications (quadruped, graminivorous, etc.). After this, the
third gentleman steps forward. He is a government officer as well as a famous
boxer and he is known for his alert belligerence. His job is to remove "fancy" and
"imagination" from the minds of the children. They learn that it is nonsense to
decorate a room with representations of horses because horses do not walk up and
down the sides of rooms in reality. Sissy Jupe is a slow learner, among the group of
stragglers who admit that they would dare to carpet a room with representations of
flowers because she is "fond" of them. Sissy is taught that she must not "fancy"
and that she is "to be in all things regulated and governed by fact."

After the gentleman finishes his speech, the schoolteacher, Mr. M'Choakumchild,
begins his instruction. He has been trained in a schoolteacher-factory and has been
conditioned to be dry, inflexible and uninspiring ‹but full of hard facts. His primary
job in these preparatory lessons is to find "Fancy" in the minds of the children and
eradicate it.

Analysis:

"Murdering the Innocents" replaces the suspense of the previous chapter by

establishing names and identities for the previously anonymous social roles that
were presented earlier. As is to be expected from Dickens, the names of the
characters are emblematic of their personality; usually, Dickens' characters can be
described as innocent, villainous or unaware of the moral dilemmas of the story
that surrounds them. The characters' names are almost always an immediate
indication of where the character fits on Dickens' moral spectrum. Thomas
Gradgrind, "a man of realities" is a hard educator who grinds his students through a
factory-like process, hoping to produce graduates (grads). Additionally, Gradgrind
is a "doubting Thomas"‹much like the Biblical apostle who resisted belief in the
resurrection, this Thomas urges that students depend exclusively upon the
evidence in sight. He dismisses faith, fancy, belief, emotion and trust at once. Mr.
M'Choakumchild is plainly villainous and he resembles the sort of fantastic ogres
he'd prefer students took no stock in.

12
Cecilia (Sissy) Jupe is unlike the other characters in almost every possible way.
While there are other female students, she is the only female identified thus far in
the novel. Unlike the boy "Bitzer" (who has the name of a horse), Sissy has a
nickname and at least in this chapter, she is the lone embodiment of "fancy" at the
same time that she is the single female presented as a contrast to the row of
hardened mathematical men. Her character is, of course, a romanticized figure.
Despite the political critique of Dickens' simplification and over-idealization of
females and children (and girls, especially), Cecilia's character does have some
depth that allows her development later in the novel. Her last name, "Jupe," comes
from the French word for "skirts" and her first name, Cecilia, represents the sainted
patroness of music. Especially as she is a member of a traveling circus, we can
expect Cecilia to represent "Art" and "Fancy" in contrast to M'Choakumchild, one of
141 schoolmasters who "had been lately turned at the same time, in the same
factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs."

Besides the allusion to St. Cecilia, Dickens alludes to Morgiana, a character in the
classic story "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves" ‹one of the Arabian Nights tales. The
reader should always note the irony in Dickens' allusions: while Dickens' characters
argue against fanciful literature, Dickens' is relying upon it to compose his story. In
this case, Dickens' simile presents M'Choakumchild's search for "the robber Fancy"
in terms of Morgiana's searching for (and hiding of) the thieves in "Ali Baba." The
metaphor of the children as eager "vessels" is made explicit when the "vessels"
before M'Choakumchild become the "jars" before Morgiana. And the motif of
robbers and villains is finalized when we remember that Ali Baba and the forty
thieves were more hero than criminal. M'Choakumchild is labeled "gentleman" but
his intention to seek and destroy "the robber Fancy lurking within" makes "the
robber Fancy" (childish imagination) a more noble personification. Instead, the
teachers are the ones who seem criminal.

The most important allusion of the chapter is the title: "Murdering the Innocents."
The reader should expect Dickens work to be full of Biblical and Christian allusions
as he is writing to a largely sentimental popular audience. While the reference may
be more inaccessible, erudite or unrecognizable for modern young readers, Dickens'
1854 British audience immediately saw the reference to King Herod. Soon after the
birth of Christ, Herod fears for his throne and has all of the male babies in
Bethlehem executed (in the hopes of murdering the Christ child). In literary circles,
the phrase "murder of the innocents" is exclusively used to describe this Biblical
story. While the students are not literally danger (M'Choakumchild), their childish
imagination has been targeted for annihilation. This completes the archetype of
youth vs. age, and foreshadows that whoever is being targeted and singled out
(Cecilia Jupe and her imagination) will ultimately escape this tyrant, but other
innocents will be less fortunate (Bitzer). But we might expect as much from the
same author who had written A Christmas Carol a decade before.

The major theme of the chapter can be easily inferred from Dickens' description of
Cecilia in the classroom. The "horses" and carpeted "flowers" are all double symbols
of her femininity and youth, but most important, Cecilia represents Art in opposition
to mechanization. Dickens is not arguing against education, science or progress. He
is arguing against a mode of factory-style, mind-numbing, grad-grinding production
that takes the fun out of life. But even worse than the loss of "fun" or "leisure,"
Dickens is arguing that art requires an inquisitive and desiring mind. Especially as
Dickens is known to have read and enjoyed Arabian Nights in his youth, we can see
a bit of autobiography in his tender treatment of Cecilia ‹perhaps if he had come
under a Mr. M'Choakumchild, he would have proved incapable of becoming an
artist.

Chapter Three: A Loophole

13
Mr. Gradgrind is walking home from school and he is thinking about his students
and his children‹who are also under his tutelage. He considers them to be models,
for he has trained them since birth, and they have attended many lectures. He is
quite confident in them, for they study all of the most important subjects and their
academic knowledge is well-rounded. Their earliest memories are of the chalkboard
and they have learned plenty of statistics, though they know nothing of children's
literature, of art or poetry or "silly" songs. Mr. Gradgrind forbids "wonder" and
encourages classification and dissection, the exposition of fact.

Gradgrind's home is called Stone Lodge and he moved here after working in "the
wholesale hardware trade." The house is short distance outside of "a great town"
called Coketown and Mr. Gradgrind's current occupation is his intention of running
for a seat in Parliament. The house is perfectly balanced, proportioned and
calculated. The lawn and the gardens are all perfectly even. Gradgrind is thinking
about all of these things as he walks home and he is close to his conclusion that
everything is right in his world and everyone is behaving as they ought. But in this
moment his "ears were invaded by the sound of music." A group flying the flag of
"Sleary's Horse-riding" has attracted a small crowd with such acts and exhibitions
as the "graceful equestrian Tyrolean Flower-Act," the "highly trained performing
dog Merrylegs" and other fanciful amusements.

Gradgrind disregards the rabble and continues home, only when he looks to the
rear of the circus booth, he sees a number of children peeping to see what is inside.
Of course, Gradgrind heads over, intending to remove whichever students are in
affiliation with his school. Much to his surprise, he finds his two children ‹"his own
metallurgical Louisa" and "his own mathematical Thomas" struggling to catch a
glimpse of what is happening inside. Gradgrind startles them both and orders them
home. Louisa is more bold in her anger; she is older than her brother but her extra
years of schooling have made her more resentful than docile. In fact, Louisa has
asked her brother to come along with her to the amusement. Gradgrind is
embarrassed, arguing that the two children are debasing themselves but Louisa
merely replies that she is "tired" and has been "tired for a long time." Dickens ends
the chapter with Mr. Gradgrind's final exclamation and his own commentary: "What
would Mr. Bounderby say!"‹as if Mr. Bounderby had been Mrs. Grundy.

Analysis:

We neither know Mr. Bounderby nor Mrs. Grundy (yet another of Dickens'
cliffhangers), but from Mr. Gradgrind's statement we can infer that they are
similarly boring and uninspiring adults with a heavy-handed disciplinary air about
them. As the novel progresses, the narrative structure will rely more and more
upon cliffhangers and the sometimes-abrupt introduction and disappearance of
characters. The second chapter, "Murdering the Innocents," foreshadows this
chapter, "A Loophole." Just as the theological commentary on Herod's Bethlehem
massacre (allusion from Chapter 2) focuses on the escape of the Christ child in the
midst of the mass murder, the "Loophole" now offers escape from the "Murdering."
And just as this chapter ends with the cliffhanger (Who is Mr. Bounderby?), the
next chapter, entitled "Mr. Bounderby" answers that very question. The question of
location is answered however: Coketown, is the setting of the novel and it is an
explicit critique of the social politics, corruption and depression of Manchester,
England, a heavily industrialized city.

The new characters include "metallurgical Louisa" and "mathematical Thomas" and
by now, the reader should notice the combined force of rhyme, consonance and
alliteration in the character's names and descriptions of places. This stylistic point is
worth dwelling on because usually these three devices ‹especially when used in

14
concert‹tend towards more lyrical language and more beautiful images. This is not
necessarily the case in Dickens because he simply strips these literary rules to their
basic meaning. A rhyme does not have to be fanciful, it only has to hint at a
common trait.

For example: Coke in Coketown rhymes with Choak in M'Choakumchild.

Consonance describes the agreement of sounds (not necessarily a rhyme, but more
often alliteration, or a combination of both). These are sounds that sound nice
together, they repeat without perfectly rhyming, and while they sound nice
together they are not necessarily nice sounding words.

For example: Bounderby and Grundy share consonant endings by and dy, as well
as the nd sound in the middle. They are consonant but they do not perfectly rhyme.
M'Choakumchild is depicted as a "dry Ogre chalking ghastly white figures" on the
black board (ch-).

Alliteration, the repetition of letters (and as a result, sounds), is a final device we

can use to group characters together.

Ogre, Gradgrind, Grundy, Bounderby.

Sissy/Cecilia Jupe, Signor Jupe, Josephine Sleary, Merrylegs.

"Metallurgical Louisa," Mathematical Thomas"

In some words and descriptors, we find unpleasant images that receive the benefit
of alliterated sounds: mathematical Thomas and metallurgical Louisa can be viewed
as pupils who have received the same rhyming (ical) educational treatment‹but in
truth, Louisa and Thomas will prove very different. Dickens takes these devices to
the extreme in this chapter and while these rules prove true throughout the novel,
the occasional exception or coincidental rhyme can pop up. All of the names
mentioned above however, are sustained in the work. Bounderby later becomes
metallic, Gradgrind establishes boundaries, etc. Dickens' caricatures are visual (he
drew illustrations for the original editions) but they rely upon the repetition of
repetition, over and over again, much like the factories.

Dickens takes another motif from children's literature and explicitly names the
teacher as an "ogre" who is "taking childhood captive, and dragging it into gloomy
statistical dens by the hair." The loophole is a symbol of escape ‹both mentally and
physically. The symbol of contrast to the loophole is Stone Lodge, the home of
Gradgrind, and most definitely a "statistical den." Dickens simile presents the
gardens "like a botanical account-book" and this sustains the underlying
comparison between the statistical, grid-iron classifications (mathematical,
metallurgical) and the freedom that one expects from nature. The children's
"dissection" of the "Great Bear" constellation is a metaphor for the murder of fancy
and mythology.

We recall the "horse" vs. "Quadruped. Graminivorous." debate and this is sustained
in the images of animal "celebrities" from nursery rhymes ‹figures who are
unfamiliar for young Louisa and Thomas. Thematically, there have been several
"loopholes" in the Gradgrind training. There is the loophole as peephole, which is a
symbol that foreshadows a continued defiance (at least on Louisa's part); there is
also the loophole of contradiction where astronomy permits the "Great Bear" but
the real dog "Merrylegs" and the painted representation of "horses dancing
sideways" on a wall are forbidden. Mr. Gradgrind's blind face prevents him from

15
enjoying fancy but it also prevents him from seeing the contradictions in his
thought and the loopholes through which his model children might escape.

Chapter Four: Mr. Bounderby

Mr. Josiah Bounderby is Mr. Gradgrind's closest friend, and just like Gradgrind he is
a man "perfectly devoid of sentiment." Bounderby is very wealthy from his trade as
a banker, a merchant and a manufacturer among other things. He has an imposing
figure and his entire body is oversized, swelled and overweight. He calls himself a
"self-made man" and he always tells his friends (the Gradgrinds, primarily) stories
of how he grew up in the most wretched conditions. Mrs. Gradgrind has a very
emotional temperament and she usually faints whenever Mr. Bounderby tells his
horror stories of being born in a ditch or having lived the first ten years of his life as
a vagabond. Bounderby continues to tell his stories, pacing in the formal drawing-
room of Stone Lodge.

Bounderby is proud of self-made status, having risen to the ranks of the Gradgrinds
without the "advantages" of education. Instead of attending school, Bounderby
inevitably ran away from his grandmother, who would steal his shoes and sell them
for alcohol, his mother having abandoned him soon after birth. He describes the
periods of his life as follows: "Vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer, porter,
clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown." He taught
himself to read by looking at the outsides and signs of buildings.

Mr. Gradgrind informs his friend Bounderby that Louisa and Thomas were caught
spying at a circus and Mrs. Gradgrind replies "I should as soon have expected to
find my children reading poetry." Louisa and Thomas are present and the three
adults express their disappointment. Bounderby makes it clear that the circus is
composed of the very vagabonds that Louisa and Thomas should be grateful for
having avoided. For his part, Bounderby adds that the circus is a "cursed bad thing
for a girl like Louisa," subsequently apologizing for his profanity, but to his credit,
he did not have a "refined growing up." Mr. Gradgrind is intent upon understanding
what might have motivated Louisa and Thomas to stray from their rules and
standards. Bounderby brings Cecilia Jupe (one of the "strollers' children") to
Gradgrind's attention and he convinces him that Cecilia must be the factor
influencing the Gradgrind children. Mr. Gradgrind is at first hesitant but he soon
agrees with Bounderby that Cecilia must be removed from the school so that she
might not infect the other students with her ideas. The chapter ends with Gradgrind
and Bounderby's immediate venture into Coketown to confront "Signor Jupe" and
remove Sissy from school.

Analysis:

Josiah Bounderby dominates the chapter, much as his physical figure dominates
those surrounding him. At least at this point in the novel, it is unclear how exactly
he became a "self-made" man and arrived at his fortunes. Bounderby is a man of
social mobility and ever expanding boundaries, but Dickens' social commentary
suggests that Bounderby is hypocritical: even as he complains that he had to crawl
out of poverty without aid, he is the firmest advocate of Sissy Jupe's dismissal from
the school. Other characters that are introduced in this chapter are Mrs. Gradgrind,
an unintelligent hypochondriac. Three younger children, Jane, Adam Smith and
Malthus are briefly depicted. They are relevant as references to economists: Adam
Smith is considered the father of laissez-faire (capitalist) economics and his
theories encourage hard work and competition. Thomas Malthus is a less famous
and more depressing thinker whose primary economic argument explained the
inevitability and desirability of a certain level of poverty ‹as a means of avoiding

16
overpopulation. Smith and Malthus are both symbols of the economic mode of
production that has overrun Coketown.

Bounderby's self-presentation is pure hyperbole. While he may have been very poor
once and certainly is now very rich, his overbearing stories sound very much like
the "art" and "fancy" to which he is nominally opposed. As in a classic fairy-tale, he
has a wicked grandmother who mistreats him. And there is a Shakespearean
allusion in Bounderby's explanation of his birth (" ŠI was born in a ditchŠ As wet as a
sop. A foot of water in itŠ.nobody would touch m e with a pair of tongs.") Despite
Bounderby's lack of a proper education, his lines are a paraphrase of very famous
lines from Shakespeare's Macbeth (Act I) where witches boil a stew that includes a
"finger of birth-strangled babe/Ditch-deliver'd by a drab,/Make the gruel thick and
slabŠ" Ditch-born babies generally have bad luck, but Bounderby has somehow
overcome his.

And it is strongly suggested that the images of vagabonds and circuses are the
avenues towards idleness, and after idleness comes poverty. The focus on money
and industry produces a motif of metals and minerals. Just as Coketown is named
for "coke"‹the coal-like fuel of the industrial furnaces, we have seen "metallurgical
Louisa" and now Bounderby is described as having a "metallic laugh," Mrs.
Bounderby is described as not being an "alloy" because she is unintelligent, and
Jane had fallen asleep "after manufacturing a good deal of moist pipe-clay on her
face with slate-pencil and tears."

Bounderby's "cavernous eyes" are a symbol of the deep, dark secrets hiding (cave-
like) in his past; but his resemblance with Gradgrind reminds the reader that
Bounderby and Gradgrind are constantly operating surveillance ‹there is a
juxtaposition in the adults' spying on the children as they peep at the publi c circus,
and this awkward relationship reveals how much power the adults have. When
Bounderby greets Louisa with a goodbye kiss, she rubs this spot of her face
incessantly and her proposal to cut that hole out of her face altogether hovers
between metonymy and metaphor‹Louisa is increasingly desperate to remove
herself from her present situation and Bounderby's advanced age only intensifies
her anguish and foreshadows Bounderby's convoluted and confused desires for
Louisa.

The theme of education and self-improvement is rather well-developed in this

chapter. We find the hypocrisy of the self-made man who would bar Sissy Jupe
from school; another irony is in Bounderby's repeated admission of being low-class.
After he uses the phrase "cursed bad thing," Bounderby continues: "I should ask
Mrs. Gradgrind's pardon for strong expressions, but that she knows very well I am
not a refined character. Whoever expects refinement in me will be disappointed. I
hadn't a refined bringing up." The understatement here is that Bounderby should
ask for pardon but he does not because he is merely behaving as ought to be
expected. It is interesting that Bounderby is not a target for education and that
despite his lack of education he is somehow acceptable (this is because he is rich).
On the other hand, how necessary is an educational system so heavily dependent
on the "Protestant Work Ethic" when its model pupils are wayward and those who
most need conversion (Cecilia Jupe) are mildly persecuted? Louisa's languished
looks out of the window and the description of two other children "out at lecture in
custody," complete our understanding of the educational environment as an ogre's
prison-cave.

Chapter Five: The Key-Note

17
In this short chapter, Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind proceed towards Coketown,
a town which is a "triumph of fact." It is mostly made of red brick and it is heavily
industrialized. Smoke hangs in the air, the water is polluted with "ill-smelling dye"
and pistons and steam-engines cause the windows of the buildings to rattle all day
long. The streets are monotonous and the people are hardly different from one
another, each performing pretty much the same job in the same factory, and the
work that they do is little different from one day to the next.

The only things to be seen in Coketown were "severely workful." There were
eighteen chapels in the town, representing eighteen religious persuasions but the
workers were not among these congregations. The churches are little different in
appearance from the jail, the infirmary and the town-hall. Every building is a
testament to "fact." There is an organization in Coketown composed to deal with
the irreligious nature of the laboring classes and they often petition Parliament for
acts that would "make these people religious by main force." Besides this truancy,
alcoholism and opium were other vices rampant in Coketown. Plenty of specimen
testified that had it not been for the drink they "would have been a tip-top moral
specimen."

As they pass through Coketown, Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind consider the
town residents to be a "bad lot" who are ungrateful, demanding, excessive in tastes
and diet, languid in work ethic. The actual picture is not so simple as a town full of
vice. Dickens suggests that the residents of Coketown were simply in need of good
humor and some sort of diversion after the endless misery of their occupations.
Bounderby and Gradgrind are looking for an address called Pod's End and as they
continue along their path, they run into Girl number twenty, who is being chased by
Bitzer. Bitzer accuses the girl of being a horse-rider and a liar as well. Bounderby
sees this as evidence of her contagious spread.

Sissy Jupe leads the two gentleman to the decrepit place where she lives. They see
here carrying a bottle and question if it is gin, but she replies that it is "the nine
oils" that her father has requested as an ointment because he is sore from his
performances. Sissy tries to be as polite as possible and just before entering the
"public house" she warns the two gentlemen not to fear barking that they may hear
as it is only the small dog, called Merrylegs.

Analysis:

This chapter is a narrative interlude that spaces out the dramatic action at hand. In
striking the "key-note," Dickens takes note of the physical setting and spends time
describing Coketown more than he had previously done. The overriding archetype
is hell: Hell is seen in the darkened canal that is an allusion to the River Styx. The
coiled serpents are another symbol of sin and immorality. The images of the savage
painted faces parallel the image of the dyed water. And the elephant is an odd
juxtaposition of mechanics and nature: little surprise that he represents a
"melancholy madness."

One of Dickens' primary rhetorical devices here is his exhortation to the reader,
that they might reject the hasty condemnations made by the likes of Messrs.
Gradgrind and Bounderby. From Dickens' legal background we might suggest that
he is presenting the case for the people of Coketown, left without adequate legal or
popular counsel. Here, a Latin term "amicus curiae" ("friend of the court") would be
the most precise way to describe Dickens' moralizing tone in this short chapter.
Dickens was not alone in arguing that the conditions of workers in cities like
Coketown (or rather, Manchester) were inhumane and ought to be regulated more

18
closely. This opening chapter foreshadows many of the class-oriented issues that
the characters will have to grapple with.

Book I, Chapters 6-10

Chapter Six: Sleary's Horsemanship

Sissy Jupe lives in a public house called Pegasus's Arms and this is where she leads
the two men. The inscription at the entrance suggests that the public house is a
place where alcoholics congregate and Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind are clearly
out of their element. The decorations of the public house are theatrical and the
joviality of the scene is all the more clear when Merrylegs appears. Sissy is
surprised to find that her father is not in the room that they share. He had sent her
on an errand to retrieve the "nine oils" as an ointment for his pain. Looking through
the room, Sissy finds that the trunk is empty and she is suddenly fearful.

The other members of the performing group also live in the public house and they
try to explain to Sissy that her father has abandoned her. He has not left out of ill
will, but because he thinks that she will have a better life without him as her
guardian. It was with this intention that he had her enrolled in Mr. Gradgrind's
school. Mr. Bounderby is morally enraged that a man would actually desert his own
daughter. She has no other family in the world. One of the members of the group,
E. W. B. Childers, does his best to defend Signor Jupe's honor. Jupe's honest
intention was to give his daughter a better life and while he wanted to stay with
her, he did not believe that he was anything more than a hindrance.

This certainly changes Mr. Gradgrind's plans‹as he had originally come to the public
house with the intention of dismissing Jupe from the school. Despite Bounderby's
opinion, Gradgrind does not think it is in good taste to abandon Sissy after she has
already been abandoned. Gradgrind gives her a choice to make on the spot: either
she can stay with the Sleary performing group, remain in Pegasus's Arms and never
return to his school, or she can leave Sleary's company, live with the Gradgrinds
and attend school. If she chooses this option, of course, she is forbidden to have
extended contact with the performers‹though they are the only people that she
knows.

It is a difficult decision for Sissy to make but at the urging of Josephine Sleary,
Sissy chooses to leave Pegasus's Arms and join the Gradgrinds. While the
performing group mourns Sissy's loss, they are also joyful and they remind her that
even though this is a harsh moment, life will be better for her. Sissy is losing a
family and also a future vocation (as a performer) but when she remembers her
father's wishes, Sissy sees that it is right for her to join the Gradgrinds ‹if only for
the sake of obeying her father in absentia. Sissy becomes very emotional and
Josephine comforts the crying child. While Bounderby is short on patience, Mr.
Gradgrind is not emotional, but he is not without pity. Even though he knows that
Signor Jupe is never coming back to find Sissy, he indulges her child-like faith and
allows her to carry the bottle of nine oils with her. The leader of the performing
group tells Sissy that the bottle is heavy to carry and will be of little use to her. But
Cecilia is convinced that her father will return to find her and that when he comes
for her, he will want the bottle (She is not even convinced that he has deliberately
left her‹though all facts suggest this is the case).

Analysis:

Both the dog, Merrylegs, and the name of the public-house ‹Pegasus's Arms‹are
symbols of the "fancy" that Sleary's company offers, in contrast to the world of

19
hard facts and figures. The additional cast includes a "Centaur" and a "cupid" which
are also allusions to the same Greek mythologies that spawned the "Pegasus." It is
certainly ironic that Bounderby, a man who has claimed to have been abandoned in
his youth, would now be the advocate of Sissy's rejection and abandonment. His
hypocrisy is certainly one of the main targets of Dickens's social commentary.

Mr. Sleary is one of Dickens's caricatures. His loose eye and his lisp make him
appear as ridiculous as circus performer might be expected to be. Still, he does
have a few words of wisdom to offer and especially later on in the novel, Mr. Sleary
is an archetypal fool who is actually wise.

Chapter Seven: Mrs. Sparsit

Mrs. Sparsit is the housekeeper for Mr. Bounderby‹as he is a bachelor and in need
of someone to keep his house tidy. Mr. Bounderby especially relishes the
arrangement because Mrs. Sparsit was once a "highly connected" lady and she had
seen better days. But she had fallen on "hard times" after marrying young and
being widowed by a man who left her only debts and little fortune to rely upon.
Bounderby's boasting often dwelled upon the difference between their stories ‹for he
was low-born and moved himself up in society and she was high-born and now she
is his housekeeper.

Mrs. Sparsit is a very good housekeeper and in spite of Bounderby's often

uncivilized manner, she always retains the graces that befit a lady of her standing.
Bounderby discusses both Louisa and Cecilia Jupe and it is clear to see that he is
very interested in Louisa but not at all amused by the idea of the Gradgrinds
"bringing up the tumbling-girl." There is the hope that Cecilia might be a good
influence on Louisa‹by providing her with a perfect example of all that can go
wrong when one is not rooted in a disciplined upbringing. Bounderby thinks that if
anything, Cecilia will corrupt Louisa.

Concerning young Tom Gradgrind, Mr. Bounderby decides that at some point in the
near future, after the young man has further progressed in his studies, he will
make a job for him at the bank. When Mrs. Sparsit attempts to interpose an
opinion, Bounderby reminds her that she knows very little about these subjects
because she has grown up in "devilish high society" though she has done very well
at accommodating herself to the changes life has dealt her. Cecilia and Gradgrind
are both present and Gradgrind overlooks Cecilia's social awkwardness and makes
his final decision to bring the girl into his household. He announces that she will be
"reclaimed and formed" and that her previous education ‹reading stories about
fairies, dwarves and hunchbacks‹has come to an end.

Analysis:

Characterization is very important in this chapter, which center on the character for
whom it is named. Mrs. Sparsit's name can be read as a combination of the words
"sparse" and "sit." Throughout the novel, the reader will find that Sparsit is almost
always described in terms of her posture (and she is usually sitting). Her character
and her history are riddled with contradictions and contrasts. There is, for example,
the irony of her husband dying of alcoholism ("brandy") in the midst of French
decadence (the port city of Calais). And yet, Sparsit is to be considered as a moral
example and as for power, she is both a "conqueror" and a "princess."

Bounderby is described with various symbols of his own power; chief among them
are his portrait and his bank documents. The portrait is an especially interesting
symbol as it is a likeness of Bounderby and is also an artistic image. Why should

20
Bounderby be so interested in an artistic rendering of himself? Perhaps it is because
the portrait is not an element of fancy, but is an extremely accurate representation.
It is, essentially, a second Bounderby.

Finally, there are a few instances of hyperbole in this chapter, as seen in much of
Gradgrind and Bounderby's dialogue about Cecilia Jupe. The reference to Fairies,
Dwarves and the Hunchback as "destructive nonsense" is a little extreme. But this
hard line of reasoning does situate Jupe's experience within the themes of
education and conversion. It is interesting to note that Cecilia is to be "reclaimed
and formed" both intellectually and morally.

Chapter Eight: Never Wonder

This short chapter is another one of Dickens' interludes: "Let us strike the key-note
again, before pursuing the tune." About six years previous, Louisa was overheard
using the phrase "I wonder Š." And her father forbade her from wondering. Between
Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. M'Choakumchild all of the youthful impulses to wonder have
been notably suppressed. The children born in Coketown are "unlucky infants" and
all of the social bodies agree on the single point that these children are never to
learn how to "wonder." Instead they are to focus on "trust" and "political economy."

The town library was sometimes the source of Gradgrind's dismay ‹when readers
opted for literature rather than geometry and drama instead of statistics. This sort
of existence has become unbearable for the young Gradgrinds. Tom tells his sister:
"I am sick of my life, Loo. I hate it altogether." He and Louisa are both sulking in
their room and Tom insists that Louisa is the only person in his life who is capable
of making him happy. Everyone else has fallen under the sway of dullness but
Louisa has managed to keep a spark of the interesting alive.

Louisa looks at the shadows on the wall and she looks into the fire and she is able
to almost spin stories out of what she sees. Thomas cannot see what she does, but
he does listen to the things that she says while she looks into the fire. Looking into
the fire causes Louisa to wonder. And when Thomas notes her admission, Louisa
replies that she has always had "unmanageable thoughts." Mrs. Gradgrind has been
listening at the door and she re-iterates the warning issued six years previous.
Louisa is not to wonder and Thomas is not to encourage his sister to do something
he knows will worry her father. Louisa has angered and disturbed Mrs. Gradgrind to
the point where she says: "I really do wish that I had never had a family, and then
you would have known what it was to do without me!"

Analysis:

Chapter Eight is more important within Dickens' philosophical context than in the
actual "story" that is being presented in the novel. Certainly, the characters are
affected by the course of events, but when Dickens writes of returning to the "key-
note" this is a hint that he is returning to look at the major themes and contrasts
that have been presented thus far. In a sense, it is a summary of the major ideas in
conflict. An example of this conflict can be seen in the library; ironically, Gradgrind
does not approve of the establishment. Dickens develops this point by contrasting
"Defoe" versus "Euclid" and "Goldsmith" versus "Cocker." These references
basically reiterate the fact that Gradgrind does not like literature (Daniel Defoe is
the author of such classic fictional works as Robinson Crusoe and [?]Goldsmith is a
famous British playwright. Euclid, on the other hand, is an ancient Greek who
basically invented geometry and [?]Cocker is [?]).

21
The battle between the literary agents of "fancy" and the hard mathematical
analysts can be seen again in Dickens' archetypal use of fire imagery to convey the
sense of the storyteller (in this case, Louisa Gradgrind ‹but also, in a larger sense,
Dickens, no?) as a somewhat magical, more modern version of the ancient oracles.
In Greek myth, oracles were ordained priest-like figures who were usually female
and known for looking into the fire and "reading the signs." Incidentally, this scene
of a sister reading the fire to her younger brother is repeated in another one of
Dickens' novels, Our Mutual Friend. The fire can be a symbol of the hearth, of
familial warmth and love between siblings but we find here is that this warmth is
largely frustrated.

The contrast to Fancy and imagination comes with the lingering cold, despite the
fire. In a metaphorical sense, we can describe the Gradgrinds' family life as very
cold and lacking in emotion. An important distinction can be made between
coldness and hate, indifference and dislike. The parents neither hate nor dislike
their children, but they are emotionally cold, indifferent and distant. In opposition
to emotion and "wonder," they prefer science. We see mechanical imagery in the
way that Louisa and Tom describe their emotions (as a coiled "spring," for example)
and in the lack of freedom and repression of emotions. In a way, repressing ones
true emotions, feelings and desires is a form of dishonesty and this chapter
foreshadows later scenes in the novel, where Louisa's repression becomes a matter
of loyalty and fidelity (a key theme of the novel).

Chapter Nine: Sissy's Progress

Sissy did not have an easy time of things and she continually considered running
away. The belief that her father would be unable to find her was the only thing that
kept her in Gradgrind's custody. Gradgrind has some pity for the girl, mainly
because he questions whether any amount of education will undo the damage that
has been done. Sissy tells Louisa that she is luck to have been so trained at an
early age, but Louisa replies that she is not necessarily the better for it. Sissy is
able to help Mrs. Gradgrind with tasks and chores and she is able to keep Louisa in
a cheery mood but mistakes "seem to come natural" to her when she is in the
classroom.

When Mr. M'Choakumchild is teaching National Prosperity, Proportions and

Statistics, Sissy always answers incorrectly. Her responses are based more on
compassion that on calculation. Louisa asks Sissy about what her life was like
before and she learns that the girl's mother died when she was very young. Talking
about her father, Sissy admits that he has left her ‹but he has left her for her own
good. He traveled as a clown but as he got older his skills weakened. Sissy worries
that it was partly in embarrassment that her father left her ‹and the traveling
company as well.

Sissy remembers that her father loved when she would read stories to him, though
these same stories she is forbidden to speak of in the Gradgrind's house. Sissy
begins crying, while she is telling these stories to Louisa. Their conversation is
interrupted when young Tom enters the room and announces that Bounderby has
arrived, and that if Louisa will make an appearance than Bounderby will take Tom
out to dinner. Sissy often asks if her father has sent her any letters but none have
arrived. Again, Mr. Gradgrind is dismayed by Sissy's slow learning.

Analysis:

The characterization of Cecilia Jupe as a student who is trying to make "progress"

in her relations with the Gradgrinds relies upon an allusion to the epic, Pilgrim's

22
Progress by John Bunyan. As this work is about a very devout character (named
Christian) who tries to get to Heaven (called the Celestial City) and avoid sin (in
such places as the Slough of Despond), you could say that Dickens' use of this
"Progress" is intended as irony. The reference to Bunyan's work might not be
obvious but once it is pointed out, the reader should consider the different types of
"progress" that might exist. Dickens lived during the great "Industrial Revolution" of
Great Britain and the Gradgrinds are certainly part of this revolution. Still, Dickens
suggests that this economic and scientific progress should be matched with moral
and artistic progress.

Without being as religiously explicit as Bunyan, Dickens tries to show that Cecilia
has made moral progress in a way that the Gradgrinds have not. For example,
there is the metaphor of Mr. Gradgrind's eye as a "wintry piece of fact." It is hard
and dead (the archetype of winter) but Cecilia can make progress, and can grow for
she is attached to images of spring, youth and life. As one of the major themes in
the novel focuses on education and conversion, we might ask ourselves what the
Gradgrinds (especially Louisa) could learn from Sissy and how this progress might
make their lives better. Dickens contrasts Sissy's concern for others with "political
economy"‹an academic subject that should answer questions in order to take care
of a society and its citizens.

One of Dickens' literary qualities that does not appeal to modern readers is his
overly sentimental treatment of certain characters. Hopefully, the sentimentality
does not significantly obscure some of the subtle points that Dickens is making
when he seems to making the same point over and over again. There are many
ways in which Sissy is a contrast to the Gradgrinds, but there is the hidden detail of
her father being a circus clown, basically, yet being a better father than Mr.
Gradgrind. Later on in the novel, Dickens will again use the stock character of the
fool in order to show true wisdom. The constant battle between "Fancy" and "Fact"
is complicated by the varying degrees of honesty, truthfulness and accuracy. While
Mr. Gradgrind always insists on "Fact" and we can assume Dickens to prefer
"Fancy," Dickens does try to show that the preference for one or the other is a
matter of choice and opinion. Regardless of which is better, both are necessary and
life is miserable without the both. In terms of social commentary, Sissy's sobbing
over being denied the stories she loves ("the wrong books") is an example of
censorship, and yet another example of the themes of surveillance and watching
that fascinate Dickens.

Chapter Ten: Stephen Blackpool

The story turns to the workers of Coketown, a group of laborers known as "the
Hands." Among them lived a decent man named Stephen Blackpool. He is forty but
he looks much older and has had a hard life. In fact, those who know him have
nicknamed him "Old Stephen." Stephen has very little as far as intelligence or social
graces and he is very simply defined as "good power-loom weaver, and a man of
perfect integrity." After his long hours in the factory, once the lights and bells are
shut down, he looks for his friend Rachael. On this night, he cannot find her but
just when he is convinced that he has missed her, she appears.

Rachael is also a laborer, she is thirty-five years old and she is a gentle, caring
person. They have been friends for many years and Stephen takes consolation in
this. Whenever his life seems unbearable, Stephen knows that Rachael will make
him feel better. She repeatedly advises him that when life is as unpleasant as
theirs, it is better not to think about it at all. They walk together towards the part of
town where they both live. Here, the houses are extremely small and dirty.
Stephen does not even live in a house ‹he lives in a small room above a shop. He

23
tries best to keep things as orderly as possible and he is always courteous in
regards to the woman who rents the small room to him.

It seems that this night is full of bad luck for Stephen. He enters his room and he
stumbles against a wretched figure that frightens him. A drunk and disabled woman
is in his room and she is apparently someone that he knows. As the chapter ends,
she laughs at Stephen scornfully. She has returned from some part of the past to
ruin his life and give him even more to worry about. She passes out in a drunken
stupor and Stephen is left to his misery.

Analysis:

Dickens' portrayal of Stephen Blackpool is a form of characterization that basically

equates the figure and the scene. Stephen is the personification of his town and the
symbol of the downtrodden working-class. The name "blackpool" relies upon basic
negative imagery to suggest Stephen's dim prospects. This is entirely true and
unwavering: only bad things happen to Stephen even though he remains an
incredibly virtuous person throughout his adversity. Both Stephen and Rachel fit
into Dickens' sentimental depiction of the working-class as more decent and morally
fit than their alleged superiors. The drunken woman at the end of the chapter is a
reminder of reality, that not all poor people are also decent.

The city is described using the imagery of a hell-like place. It is confusing, ugly and
full of smoke. In one passage, the description of the scene contains an allusion to
the "Labyrinth" of Greek mythology ‹a maze in which a vengeful monster (called the
Minotaur) lived. Coketown is a labyrinth in that it is maze-like; each building and
street identically resembles the squalor and misery found in all of the other poor-
houses and alleys. There is the irony of the factories being described as "Fairy
palaces" featuring bells, an elephant and a serpent. Not only are the factories
instances of fact versus fancy (and fairies) but there is nothing innocent nor
anything harmless about these "Fairy palaces." The "titanic shadows," the serpent
and the threatening words of the drunken woman complete the symbolism of
looming threatening danger. In drunkenness, just as in a maze, everything looks
the same and everything is unclear.

Book I, Chapters 11-16

Chapter Eleven: No Way Out

The next day, Stephen Blackpool is back at work, bent over his loom. He is
depressed about the woman who has appeared in his room but he does not let this
get in the way of his work. His work began early in the morning when it was still
dark outside but as it grows later, the lights are shut off and it begins to rain
outside. When Blackpool has his lunch break he takes his piece of bread and walks
towards Mr. Bounderby's house to seek some advice. Bounderby is the owner of the
factory. Stephen finds Bounderby at lunch eating a lavish meal and Mrs. Sparsit
was sitting in the room as well, but she did not eat lunch by habit.

Bounderby asks Stephen what his problem is, noting that as an employer he is glad
to say that he has never had any problem with Stephen. Unlike many of the other
workers, Stephen isn't looking for luxuries like "turtle soup and venison."
Bounderby is pleasantly surprised when Stephen confirms that he has not arrived to
make a complaint. He only wants advice. With permission, Stephen begins his
story.

24
The woman who apprehended Stephen the night before was the same woman that
he married nineteen years previous. He was very good to her, but she became a
drunkard and sold the furniture and refused to work. After some time, she
disappeared and no one heard anything from her. As a decent gesture, Stephen
looked for a way to provide for her without being attached to her lifestyle. For the
previous five years, he paid her money to stay away from him and it worked until
now. Bounderby does not have very much advice though he does agree that
Blackpool is in a very bad situation. Stephen wants to know how he might be rid of
the woman and Bounderby and Mrs. Sparsit are both offended.

Stephen would much rather be with Rachael but what he learns from Bounderby is
that any sort of annulment or divorce or separation from the drunk woman is going
to cost a good deal of money ‹far more than Stephen will ever have. Bounderby
goes further to express his disappointment in Stephen's "unhallowed opinions" and
the fact that he would air them in front of a decent lady like Mrs. Sparsit. Stephen
does not linger at the scene; he thanks Bounderby for his time and exits.

Analysis:

The narrative structure of the novel often uses various chapters as parallels or as
cause-and-effect sequences. In this case, "No Way Out" might be compared to "A
Loophole" in the same way that we can contrast the lack of freedom suffered by the
poor (Stephen) and by children (Tom and Louisa Gradgrind). It is also worth noting
that for all of Mrs. Sparsit's hypocrisy, she parallels Stephen Blackpool as the
spouse of a drunk (her husband died of alcoholism in France). Finally, on the
subject of marriage, Stephen's fate foreshadows Bounderby's marriage (presented
at the end of Book One) and by the end of the novel, Bounderby will find himself in
a similarly awkward situation.

The tone of this chapter is incredibly negative in regards to Sparsit and Bounderby.
While they weren't the favorite characters before this point, Dickens'
characterization is really a social commentary on class conflict and the difference
between the lives of the rich and the poor. While Sparsit is described as a "fallen
lady," there are more intense images of verticality in the lives of the poor: the
serpent, the rising smoke, Lucifer the fallen angel and the grim, black ladders
attached to each house. Each of these images becomes an explicit symbol of how
easy it is for the poor to fall farther into the dumps. On the one hand we have
Blackpool whose steady fall throughout the novel is simply on account of his
already being down and having no other direction in which to travel. On the other
hand, characters like Bounderby and Sparsit will also suffer their own social "falls"
but it will be on account of their hubris, excessive pride.

Chapter Twelve: The Old Woman

When Stephen leaves Mr. Bounderby's house he is greeted by an old woman who is
very clearly come from the country on a journey. Stephen is at first distrustful of
her but he remains polite despite the disappointment of the last two days. The lady
asks Stephen if she has seen him exit "that gentleman's house" and Stephen
answers that she has. She describes Bounderby and asks if this is the man Stephen
has seen. When Stephen answers her in the affirmative, she thanks him warmly.

She continues walking with Stephen and it seems that the very aspects of
Coketown that make life all the harder for the residents are the very monstrosities
and large attractions that she finds exciting. She has walked nine miles to arrive in
town and this is a trip that she makes once a year. This only adds to her mystery
and Stephen is puzzled by her insistence that she comes to town each year so that

25
she might see the gentlemen. She is specifically interested in seeing Mr. Bounderby
and she hopes that she will be so lucky though this seems doubtful.

Stephen tells the woman that he works in the factory and when she asks him if he
is happy he replies that everybody has their troubles. She has expected that he
would say he was very happy‹for he is living in the town and not in the country‹and
Stephen does not want to disappoint her, though he cannot lie and feign happiness.
Stephen does say that his troubles are at home and that they do not follow him to
the factory where, under Bounderby, everything is regular and orderly. When
Stephen tells the old lady that he has been a continuous worker at the loom for
twelve years, she exclaims her pride in him and insists upon kissing him: "I must
kiss the hand that has worked in this fine factory for a dozen year." It is clear at
this point, that the old lady is a little eccentric but she certainly means no harm and
Stephen, being a decent man himself., obliges her as best he can.

Though they part ways when they finally approach the factory and Stephen must
return to work. Back at his loom, Stephen is in awe of the old woman and the
"harmony" that surrounds her. In the midst of the loud noises and the smoke of the
factory, Stephen's thoughts easily fall into a negative slump. At the end of his
work-shift, he looks for Rachael but he does not see her. He remembers when they
were both young and it is obvious that they would have been far happier together
than they have been, separate. Stephen does not want to return to his home; he
does not know what he will find there. But in the end, "he went home for shelter."

Analysis:

The old woman character is one of Dickens' specialties, appearing in more than a
few of his novels. As in the others, she is a woman from the country who is on a
pilgrimage, which is usually a religious trip. In spite of her mystery, her kiss upon
Stephen's hand is a symbolic blessing. There is a simple contrast between the
country woman and the city men that excite her. Her connection to Bounderby is
not yet known, but it is very important and will be easy to guess well before it is
revealed. It is ironic that she considers the men of high standing to be "gentlemen"
when we have learned that they are anything but gentle, but the pilgrim
demonstrates that she can see past appearances by finding the value in Stephen
Blackpool.

The suspense of the chapter is mainly fueled by questions of the woman's identity
and how she is able to know Bounderby so well as to describe him as "portly, bold,
outspoken and hearty." Again, the theme of surveillance is established, for the lady
has only come to town to deliberately watch strangers. Nonetheless, her honesty
and the fact that she does sneak up and spy on others are all reassuring.

Chapter Thirteen: Rachael

There is a candle burning in the window of Stephen's room. While Stephen sits he
thinks to himself about the larger philosophical questions and mysteries of life and
death‹not in an academic way, but in terms of application to his own life. He thinks
of all of the people who die despite the fact that they loved others dearly and are
dearly missed. In contrast to them all, his drunk wife is loved by no one and loves
no one‹yet she lives and survives her own undoing to cause pain to others.

Stephen and his wife are not alone for Rachael is also in the room, tending to the
drunken woman. The woman is not in a very good state and Rachael is glad that
Stephen has finally come home. A doctor had been by earlier and Rachael reminds
Stephen that they all have an obligation not to judge the woman because they are

26
all sinners. Stephen repeats that he is grateful that Rachael is there because he
cannot guarantee that he would be able to overcome his desire to do harm to
himself and/or his wife. Both Rachael and Stephen are half asleep and Rachael
agrees that she will stay with Stephen until three in the morning. Then she will
return home.

Stephen sees a bottle on the table; it is mostly empty but it causes him to tremble.
Rachael sees that he is in a fit of trembling and she moves to see that he is not
feeling too ill. Stephen assures her that he is simply having a fright and that he will
soon be better. As he falls asleep, Stephen enters into a "long, troubled dream"
that continually blurs with the sad reality surrounding him. He sees himself at his
own wedding, happily preparing to marry, except the woman is not Rachael and
there is a protest started by one of the witnesses of the wedding. In his half-asleep
state, Stephen sees his wife make a move for the bottle on the table but Rachael
wakes up in the nick of time. There is a struggle and the drunk woman grabs
Rachael by the hair, but Rachael overpowers her and destroys the bottle. Stephen
is convinced that Rachael is an angel but she insists that she is not. Still, she is
definitely a benevolent force in Stephen's life.

Analysis:

The most important symbol in the chapter is the candle that represents Rachel's
presence in Stephen's room and in his life. As a candle, Rachel brings light (clarity
and understanding), warmth (love) and constancy (permanent devotion). Along
with Sissy Jupe, she is part of the motif of young women who have maternal, caring
qualities because they are poor and live hard lives. This is part of Dickens'
trademark sentimentality but it is serious enough to establish the contrast between
Rachel's candle and the black ladder that is an image of death.

Death is one of the focuses of the chapter, with Stephen's wife only barely
recovering from what was almost her deathbed. In a metaphor, death is reduced to
the operations of chance and fate in a card game: it "dealt out an unequal hand."
Stephen's unequal hand is in the fact of his living-death. He is trapped in between
sleep and being awake. Even worse, he can find "now way out" of his present
situation in either of these conditions. Alcohol and dreams are both symbolic
escapes, but in this case, the alcoholism of the wife has dried out the dreams of the
husband.

Chapter Fourteen: The Great Manufacturer

Time goes on in Coketown and Mr. Gradgrind notes that as the months and years
go by, his children are growing into young adults. He decides that his son, Thomas,
should join Bounderby's Bank and find work. Gradgrind has kept up his education of
Sissy, but he ultimately concludes that any further education would be useless. She
has learned all that she is capable of learning and this has not been very much.
Sissy is in agreement and she is sorry that she has disappointed Mr. Gradgrind. She
begins to cry, but Mr. Gradgrind consoles her by complimenting her: she is
"affectionate, earnest, good" and this will have to be good enough. She is very
useful to Mrs. Gradgrind and she keeps the family in better spirits than otherwise
and so she can remain a part of the household.

Gradgrind is disappointed that Sissy still clings to the bottle of nine oils and while
he does not have contempt for her ignorance, he does admit to himself that he
does not know precisely how to categorize Sissy. His thoughts are mostly focussed
on Louisa. He finds her one evening and informs her that he would like to have a
serious conversation with her in the morning. A bit later, Tom comes into the room

27
and asks Louisa if she knows what the conversation is going to be about. Tom
informs her that their father is in talks with Mr. Bounderby though the subject is
still undisclosed. Tom wins Louisa's unsuspecting assurance that she will do
whatever she can to help him. He then leaves her to her solitude, meeting up with
his friends.

Analysis:

This chapter is the foreshadowing of Louisa's marriage to Mr. Bounderby.

Obviously, this is a disappointing union of contrasts. Louisa is young while he is old
and her desires for freedom are going to remain suppressed in his house.
Symbolically, the presence of a wilderness as opposed to the cycle of seasons
reflects the lack of fertility and the end of growth for Louisa. From her youth, she
threatens to become a bitter old woman. At the very least, her marriage is heavily
foreshadowed as a failure.

Tom calls his sister a "capital girl" and this is a reiteration of the imagery of
economics applied to emotional and human subjects. Louisa is "capital" because her
marriage presents the potential for profit. Similarly, the children's education at the
"Mill" and the "Bank" of learning, transforms them into products and economic
laborers. Finally, there is the irony of the old woman who is a spinner of Time. She
is the archetype of the Fates offering a lifetime as a thread to be cut. But in
contrast, Bounderby has a weaving factory in which Stephen Blackpool is a skilled
power-loom weaver. The motif of weaving operates on yet another level when
Dickens compares nature's weaving (creation) of Stephen Blackpool (a human
being) as superior to the mere spinning and weaving of the goods that Bounderby
sells.

Chapter Fifteen: Father and Daughter

Mr. Gradgrind sits in his room which is designed very much like an Observatory. He
has spent many ours in this space contemplating and studying human habits and
destinies. He prepares to have his serious discussion with Louisa, who insists upon
remaining dispassionate throughout the entire encounter. Gradgrind tells his
daughter that she is the subject of a marriage proposal ‹and Louisa does not
respond. Gradgrind expects Louisa to convey some emotion, but she is entirely
stoic and reminds Gradgrind that her upbringing has prevented her from knowing
what emotions to express.

Gradgrind explains that it is Mr. Bounderby who has made the marriage proposal
and Louisa refrains from registering any emotional response. When her father asks
her what she intends to do, Louisa turns the question back to him and asks him
what he thinks she ought to do. Gradgrind looks at the situation analytically and
dismisses the fact of Bounderby being fifty years old. The marriage has little to do
with love and is simply a matter of "tangible Fact." In the end, the decision is for
Louisa to make. But as she does not see that any opportunity will bring her
happiness she realizes that it does not matter what she does. She continually
repeats the phrase "what does it matter?" and this frustrates Mr. Gradgrind.

In the end, Louisa is still emotionless and she replies: "I am satisfied to accept his
proposal." Mr. Gradgrind is very pleased and he kisses his daughter on the
forehead. When Mrs. Gradgrind hears the news she is happy but then she works
herself into a fit and soon passes out. Sissy Jupe is present and she is, perhaps, the
only one who is able to sense the difference in Louisa. Louisa keeps herself at a
distance and is "impassive, proud and cold." Sissy feels a mixture of wonder, pity
and sorrow for Louisa.

28
Analysis:

The reference to Bluebeard and Mr. Gradgrind's office room being full of
"bluebooks" is a combination of irony and allusion. At the very least, the very
mention of Bluebeard, a villain from a child's fairy tale story, foreshadows the
marriage drama that unfolds and it is a reminder of the war against "fancy" and
"imagination" that the Gradgrinds have embarked upon. Bluebeard was a dreadful
knight who promised a wonderful life to each of his wives until their curiosity
overcame them and they were encouraged to search through a hidden closet in the
back of his castle‹a closet that contained the dead bodies of his former wives.
Surely this is not a good harbinger for Louisa's upcoming marriage.

Mr. Gradgrind is a bit of an ogre. Certainly, he and Bounderby have had Louisa
under heavy surveillance and observation for some time. Gradgrind's office is as
symbolic an observatory as it is a literal one. The characterization of Louisa reflects
the power and politics between Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. She becomes a
debased human being in a way, the mere "subject of a proposal." She is weakened
but in a reversal, she is the one who stands "impassive, proud, cold" and is above
all. The father is beaten at his own game of stoicism and if anything, this chapter
marks the beginning of the blindness motif that will come to identify Mr. Gradgrind
and his inability to understand the human soul.

Chapter Sixteen: Husband and Wife

The concluding chapter of Book One unites Louisa Gradgrind and Mr. Josiah
Bounderby in marriage. Bounderby's first task before the marriage was to inform
Mrs. Sparsit. She is offered the option of continuing in the household but she
decides that such an arrangement would be improper and Bounderby makes finer
arrangements for her elsewhere. He expected that Mrs. Sparsit would be overcome
by shock and might pass out but she is hardly surprised and in fact, there is a hint
of condescension in her tone. Bounderby assures her that her new position
elsewhere will not result in a further fall in societal position.

The eight weeks between the proposal and the wedding are hardly romantic and
are entirely fact-based. It is more of a business transaction than anything else. The
wedding ceremony is adequately dry and Bounderby makes a long-winded speech.
He is very honored to be married to the daughter of as fine a man as Mr.
Gradgrind, who is after all, a member of Parliament. He offers best wishes that
every man may find a wife as good as his and that every woman may find a
husband as good as him. After the wedding, the Bounderbys are due for a
honeymoon in "Lyons." Tom sees his sister off and in his happiness ‹for his position
at the bank is certainly secured now‹he is unable to detect her disappointment.

Analysis:

If this chapter confirms what we have learned from the stories of Mrs. Sparsit and
also Stephen Blackpool it is an argument of social commentary: the politics of the
social scale are mediated more by marriage than by any other one thing. This also
presents an interesting contrast between Mrs. Sparsit and Mr. Bounderby. Her fake
show of sympathy foreshadows the eventual unhappiness of the marriage. Who
exactly is the "victim?" As Book I ends, we are left to compare the "jolly" state of
Bounderby and the more "desperate" condition of Blackpool.

Book II, Chapters 1-6

Book II

29
Chapter One: Effects in the Bank

Book II continues about a year after the Bounderby marriage. Coketown is little
different and the life of the poor is as hard as it was before. Nonetheless, Mr.
Bounderby is convinced that the poor are after a "gold spoon and turtle soup" and
luxury living. It is summer and the town is especially hot. Mrs. Sparsit sits upstairs
in the Bank where she has been relocated and this is where she holds court with
Bitzer, Bounderby's trusty assistant. Bitzer informs Mrs. Sparsit of the common
laborers and their lack of values and their inability to save money and improve
upon their condition. They both agree that the morals of the poor are wanting. The
relationship between Bitzer and Mrs. Sparsit is very much like a relationship
between a spy and his employer.

Their gossipy conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a stranger at the door.

Mrs. Sparsit consents to see him mainly because she is curious as to who this is.
The stranger is a very charming and elegantly dressed gentleman and he shares
Mrs. Sparsit's class sympathies. After trading their casual observations on life, the
two settle down to conversation and discuss the business at hand. The stranger is
to see Mr. Bounderby‹he has a letter of introduction that has come from Mr.
Gradgrind. The stranger became acquainted with Mr. Gradgrind in London but this
is his first time in Coketown and he is somewhat disgusted with the town.

He is however, very eager to eat Louisa and he is astonished to learn that Mr.
Bounderby has married her‹as he is a good three decades older than she is. Mrs.
Sparsit assures the stranger that Louisa is not at all the hardened and unattractive
academic that he has in mind. Later in the night, Mrs. Sparsit is thinking to herself
and she exclaims: "O, you Fool!" but it is unclear precisely whom she means.

Analysis:

The tone is wrought with sarcasm. Dickens uses the word Œwonder' as irony
because there is little wonder to be had in Coketown. The "evil eye" glaring over
Coketown is as intense a foreshadowing of Bounderby's unraveling as any other
image in the novel. The shroud is a symbol of death and dying, decay and
destruction.

The metaphor of Babel refers to the Tower of Babel. This is an allusion to an Old
Testament story that explains that the excessive pride of humans will eventually
topple their enterprises. The image of hell and punishment is reinforced by the very
sharp description of the city's climate as "frying in oil."

The use of the word "aspiring" is a pun that refers both to the upward motion of the
smoke and the upward yearnings of the poor ‹if only the fortunes of the poor rose
as easily as the smoke of the factory. A metaphor is employed when the fragility of
the townspeople is understood by their being like "weak china."

In characterizing Mrs. Sparsit, Dickens takes her posture (always sitting and
watching) and makes her into an equivalent of the Fates, much like Madame
deFarge, a famous character from his novel A Tale of Two Cities. The scenes that
revolve around Mrs. Sparsit are all about the trappings of social class and position
and in these moments, even the tables are personified as having their "legs in an
attitude."

Against the cliffhanger that centers on yet another new stranger's mysterious
identity, Dickens offers some social commentary on the upper class conceptions of
knowledge and education. In sharp contrast to the Gradgrinds, Mrs. Sparsit takes

30
her lack of knowledge as a fashionable symptom of her simple virtue. Even as it
makes little sense for lack of knowledge to be rewarded we also see that Sparsit is
eager to gain information about the people around her. This interest in others
affairs will eventually prove to be Sparsit's undoing.

Chapter Two: Mr. James Harthouse

Mr. Gradgrind is hiring the stranger, Mr. James Harthouse, as an instructor in his
school. He will be one of many who are trained in logic and statistics and eager to
help relieve children of their imaginations. James Harthouse is the younger brother
of a member of Parliament and as he has become an adult, he has failed to find a
vocation or even a steady hobby to fill his hours. After trying several other things,
Harthouse decided that he might as well give statistics a try and so he had himself
coached and instructed in various philosophies. He was a success in London and his
older brother easily passed him off to Mr. Gradgrind as a suitable educator.
Gradgrind sent James (nicknamed "Jem") down from London to Coketown to get to
meet the important men in town‹Mr. Bounderby chief among them.

By the time Bounderby arrives at Harthouse's hotel room, the young man is almost
about to quit his new job and "go in" for another. Bounderby is very different from
the very suave and collected younger man. He tells James the stories of his young
years on the street and the myth of his self-improvement. He asserts that he is not,
unlike Harthouse, a gentleman and it makes little sense for Harthouse to expect
Bounderby to have any manners. Harthouse pretends to be incredibly amused and
interested in Bounderby's stories but he actually finds the man incredibly dreadful
and boring.

At Bounderby's mansion, Harthouse meets Louisa and he finds her very attractive
but very hard to understand. She is extremely guarded and reserved and he is
unsure that his ideas and his rhetorical display are impressing her the way that
they have impressed everyone else. In his observations, Harthouse notices that
Louisa's ungrateful younger brother, Tom, is the only person that can make her
happy. She smiles when she sees him. At the end of the chapter, it is Tom who
accompanies Harthouse to his hotel room.

Analysis:

It is very humorous that Harthouse is being hired to instill discipline and order
when he is wholly lacking in convictions. A subtle difference between this chapter
and the previous ones is the interior monologue of Harthouse; he is the first
character in the novel whose thoughts are rendered verbatim to the reader. This is
a good indicator of just how transparent his character is, but this will not prevent
him from ultimately causing mischief and doing serious damage to his relationships
with others.

Dickens is perhaps being a bit too merciless when he describes the Gradgrinds'
educational system as "cutting the throats of the Graces." Dickens alludes to the
three Graces of ancient Greek mythology, goddesses who personified beauty, joy
and flowering. That the Gradgrinds' would eliminate this activity is especially worth
noting because Book II is when the "reaping" will occur. The elimination of the
Graces will insure the foreshadowed poor harvest.

One of the most important images of the chapter is that of Louisa's face, described
as a face whose "natural play was so locked up" that Harthouse is unable to
decipher her true thoughts and emotions. The "natural play" is a metaphor for
Louisa's facial gestures and her expression but the state of their incarceration and

31
lack of freedom (being "so locked up") stands as a symbol for Louisa's experience
as a whole. Just as Bounderby can be understood by his braggart's portrait, Louisa
is represented by her imprisoned, stony face. The motif that offers representations
of the "self" leads to the metaphor of Bounderby's "household gods." Again, this
reinforces his portraits and the toys of his wealth as a combination of idolatry and
pride that is sure to bring doom.

A final contrast to consider is Harthouse vs. Louisa. While Louisa may be said to
have few emotions and desires because of her restricted upbringing, Harthouse has
few genuine emotions and desires because of his refusal to make an unswerving
commitment. Dickens' treatment of the theme of fidelity is not a lumping together
of the two characters‹when Louisa says "What does it matter?" she means
something very different from Harthouse's more casual and more dangerous
argument that one set of ideas is "as good as another."

Chapter Three: The Whelp

Tom Gradgrind has become quite wayward despite the rigors of his education and
he is incredibly hypocritical and disrespectful. He makes no effort to hide his disdain
for Mr. Bounderby even as he fascinated by Mr. Harthouse's flashy clothes and he
befriends him for this largely superficial reason. Tom very quickly becomes a pawn
of Mr. Harthouse. After a little alcohol and some tobacco, Tom is loose-lipped and
uninhibited in his criticism of Mr. Bounderby. At one point, Tom goes as far as to
say that he is the only person that Louisa cares about and that it is only for his
well-being that she agreed to marry Mr. Bounderby.

Without realizing it, Tom is laying the seeds for a potential affair between
Harthouse and his sister. As Harthouse becomes more enrapt with Louisa, Tom
offers more and more secrets until he finally falls into a stupor. In his drunken fog,
Tom suffers Harthouse's gruff rousing to get up and go home. A waiter helps him
through the street and he eventually stumbles in the direction of his home,
dissipated and wholly unaware of what he has done.

Analysis:

Tom's new characterization as a "whelp" is certainly a sing of bad things to come.

Indeed, Tom's condition comes to be less a matter of foreshadowing so much as it
shows the inevitable workings of fate. Later in the novel, the reader will find that
well before Tom actually became a criminal, the novel had already uncovered his
criminal potential. As an ignorant, headstrong young man, Tom Gradgrind suffers
from what the Ancient Greeks called "hubris," an excessive pride that usually
roused the gods to anger. In this case, Tom does not even have the benefit of
becoming a fallen hero for there is nothing heroic about him. The image that he has
of himself is far grander than what he actually is.

The images that identify Tom in this chapter are subtle indicators of the young
man's folly, blindness and inability to direct his steps. In this chapter, he becomes
involved in drugs, soporifics, tobacco, cigars and the like ‹all of which induce a
clueless sleep. This is reinforced by the symbolic action of begin carried through the
mist by the waiter and Tom feels as though he is "lounging somewhere in the air."
Certainly, one can draw a parallel between Tom and Stephen Blackpool's wife, but
the most important feature of Tom's drunkenness is his somewhat innocent
destructive activity. His intentions are far from pure, but he is unaware of what
greater evils he sets in motion. Whether from the cigar smoke or the alley-air, Tom
is not in control of his action.

32
A better parallel lies between Tom and James Harthouse for Harthouse will come to
relinquish control of his actions by simply avoiding to calculate the consequences of
the things he does. What these characters leave unsaid and to happenstance
expresses a sentiment echoed in Dickens's euphemistic condemnation of Tom who
would have done better to let the foul river rise above his "curtained head." Suicide
is the unsaid factor here, and while Tom is never driven to suicide, his fate is little
better and he does far greater harm to other innocent characters.

Chapter Four: Men and Brothers

This chapter returns to the life of Coketown's laboring poor. A conniving and
dishonest man named Slackbridge is at the head of a movement to create labor
unions. He has taken the legitimate concerns of the poor but he is more interested
in inciting outrage and building a platform for his own power and edification than in
achieving the common goals of the "Brotherhood." Stephen Blackpool is one of the
power loom weavers and he is present at the meeting but he declines to join the
union. Slackbridge denounces Blackpool and he curbs his language only after
several members of his faithful crowd demand that Stephen be given a chance to
defend himself.

Of course, Stephen lacks the rhetorical skills and the manipulative desires of
Slackbridge and his deeply felt remarks are received but to little avail. Stephen has
no problem with others joining the movement and he supports them but he cannot
join and would simply like to continue his job without any trouble. Unfortunately,
under Slackbridge's new regime, Stephen is ostracized as a traitor and he is
deliberately ignored and shunned. Suffering the silent treatment, Stephen avoids
seeing Rachael because he worries that if she is seen with him she will be treated in
a similar way. The union movement has not yet spread to the women but it is
expected in the near future. Stephen's life has simply gone from bad to worse and
things look to get little better when he receives a summons to see Mr. Bounderby in
his residence.

Analysis:

Slackbridge is one of Dickens's quintessential caricatures, the principal

characterization of the man being derived from his one-word name: slack bridge.
The juxtaposition of slack and bridge, should amply explain the danger that
Slackbridge presents as a leader for the urban poor. Like a bridge, he is necessary
and essential to the cause. But he is slack, not dependable, untrustworthy and
dangerous. It is the combination of slack and bridge that produces the fault of the
man. The worthless content of Slackbridge's message is described by alliteration in
the phrase "froth and fume" and Slackbridge's demagoguery can be compared and
contrasted to Bounderby and Sparsit, two other leading orators of the novel.

In the pairing of Stephen Blackpool against Slackbridge, Blackpool's negative name

has no correlation with his character. Still, he is no match for Slackbridge's
powerhouse. Slackbridge's rhetorical skills are exemplified in the copious allusions
that he offers in the hopes of painting a sour picture of Blackpool's moral
credentials. He alludes to the Old Testament story of Esau and his brother Jacob
who tricked his brother Esau into selling his birthright. Slackbridge also mentions
Judas (Iscariot) who betrayed Jesus Christ and a man by the name of Castlereagh,
a British politician who earned the scorn of the laboring classes and also foreign
diplomats by reneging on his promises.

Chapter Five: Men and Masters

33
When Stephen arrives he is in the company of Mr. Bounderby, Louisa, Mr.
Harthouse and Tom. Mr. Bounderby intends to make an example of Stephen and
present him to Mr. Harthouse as a sort of specimen of the lower classes. He asks
Stephen if the other laborers have been harassing him but Stephen is unwilling to
disparage his fellow workers. Bounderby then suggests that Stephen's conduct is on
account of some far-fetched hope that he is going to come into luxury because he
has resisted the insurrectionist movement. Stephen replies that he made a promise
not to join the union and that is why he has refrained (but this is not a promise he
has made to Bounderby but to another).

When Mr. Bounderby describes the group as a gang of "rascals and rebels,"
Stephen argues in their favor and explains that economics is at the root of their
crisis. The problem is rich people who argue that they are always correct and that
the poor are always in the wrong simply because of how much money they have.
Stephen describes the situation as a "muddle" and he assures Bounderby that the
problem is larger than Coketown and its factories and the longer the problem goes
unsolved the greater the tension. Bounderby does not appreciate the criticism and
on a whim he decides to repay Stephen's loyalty by accusing him of being disloyal.
He goes as far as to say that Stephen has betrayed both his employer and his
fellow employees and he caps his argument off by firing Stephen "for a novelty."
Upon completion of his current assignment, Stephen is to leave the factory.
Stephen appeals that he will not be able to find work in another place but Mr.
Bounderby does not care. He looks at Louisa in the hopes of her rescuing him but
she has lowered her head.

Analysis:

The narrative structure of this chapter parallels the "Men and Brothers" theme with
its own "Men and Masters." Once dominated by those of his own low social
standing, Blackpool is now dominated by those who are his social superiors. The
"black unpassable world betwixt" the rich and the poor is a metaphorical
"blackpool" that also echoes the words about angels and dead siblings who are
benevolent spirits, blessing from across the "gulf" of life and death. The other
major metaphor that Blackpool uses to describe the plight of the poor is a clock
that is set on a ship bound to Norfolk.

His reference to Norfolk is well worth notice as Norfolk was an old Virginia colony
that was unsuccessful and little different from the lost colony of "Roanoke." One of
the central themes of literature involves the "unity" of time. Here, Stephen is
practically philosophizing when he argues that time will continue to advance
regardless of the do-nothing attitude of those who have the potential to produce
some benefit for society. The social commentary focuses on the "muddle" that has
been created in the hypocrisy of the wealthy and the incredible want of those who
are lower on the social totem-pole. Just as Bounderby is incredibly casual in
delivering a very serious blow to Stephen's livelihood, the images that describe him
as a "windbag" and as a "wind rising" express the violent potential of his volatility.
Yet again, Stephen is martyred and wounded despite his good heart. Don't expect
his situation to get anything but worse; his fate is steady and he cannot overcome
the curse of his name.

Chapter Six: Fading Away

By the time Stephen leaves Mr. Bounderby's house it is getting dark. Walking to his
slum, he encounters Rachael walking alongside the old country woman that he had
seen about a year previous. Just as she had been before, the lady was in a cheery
mood despite the somber atmosphere. She has heard about Mr. Bounderby being

34
married and she was hoping that she might get a chance to see the bride but she
has not been very lucky. Stephen assures the woman that Louisa is young and
pretty and this, of course, is exactly what the lady wants to hear.

Stephen informs Rachael that he has lost his employment and they are both
depressed because they know Stephen is going to have to leave Coketown if he
there is any hope of him working again. Though he is not happy to leave, Stephen
is sure that Rachael's life will be easier without him there to complicate things.
Deep down, both of them know that they will never see each other again. Stephen
asks the old lady about her family and she announces herself as Mrs. Pegler, a
widow. She also says that she "had a son" and Stephen and Rachael assume that
her son has died though this is not what Mrs. Pegler has actually said. She re-states
her claim: "I have lost him."

There is a small disturbance and the landlady comes up the stairs and informs
Stephen that Mrs. Bounderby has arrived to see him. Mrs. Pegler is horrified that
the woman might see her and she hides in a corner. When Louisa enters, she does
the best that she can to undo her husband's wrong ‹though of course, she cannot
undo what he has decided. She offers some money to Stephen and he shows his
decency by refusing the larger sum she offers and he instead takes two pounds ‹a
nominal amount that shows that he is grateful, but independent. Louisa has
brought Tom with her and Tom seems to have some sort of plan in mind. He tells
Stephen that he will be able to help him further and instructs him to loiter outside
of the bank to wait for more instruction. Stephen does all of this for two days ‹to no
avail, for word never comes from Tom. He finishes his assignment and begins his
journey to a new town and a new life.

Analysis:

"Fading Away" presents us with the images of decay, lingering and failure ‹all of
these foreshadow pain in the lives of the major characters. And a good part of this
pain comes in the fact of fate being so protracted. Blackpool is not so fortunate as
to suffer once and finally; rather, life gives him so many convolutions and false
hopes that he is forever entangled in the negative affairs of his life. Just as his old
wife is described as a metaphorical "evil spirit," the old lady who returns seemingly
out of nowhere to comfort Stephen in his hour of need, is a symbol of fidelity.

Even though Stephen has the opportunity to leave Coketown, the potential freedom
is overwhelmed by stronger, more negative images. The law of fate "rose like the
sea" much as Bounderby exhibited the archetypal image of the powerful wind. In
both cases, nature's archetypal images are employed to express the power of the
forces who are against Stephen. They are as strong as nature because they present
him with a fate that he cannot escape from. At the same time, the nature imagery
suggests the death and decay of Coketown alongside the excessive power of
sadness and of Bounderby. Most emblematic is the deteriorated sunrise ‹which is
very sharp because sunrise is when the sun's radiance dissolves the darkness of the
previous night.

Dickens writes that the "sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad sea" much
as other characters "looked wan." We can add to these symbols, the fact that the
town is "in eclipse" and is metaphorically blinded by the eclipse and the "smoked
glass" of the town. The sun and sea images have been perverted as the only way to
show how disorderly and improper the order and propriety of Coketown truly are.

Book II, Chapters 7-12

35
Chapter Seven: Gunpowder

Mr. Harthouse has been very successful in his teaching job and he is considered to
have great promise in the industry. He has been devoting most of his attention to
Louisa, however. Louisa is clearly unhappy in her marriage and she re-iterates the
question that she posed her father: "What did it matter ŠWhat did anything matter."
Just as she goes through her life not caring what happens, Harthouse is also
ambling through simply because he is, at heart, too lazy to actually engineer any
sort of design or plan. He never makes a deliberate plan to seduce Louisa, he
simply figures that whatever will happen will happen and at this point, he neither
hastens nor prevents an amorous relationship from developing.

After months of study, Harthouse begins to understand Louisa and he makes efforts
to make her happy. He realizes that his philosophy will gain little ground with her
because he does not care about the issues and she realizes that her life is so
incredibly cloistered and detached from the outside world. The only way that
Harthouse can make Louisa happy is through Tom and he decides he will take
advantage of an opportunity should it present itself.

Mr. Bounderby is increasingly wealthier and he adds to the trappings of his social
position with a "snug little estate": a country-house he has bought from a man who
went bankrupt. On an occasion, Harthouse finds Louisa alone and in a conversation
with her he professes an incredible interest in Tom and in winning her trust, he
learns that Tom has borrowed quite a bit of money from Louisa to repay gambling
debts. Tom's ungrateful manner and his increasingly reckless lifestyle are both a
source of consternation for Louisa. When Harthouse gives Tom a stern talking-to
and Tom's behavior slightly improves, Harthouse moves into Louisa's good graces.

Analysis:

The narrative structure of chapters seven and eight combine a plot device with a
metaphor. It should be immediately noted that there is no literal "Gunpowder" nor
a literal "Explosion." Rather, the plot relies upon the cause-and-effect progression
of the story in order to maximize suspense. Metaphorically, the "gunpowder" is
simply the combustible material of tension and argument in strained relationships.
But the "explosion" will turn out to have little to do with what is deceptively
foreshadowed by the "gunpowder" in this chapter. In other words, actions are built
up to the brink of climax but Dickens often leaves them lingering and turns to other
element of the story.

Dickens's social commentary is especially revealing if we think about how the

poorer characters are heavily subject to fate. The wealthier characters, however,
suffer their calamities in terms of cause and effect. The major emphasis of the
foreshadowing in this chapter is the budding potential for an extra-marital romance
between Jem and Louisa. While Jem once noted that Louisa had "stone" features,
we now find the allusion to the Gorgon sisters ‹Medusa, chief among them. Jem
feared that Louisa was hardened and ugly, but in fact she only wears her stone face
without having lost her beauty. Ironically, the Gorgons do not have the stone faces,
rather the young heroes who failed and gazed upon them are the ones turned to
stone.

As heroes go, it remains to be seen whether Harthouse will successfully woo Louisa
from the husband to whom she is obliged. Even as he metaphorically reads Louisa
with a "student's eye" the truth of the matter is that he is a failed teacher in a
failing system and she is more complicated than he surmises.

36
Chapter Eight: Explosion

At this point, Harthouse has not committed himself to any plan of action. In fact, he
has yet to develop romantic feelings for Louisa in a true sense. He is simply passing
the time by expressing interest in her. Bounderby bursts on the scene with the
news that the bank had been robbed. A small safe in Tom's closet that was used for
petty purposes had been ransacked and a total of one hundred and fifty pounds
was gone. Of course, it could have been far more than that. Mrs. Sparsit and Bitzer
had been in the bank at the time but Bitzer was sleeping on duty.

A false key is found in the street and it is concluded that the safe was broken into
with the false key. Bounderby immediately suspects Stephen Blackpool for not only
has Stephen left town, but Mrs. Sparsit and Bitzer can testify to the man's ambling
back and forth in front of the bank for several days before the robber took place.
The crime would both increase his relative fortune and allow him to have his
revenge against Mr. Bounderby. Mrs. Sparsit is shaken by the affair and she spends
the next few weeks with the Bounderbys and Mr. Harthouse at the country-house.

In the meantime, Louisa harbors a suspicion that her brother has somehow been
involved in the crime. But when she asks him to confess, he rejects her
advances‹even as she insists on absolute forgiveness. Louisa asks Tom if he thinks
that Stephen Blackpool is involved in the crime as he seemed to be a very upright
person. Tom is deliberately equivocal in his answers and Louisa leaves his room
more bothered than before. After she leaves, Tom begins sobbing in guilt and
tearing his hair. He loves his sister for her goodness even as he hates himself
because he is so unworthy of her.

Analysis:

When Harthouse is smoking, he becomes a symbolic devil, and the source of

temptation. Besides the smoke and fire, he is also associated with the "brimstone"
of hellish Coketown. The metaphors used to describe Harthouse's moral condition
resuscitate some of the images of drowning that occurred earlier in the novel. Here,
his idleness is likened to an "iceberg" that may cause a "wreck" (And it will at the
end of Book II). Harthouse is content to let himself drift along without making
conscious efforts to do right or to do wrong. This is an important reversal for
Dickens because he has spent most of the novel criticizing the excesses of labor
and work. Now, his social commentary is leveled against the excess idleness and
leisure of the leisure class.

In the discussion of the theft, there is nothing to out of the ordinary. Dickens uses
his characteristic excess of irony and understatement when describing the "little
safe in young Tom's closet, the safe used for petty purposes." Not only was the
"safe" never safe, but we come to wonder how much of a safe this was if it was
"little" in size, used for "petty" sums, and entrusted to the small closet of a "young"
whelp. Of course, Tom is the thief and the fact that there has not really been a
crime will not stop the search for criminals. Indeed, the false crime like the false
key both testify to the themes of honesty and fidelity. Moreover, there is the
question of surveillance and the limits of human understanding and knowledge.
Despite their surveillance skills, Sparsit and Bitzer could not avoid the theft. Despite
his rigorous education, Tom could not avoid stealing.

A final comment on knowledge and wisdom comes from Mrs. Sparsit's

Shakespearean allusion to the play Hamlet. When thinking of Mr. Bounderby's loss,
she hypocritically mourns (without feeling any sentiment) "Alas poor Yorick." This is
a reference to Prince Hamlet's lines in Act V, Scene I, Lines 203-204: "Alas poor

37
Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."
Hamlet has been watching the clumsy gravediggers prepare Ophelia's grave and in
the process they uncover Yorick's skull. Yorick was the court jester and play friend
of the prince. Ironically, Bounderby is no such Yorick ‹"infinite jest" and "excellent
fancy" are precisely opposite to his personality. Dickens's hidden reference gives us
further reason to suspect Mrs. Sparsit's emotional attachment to her "benefactor,"
Mr. Bounderby.

Chapter Nine: Hearing the Last of It

Once again lodged in the Bounderby residence, Mrs. Sparsit becomes a prowling
snoop, keeping tabs on the affairs of the house. She is more and more resentful of
Mr. Bounderby and seems to enjoy the fact that he is under more stress and his
marriage is falling apart. At the same time, she hypocritically coddles and pampers
Mr. Bounderby who only comes to resent Louisa even more, for lacking the
domestic charms and offices of Mrs. Sparsit.

Louisa is summoned back to her childhood home at the news that her mother has
fallen ill. Of course, Mrs. Gradgrind had always been exceptionally feeble but she is
in her final days and Mr. Gradgrind is still in London, working hard at Parliament.
Sissy Jupe has run of the house and Louisa can detect a subtle difference in her
younger siblings who have had a prolonged exposure to Sissy. As Mrs. Gradgrind
gets closer to death she begins to lose her already loosened grip on reality. She
asks for a pen to write letters to her husband but then she simply waves her hands
in the air, feigning the motion of writing and this does her just as well. Not long
after this, Mrs. Gradgrind dies and little emotion is spent.

Analysis:

The characterization of Mrs. Sparsit focuses on her facial features and their
architectural composition. Her "Coriolanian" eyebrows and her dark, all-seeing eyes
are indicative of her powers of surveillance. In contrast to the images of Sissy
presented in Book III, Chapter One, Sparsit is not a site of refuge but her eyes are
"lighthouses on an iron-bound coast." This is a symbol of Sparsit's strength and
intensity but we will find in the later chapters of Book II is that she does not use
her powers of surveillance to save or rescue anybody. Sparsit presents herself as a
serene image. She moves without being seen but she sees all. This is not going to
remain for much longer though.

Chapter Ten: Mrs. Sparsit's Staircase

Mrs. Sparsit, once the excessively austere ascetic, is enjoying her weeks at
Bounderby's retreat, "feeding on the fat of the land." When she is in Mr.
Bounderby's presence she calls him her "benefactor" but when he is not around,
she addresses his portrait as "a Noodle." But Mrs. Sparsit's main area of concern is
not Mr. Bounderby but his wife and her increasingly dangerous relationship with Mr.
Harthouse. Mrs. Sparsit sees Louisa walking down an imaginary staircase that leads
to her doom and the unraveling of the marriage. Sometimes, Mrs. Sparsit becomes
frustrated because Louisa has an incredible reserve but Sparsit believes that time
will prove the story to be one of interest. And throughout the events that unfurl,
Sparsit makes no attempt to intervene.

Mr. Bounderby is spending more and more time at the bank ‹though the thief
remains free. Mrs. Sparsit focuses on Tom and tries to get information out of him
but of course, Tom is not perceptive enough to detect the shift in his sister's

38
relationship. As the chapter ends, Mrs. Sparsit prepares to do some detective
footwork and she is confident that she will be successful.

Analysis:

The staircase is a central symbol that functions on a number of levels. As far as

social commentary, the staircase's verticality expresses the rise and fall of fate as
far as social standing is concerned. Indeed, the fates of Mrs. Sparsit, Louisa, Mr.
Bounderby and Jem Harthouse are all dependent upon Mrs. Sparsit's staircase. A
second major facet of the staircase is, of course, the archetypal fall by temptation.
Much along the lines of the classic story of Eden, Louisa's descent down the
staircase is a "fall" that parallels the original fall of man by sin.

The title of the chapter seems to heavily foreshadow the events of the next two
chapters: "Lower and Lower" and "Down." Here, as always, we can expect that
Dickens will employ some type of reversal of meaning and the referents of "Lower
and Lower" and "Down" will be something other than we originally expected.

Chapter Eleven: Lower and Lower

Mrs. Sparsit keeps constant watch on everything that is happening and she is
dismayed that Louisa has taken such a long time to fall into the gulf at the foot of
the staircase. Her Gradgrind education has robbed her of the very fancies that
would prey upon her now. Tom informs Mrs. Sparsit that during this weekend, Mr.
Bounderby is remaining in town and he has the chore of meeting Mr. Harthouse at
the train station. Mrs. Sparsit then goes to Mr. Bounderby and wins permission to
lodge at the country-house for the weekend. After Tom leaves, Mrs. Sparsit realizes
that Tom has been fooled and that Louisa and James are planning a tryst.

Mrs. Sparsit watches from her post at the bank and then when the timing is right
she hastily makes her way to the country-house and sure enough she finds Louisa
and James sitting in a garden together. He confesses his love but Louisa remains
resistant. He implores her to at least commit to seeing him but she refuses. He
suggests a change of venue and the entire time, Mrs. Sparsit, hidden behind the
shrubs, gloats to herself that the two young people have no idea that they are
being watched.

Harthouse leaves and Louisa soon follows. Mrs. Sparsit assumes that Louisa has
eloped and that they have a planned meeting-place and so she trails Louisa as best
as she can. It is raining and Mrs. Sparsit is already dirty and muddy from hiding
and crawling through the bush. Sparsit follows Louisa to the train station and thinks
that Louisa has hired a coachman to get her to Coketown faster but after a few
moments Sparsit sees that she is incorrect. Louisa has boarded some train. "I have
lost her" is Mrs. Sparsit's exclamation of defeat and frustration.

Analysis:

The potential for romance between Louisa and James is juxtaposed with the war-
like relationship between Louisa and Mrs. Sparsit. Without speaking to one another,
both characters seem locked in combat and Sparsit takes it as a personal loss when
Louisa's "curious reserve" delays her long-awaited fall. Again, Louisa is portrayed
as a silent figure is not truly understood by the people around her ‹she remains
curious. Instead of talking to Louisa, Mrs. Sparsit initiates a form of apostrophe.
Mrs. Sparsit threatens Louisa on the imagined staircase, just as she mocks the
portrait of Mr. Bounderby to his face. Within the theme of surveillance, Sparsit's
behavior makes sense because she is eager to see but reluctant to be seen. She

39
speaks to Louisa‹but not in a way that would allow Louisa to hear the threat: "all
your art shall never blind me." Sparsit is very concerned about not being blinded or
fooled but in the end of the chapter, she fools herself and misses her victory.

Sparsit wears her "threatening mitten" as a metaphorical glove, again symbolizing

the military operation she has undertaken. Sparsit's intentions are never fully
revealed. It certainly doesn't look like she has something against Louisa personally.
Rather, she intends to exploit a bad situation for her own personal gain. The
allusion to the Furies of Greek mythology is adequate evidence of Sparsit's high
tolerance for the pain of others. The rain that inundates the streets makes a muddy
mess and in the confusion, the "pipes burst" and the streets are underwater. When
Sparsit confesses: "I have lost her," we see that the rain has established a symbolic
confusion even as Sparsit's clothes are disoriented, torn and disheveled. Louisa is
expected to drown in the "gulf" prepared at the base of Mrs. Sparsit's staircase but
Sparsit is the most immediate sufferer here.

Chapter Twelve: Down

Louisa arrives at her father's house in Coketown, much to his surprise. She is
incredibly perturbed, but far from Mrs. Sparsit's expectations, she is not engaged in
any romantic enterprise. Louisa begins an angry interrogation of her father in
regards to her education‹where are her emotions: "the graces of my soul? Where
are the sentiments of my heart?" She explains to her father that he has done her a
horrible disservice and that she is now in a ruined position. Her capacity to love and
to differentiate between emotions is incredibly, deliberately deformed. Mr.
Gradgrind is moved with pity and he begins to make apology to Louisa, who has
become more distraught than ever before. She implores her father to save her from
her situation for he has gotten her into it. She then passes out on the ground and
Mr. Gradgrind's educational system has come crashing down with her. This is the
end of Book Two: Reaping.

Analysis:

The narrative structure offers a climax in this chapter, but overall Book Two ends
with more tension and drama. "Down" continues the trajectory of "Mrs. Sparsit's
Staircase" and "Lower and Lower" but in a reversal of expectations, "Down" does
not present the symbolic fall that was expected. Louisa does fall down literally, at
her father's feet. The metaphor of the fall extends also to the "House of Gradgrind"
and the prized educational system for Louisa was the pride and joy of the system.
Finally, it appears that Louisa's marriage is also on the verge of collapse. There are
many things that have fallen "down," but the phrase has come to mean something
larger than what was originally intended by Mrs. Sparsit and her staircase.

Louisa's characterization is more intense than in previous scenes. While Louisa's

repressed emotions have prevented her from becoming a full person, here the
tension between emotion, temptation and confusion becomes almost epic in its
proportions. In symbolic terms, Louisa confesses: "I crushed my better angel into a
demon." Her "better angel" is the fanciful, imaginative spirit that she has almost
murdered on account of the "demon" ‹hard facts, analysis and the suppression of
desire. The image of a shipwreck aptly characterizes the "insensible heap" that
Louisa has become and breakdown renders her temporarily unable to process any
emotions or thoughts.

Book II, Chapters 1-6

Book II

40
Chapter One: Effects in the Bank

Book II continues about a year after the Bounderby marriage. Coketown is little
different and the life of the poor is as hard as it was before. Nonetheless, Mr.
Bounderby is convinced that the poor are after a "gold spoon and turtle soup" and
luxury living. It is summer and the town is especially hot. Mrs. Sparsit sits upstairs
in the Bank where she has been relocated and this is where she holds court with
Bitzer, Bounderby's trusty assistant. Bitzer informs Mrs. Sparsit of the common
laborers and their lack of values and their inability to save money and improve
upon their condition. They both agree that the morals of the poor are wanting. The
relationship between Bitzer and Mrs. Sparsit is very much like a relationship
between a spy and his employer.

Their gossipy conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a stranger at the door.

Mrs. Sparsit consents to see him mainly because she is curious as to who this is.
The stranger is a very charming and elegantly dressed gentleman and he shares
Mrs. Sparsit's class sympathies. After trading their casual observations on life, the
two settle down to conversation and discuss the business at hand. The stranger is
to see Mr. Bounderby‹he has a letter of introduction that has come from Mr.
Gradgrind. The stranger became acquainted with Mr. Gradgrind in London but this
is his first time in Coketown and he is somewhat disgusted with the town.

He is however, very eager to eat Louisa and he is astonished to learn that Mr.
Bounderby has married her‹as he is a good three decades older than she is. Mrs.
Sparsit assures the stranger that Louisa is not at all the hardened and unattractive
academic that he has in mind. Later in the night, Mrs. Sparsit is thinking to herself
and she exclaims: "O, you Fool!" but it is unclear precisely whom she means.

Analysis:

The tone is wrought with sarcasm. Dickens uses the word Œwonder' as irony
because there is little wonder to be had in Coketown. The "evil eye" glaring over
Coketown is as intense a foreshadowing of Bounderby's unraveling as any other
image in the novel. The shroud is a symbol of death and dying, decay and
destruction.

The metaphor of Babel refers to the Tower of Babel. This is an allusion to an Old
Testament story that explains that the excessive pride of humans will eventually
topple their enterprises. The image of hell and punishment is reinforced by the very
sharp description of the city's climate as "frying in oil."

The use of the word "aspiring" is a pun that refers both to the upward motion of the
smoke and the upward yearnings of the poor ‹if only the fortunes of the poor rose
as easily as the smoke of the factory. A metaphor is employed when the fragility of
the townspeople is understood by their being like "weak china."

In characterizing Mrs. Sparsit, Dickens takes her posture (always sitting and
watching) and makes her into an equivalent of the Fates, much like Madame
deFarge, a famous character from his novel A Tale of Two Cities. The scenes that
revolve around Mrs. Sparsit are all about the trappings of social class and position
and in these moments, even the tables are personified as having their "legs in an
attitude."

Against the cliffhanger that centers on yet another new stranger's mysterious
identity, Dickens offers some social commentary on the upper class conceptions of
knowledge and education. In sharp contrast to the Gradgrinds, Mrs. Sparsit takes

41
her lack of knowledge as a fashionable symptom of her simple virtue. Even as it
makes little sense for lack of knowledge to be rewarded we also see that Sparsit is
eager to gain information about the people around her. This interest in others
affairs will eventually prove to be Sparsit's undoing.

Chapter Two: Mr. James Harthouse

Mr. Gradgrind is hiring the stranger, Mr. James Harthouse, as an instructor in his
school. He will be one of many who are trained in logic and statistics and eager to
help relieve children of their imaginations. James Harthouse is the younger brother
of a member of Parliament and as he has become an adult, he has failed to find a
vocation or even a steady hobby to fill his hours. After trying several other things,
Harthouse decided that he might as well give statistics a try and so he had himself
coached and instructed in various philosophies. He was a success in London and his
older brother easily passed him off to Mr. Gradgrind as a suitable educator.
Gradgrind sent James (nicknamed "Jem") down from London to Coketown to get to
meet the important men in town‹Mr. Bounderby chief among them.

By the time Bounderby arrives at Harthouse's hotel room, the young man is almost
about to quit his new job and "go in" for another. Bounderby is very different from
the very suave and collected younger man. He tells James the stories of his young
years on the street and the myth of his self-improvement. He asserts that he is not,
unlike Harthouse, a gentleman and it makes little sense for Harthouse to expect
Bounderby to have any manners. Harthouse pretends to be incredibly amused and
interested in Bounderby's stories but he actually finds the man incredibly dreadful
and boring.

At Bounderby's mansion, Harthouse meets Louisa and he finds her very attractive
but very hard to understand. She is extremely guarded and reserved and he is
unsure that his ideas and his rhetorical display are impressing her the way that
they have impressed everyone else. In his observations, Harthouse notices that
Louisa's ungrateful younger brother, Tom, is the only person that can make her
happy. She smiles when she sees him. At the end of the chapter, it is Tom who
accompanies Harthouse to his hotel room.

Analysis:

It is very humorous that Harthouse is being hired to instill discipline and order
when he is wholly lacking in convictions. A subtle difference between this chapter
and the previous ones is the interior monologue of Harthouse; he is the first
character in the novel whose thoughts are rendered verbatim to the reader. This is
a good indicator of just how transparent his character is, but this will not prevent
him from ultimately causing mischief and doing serious damage to his relationships
with others.

Dickens is perhaps being a bit too merciless when he describes the Gradgrinds'
educational system as "cutting the throats of the Graces." Dickens alludes to the
three Graces of ancient Greek mythology, goddesses who personified beauty, joy
and flowering. That the Gradgrinds' would eliminate this activity is especially worth
noting because Book II is when the "reaping" will occur. The elimination of the
Graces will insure the foreshadowed poor harvest.

One of the most important images of the chapter is that of Louisa's face, described
as a face whose "natural play was so locked up" that Harthouse is unable to
decipher her true thoughts and emotions. The "natural play" is a metaphor for
Louisa's facial gestures and her expression but the state of their incarceration and

42
lack of freedom (being "so locked up") stands as a symbol for Louisa's experience
as a whole. Just as Bounderby can be understood by his braggart's portrait, Louisa
is represented by her imprisoned, stony face. The motif that offers representations
of the "self" leads to the metaphor of Bounderby's "household gods." Again, this
reinforces his portraits and the toys of his wealth as a combination of idolatry and
pride that is sure to bring doom.

A final contrast to consider is Harthouse vs. Louisa. While Louisa may be said to
have few emotions and desires because of her restricted upbringing, Harthouse has
few genuine emotions and desires because of his refusal to make an unswerving
commitment. Dickens' treatment of the theme of fidelity is not a lumping together
of the two characters‹when Louisa says "What does it matter?" she means
something very different from Harthouse's more casual and more dangerous
argument that one set of ideas is "as good as another."

Chapter Three: The Whelp

Tom Gradgrind has become quite wayward despite the rigors of his education and
he is incredibly hypocritical and disrespectful. He makes no effort to hide his disdain
for Mr. Bounderby even as he fascinated by Mr. Harthouse's flashy clothes and he
befriends him for this largely superficial reason. Tom very quickly becomes a pawn
of Mr. Harthouse. After a little alcohol and some tobacco, Tom is loose-lipped and
uninhibited in his criticism of Mr. Bounderby. At one point, Tom goes as far as to
say that he is the only person that Louisa cares about and that it is only for his
well-being that she agreed to marry Mr. Bounderby.

Without realizing it, Tom is laying the seeds for a potential affair between
Harthouse and his sister. As Harthouse becomes more enrapt with Louisa, Tom
offers more and more secrets until he finally falls into a stupor. In his drunken fog,
Tom suffers Harthouse's gruff rousing to get up and go home. A waiter helps him
through the street and he eventually stumbles in the direction of his home,
dissipated and wholly unaware of what he has done.

Analysis:

Tom's new characterization as a "whelp" is certainly a sing of bad things to come.

Indeed, Tom's condition comes to be less a matter of foreshadowing so much as it
shows the inevitable workings of fate. Later in the novel, the reader will find that
well before Tom actually became a criminal, the novel had already uncovered his
criminal potential. As an ignorant, headstrong young man, Tom Gradgrind suffers
from what the Ancient Greeks called "hubris," an excessive pride that usually
roused the gods to anger. In this case, Tom does not even have the benefit of
becoming a fallen hero for there is nothing heroic about him. The image that he has
of himself is far grander than what he actually is.

The images that identify Tom in this chapter are subtle indicators of the young
man's folly, blindness and inability to direct his steps. In this chapter, he becomes
involved in drugs, soporifics, tobacco, cigars and the like ‹all of which induce a
clueless sleep. This is reinforced by the symbolic action of begin carried through the
mist by the waiter and Tom feels as though he is "lounging somewhere in the air."
Certainly, one can draw a parallel between Tom and Stephen Blackpool's wife, but
the most important feature of Tom's drunkenness is his somewhat innocent
destructive activity. His intentions are far from pure, but he is unaware of what
greater evils he sets in motion. Whether from the cigar smoke or the alley-air, Tom
is not in control of his action.

43
A better parallel lies between Tom and James Harthouse for Harthouse will come to
relinquish control of his actions by simply avoiding to calculate the consequences of
the things he does. What these characters leave unsaid and to happenstance
expresses a sentiment echoed in Dickens's euphemistic condemnation of Tom who
would have done better to let the foul river rise above his "curtained head." Suicide
is the unsaid factor here, and while Tom is never driven to suicide, his fate is little
better and he does far greater harm to other innocent characters.

Chapter Four: Men and Brothers

This chapter returns to the life of Coketown's laboring poor. A conniving and
dishonest man named Slackbridge is at the head of a movement to create labor
unions. He has taken the legitimate concerns of the poor but he is more interested
in inciting outrage and building a platform for his own power and edification than in
achieving the common goals of the "Brotherhood." Stephen Blackpool is one of the
power loom weavers and he is present at the meeting but he declines to join the
union. Slackbridge denounces Blackpool and he curbs his language only after
several members of his faithful crowd demand that Stephen be given a chance to
defend himself.

Of course, Stephen lacks the rhetorical skills and the manipulative desires of
Slackbridge and his deeply felt remarks are received but to little avail. Stephen has
no problem with others joining the movement and he supports them but he cannot
join and would simply like to continue his job without any trouble. Unfortunately,
under Slackbridge's new regime, Stephen is ostracized as a traitor and he is
deliberately ignored and shunned. Suffering the silent treatment, Stephen avoids
seeing Rachael because he worries that if she is seen with him she will be treated in
a similar way. The union movement has not yet spread to the women but it is
expected in the near future. Stephen's life has simply gone from bad to worse and
things look to get little better when he receives a summons to see Mr. Bounderby in
his residence.

Analysis:

Slackbridge is one of Dickens's quintessential caricatures, the principal

characterization of the man being derived from his one-word name: slack bridge.
The juxtaposition of slack and bridge, should amply explain the danger that
Slackbridge presents as a leader for the urban poor. Like a bridge, he is necessary
and essential to the cause. But he is slack, not dependable, untrustworthy and
dangerous. It is the combination of slack and bridge that produces the fault of the
man. The worthless content of Slackbridge's message is described by alliteration in
the phrase "froth and fume" and Slackbridge's demagoguery can be compared and
contrasted to Bounderby and Sparsit, two other leading orators of the novel.

In the pairing of Stephen Blackpool against Slackbridge, Blackpool's negative name

has no correlation with his character. Still, he is no match for Slackbridge's
powerhouse. Slackbridge's rhetorical skills are exemplified in the copious allusions
that he offers in the hopes of painting a sour picture of Blackpool's moral
credentials. He alludes to the Old Testament story of Esau and his brother Jacob
who tricked his brother Esau into selling his birthright. Slackbridge also mentions
Judas (Iscariot) who betrayed Jesus Christ and a man by the name of Castlereagh,
a British politician who earned the scorn of the laboring classes and also foreign
diplomats by reneging on his promises.

Chapter Five: Men and Masters

44
When Stephen arrives he is in the company of Mr. Bounderby, Louisa, Mr.
Harthouse and Tom. Mr. Bounderby intends to make an example of Stephen and
present him to Mr. Harthouse as a sort of specimen of the lower classes. He asks
Stephen if the other laborers have been harassing him but Stephen is unwilling to
disparage his fellow workers. Bounderby then suggests that Stephen's conduct is on
account of some far-fetched hope that he is going to come into luxury because he
has resisted the insurrectionist movement. Stephen replies that he made a promise
not to join the union and that is why he has refrained (but this is not a promise he
has made to Bounderby but to another).

When Mr. Bounderby describes the group as a gang of "rascals and rebels,"
Stephen argues in their favor and explains that economics is at the root of their
crisis. The problem is rich people who argue that they are always correct and that
the poor are always in the wrong simply because of how much money they have.
Stephen describes the situation as a "muddle" and he assures Bounderby that the
problem is larger than Coketown and its factories and the longer the problem goes
unsolved the greater the tension. Bounderby does not appreciate the criticism and
on a whim he decides to repay Stephen's loyalty by accusing him of being disloyal.
He goes as far as to say that Stephen has betrayed both his employer and his
fellow employees and he caps his argument off by firing Stephen "for a novelty."
Upon completion of his current assignment, Stephen is to leave the factory.
Stephen appeals that he will not be able to find work in another place but Mr.
Bounderby does not care. He looks at Louisa in the hopes of her rescuing him but
she has lowered her head.

Analysis:

The narrative structure of this chapter parallels the "Men and Brothers" theme with
its own "Men and Masters." Once dominated by those of his own low social
standing, Blackpool is now dominated by those who are his social superiors. The
"black unpassable world betwixt" the rich and the poor is a metaphorical
"blackpool" that also echoes the words about angels and dead siblings who are
benevolent spirits, blessing from across the "gulf" of life and death. The other
major metaphor that Blackpool uses to describe the plight of the poor is a clock
that is set on a ship bound to Norfolk.

His reference to Norfolk is well worth notice as Norfolk was an old Virginia colony
that was unsuccessful and little different from the lost colony of "Roanoke." One of
the central themes of literature involves the "unity" of time. Here, Stephen is
practically philosophizing when he argues that time will continue to advance
regardless of the do-nothing attitude of those who have the potential to produce
some benefit for society. The social commentary focuses on the "muddle" that has
been created in the hypocrisy of the wealthy and the incredible want of those who
are lower on the social totem-pole. Just as Bounderby is incredibly casual in
delivering a very serious blow to Stephen's livelihood, the images that describe him
as a "windbag" and as a "wind rising" express the violent potential of his volatility.
Yet again, Stephen is martyred and wounded despite his good heart. Don't expect
his situation to get anything but worse; his fate is steady and he cannot overcome
the curse of his name.

Chapter Six: Fading Away

By the time Stephen leaves Mr. Bounderby's house it is getting dark. Walking to his
slum, he encounters Rachael walking alongside the old country woman that he had
seen about a year previous. Just as she had been before, the lady was in a cheery
mood despite the somber atmosphere. She has heard about Mr. Bounderby being

45
married and she was hoping that she might get a chance to see the bride but she
has not been very lucky. Stephen assures the woman that Louisa is young and
pretty and this, of course, is exactly what the lady wants to hear.

Stephen informs Rachael that he has lost his employment and they are both
depressed because they know Stephen is going to have to leave Coketown if he
there is any hope of him working again. Though he is not happy to leave, Stephen
is sure that Rachael's life will be easier without him there to complicate things.
Deep down, both of them know that they will never see each other again. Stephen
asks the old lady about her family and she announces herself as Mrs. Pegler, a
widow. She also says that she "had a son" and Stephen and Rachael assume that
her son has died though this is not what Mrs. Pegler has actually said. She re-states
her claim: "I have lost him."

There is a small disturbance and the landlady comes up the stairs and informs
Stephen that Mrs. Bounderby has arrived to see him. Mrs. Pegler is horrified that
the woman might see her and she hides in a corner. When Louisa enters, she does
the best that she can to undo her husband's wrong ‹though of course, she cannot
undo what he has decided. She offers some money to Stephen and he shows his
decency by refusing the larger sum she offers and he instead takes two pounds ‹a
nominal amount that shows that he is grateful, but independent. Louisa has
brought Tom with her and Tom seems to have some sort of plan in mind. He tells
Stephen that he will be able to help him further and instructs him to loiter outside
of the bank to wait for more instruction. Stephen does all of this for two days ‹to no
avail, for word never comes from Tom. He finishes his assignment and begins his
journey to a new town and a new life.

Analysis:

"Fading Away" presents us with the images of decay, lingering and failure ‹all of
these foreshadow pain in the lives of the major characters. And a good part of this
pain comes in the fact of fate being so protracted. Blackpool is not so fortunate as
to suffer once and finally; rather, life gives him so many convolutions and false
hopes that he is forever entangled in the negative affairs of his life. Just as his old
wife is described as a metaphorical "evil spirit," the old lady who returns seemingly
out of nowhere to comfort Stephen in his hour of need, is a symbol of fidelity.

Even though Stephen has the opportunity to leave Coketown, the potential freedom
is overwhelmed by stronger, more negative images. The law of fate "rose like the
sea" much as Bounderby exhibited the archetypal image of the powerful wind. In
both cases, nature's archetypal images are employed to express the power of the
forces who are against Stephen. They are as strong as nature because they present
him with a fate that he cannot escape from. At the same time, the nature imagery
suggests the death and decay of Coketown alongside the excessive power of
sadness and of Bounderby. Most emblematic is the deteriorated sunrise ‹which is
very sharp because sunrise is when the sun's radiance dissolves the darkness of the
previous night.

Dickens writes that the "sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad sea" much
as other characters "looked wan." We can add to these symbols, the fact that the
town is "in eclipse" and is metaphorically blinded by the eclipse and the "smoked
glass" of the town. The sun and sea images have been perverted as the only way to
show how disorderly and improper the order and propriety of Coketown truly are.

46
Book II, Chapters 7-12

Chapter Seven: Gunpowder

Mr. Harthouse has been very successful in his teaching job and he is considered to
have great promise in the industry. He has been devoting most of his attention to
Louisa, however. Louisa is clearly unhappy in her marriage and she re-iterates the
question that she posed her father: "What did it matter ŠWhat did anything matter."
Just as she goes through her life not caring what happens, Harthouse is also
ambling through simply because he is, at heart, too lazy to actually engineer any
sort of design or plan. He never makes a deliberate plan to seduce Louisa, he
simply figures that whatever will happen will happen and at this point, he neither
hastens nor prevents an amorous relationship from developing.

After months of study, Harthouse begins to understand Louisa and he makes efforts
to make her happy. He realizes that his philosophy will gain little ground with her
because he does not care about the issues and she realizes that her life is so
incredibly cloistered and detached from the outside world. The only way that
Harthouse can make Louisa happy is through Tom and he decides he will take
advantage of an opportunity should it present itself.

Mr. Bounderby is increasingly wealthier and he adds to the trappings of his social
position with a "snug little estate": a country-house he has bought from a man who
went bankrupt. On an occasion, Harthouse finds Louisa alone and in a conversation
with her he professes an incredible interest in Tom and in winning her trust, he
learns that Tom has borrowed quite a bit of money from Louisa to repay gambling
debts. Tom's ungrateful manner and his increasingly reckless lifestyle are both a
source of consternation for Louisa. When Harthouse gives Tom a stern talking-to
and Tom's behavior slightly improves, Harthouse moves into Louisa's good graces.

Analysis:

The narrative structure of chapters seven and eight combine a plot device with a
metaphor. It should be immediately noted that there is no literal "Gunpowder" nor
a literal "Explosion." Rather, the plot relies upon the cause-and-effect progression
of the story in order to maximize suspense. Metaphorically, the "gunpowder" is
simply the combustible material of tension and argument in strained relationships.
But the "explosion" will turn out to have little to do with what is deceptively
foreshadowed by the "gunpowder" in this chapter. In other words, actions are built
up to the brink of climax but Dickens often leaves them lingering and turns to other
element of the story.

Dickens's social commentary is especially revealing if we think about how the

poorer characters are heavily subject to fate. The wealthier characters, however,
suffer their calamities in terms of cause and effect. The major emphasis of the
foreshadowing in this chapter is the budding potential for an extra-marital romance
between Jem and Louisa. While Jem once noted that Louisa had "stone" features,
we now find the allusion to the Gorgon sisters ‹Medusa, chief among them. Jem
feared that Louisa was hardened and ugly, but in fact she only wears her stone face
without having lost her beauty. Ironically, the Gorgons do not have the stone faces,
rather the young heroes who failed and gazed upon them are the ones turned to
stone.

As heroes go, it remains to be seen whether Harthouse will successfully woo Louisa
from the husband to whom she is obliged. Even as he metaphorically reads Louisa

47
with a "student's eye" the truth of the matter is that he is a failed teacher in a
failing system and she is more complicated than he surmises.

Chapter Eight: Explosion

At this point, Harthouse has not committed himself to any plan of action. In fact, he
has yet to develop romantic feelings for Louisa in a true sense. He is simply passing
the time by expressing interest in her. Bounderby bursts on the scene with the
news that the bank had been robbed. A small safe in Tom's closet that was used for
petty purposes had been ransacked and a total of one hundred and fifty pounds
was gone. Of course, it could have been far more than that. Mrs. Sparsit and Bitzer
had been in the bank at the time but Bitzer was sleeping on duty.

A false key is found in the street and it is concluded that the safe was broken into
with the false key. Bounderby immediately suspects Stephen Blackpool for not only
has Stephen left town, but Mrs. Sparsit and Bitzer can testify to the man's ambling
back and forth in front of the bank for several days before the robber took place.
The crime would both increase his relative fortune and allow him to have his
revenge against Mr. Bounderby. Mrs. Sparsit is shaken by the affair and she spends
the next few weeks with the Bounderbys and Mr. Harthouse at the country-house.

In the meantime, Louisa harbors a suspicion that her brother has somehow been
involved in the crime. But when she asks him to confess, he rejects her
advances‹even as she insists on absolute forgiveness. Louisa asks Tom if he thinks
that Stephen Blackpool is involved in the crime as he seemed to be a very upright
person. Tom is deliberately equivocal in his answers and Louisa leaves his room
more bothered than before. After she leaves, Tom begins sobbing in guilt and
tearing his hair. He loves his sister for her goodness even as he hates himself
because he is so unworthy of her.

Analysis:

When Harthouse is smoking, he becomes a symbolic devil, and the source of

temptation. Besides the smoke and fire, he is also associated with the "brimstone"
of hellish Coketown. The metaphors used to describe Harthouse's moral condition
resuscitate some of the images of drowning that occurred earlier in the novel. Here,
his idleness is likened to an "iceberg" that may cause a "wreck" (And it will at the
end of Book II). Harthouse is content to let himself drift along without making
conscious efforts to do right or to do wrong. This is an important reversal for
Dickens because he has spent most of the novel criticizing the excesses of labor
and work. Now, his social commentary is leveled against the excess idleness and
leisure of the leisure class.

In the discussion of the theft, there is nothing to out of the ordinary. Dickens uses
his characteristic excess of irony and understatement when describing the "little
safe in young Tom's closet, the safe used for petty purposes." Not only was the
"safe" never safe, but we come to wonder how much of a safe this was if it was
"little" in size, used for "petty" sums, and entrusted to the small closet of a "young"
whelp. Of course, Tom is the thief and the fact that there has not really been a
crime will not stop the search for criminals. Indeed, the false crime like the false
key both testify to the themes of honesty and fidelity. Moreover, there is the
question of surveillance and the limits of human understanding and knowledge.
Despite their surveillance skills, Sparsit and Bitzer could not avoid the theft. Despite
his rigorous education, Tom could not avoid stealing.

48
A final comment on knowledge and wisdom comes from Mrs. Sparsit's
Shakespearean allusion to the play Hamlet. When thinking of Mr. Bounderby's loss,
she hypocritically mourns (without feeling any sentiment) "Alas poor Yorick." This is
a reference to Prince Hamlet's lines in Act V, Scene I, Lines 203-204: "Alas poor
Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy."
Hamlet has been watching the clumsy gravediggers prepare Ophelia's grave and in
the process they uncover Yorick's skull. Yorick was the court jester and play friend
of the prince. Ironically, Bounderby is no such Yorick ‹"infinite jest" and "excellent
fancy" are precisely opposite to his personality. Dickens's hidden reference gives us
further reason to suspect Mrs. Sparsit's emotional attachment to her "benefactor,"
Mr. Bounderby.

Chapter Nine: Hearing the Last of It

Once again lodged in the Bounderby residence, Mrs. Sparsit becomes a prowling
snoop, keeping tabs on the affairs of the house. She is more and more resentful of
Mr. Bounderby and seems to enjoy the fact that he is under more stress and his
marriage is falling apart. At the same time, she hypocritically coddles and pampers
Mr. Bounderby who only comes to resent Louisa even more, for lacking the
domestic charms and offices of Mrs. Sparsit.

Louisa is summoned back to her childhood home at the news that her mother has
fallen ill. Of course, Mrs. Gradgrind had always been exceptionally feeble but she is
in her final days and Mr. Gradgrind is still in London, working hard at Parliament.
Sissy Jupe has run of the house and Louisa can detect a subtle difference in her
younger siblings who have had a prolonged exposure to Sissy. As Mrs. Gradgrind
gets closer to death she begins to lose her already loosened grip on reality. She
asks for a pen to write letters to her husband but then she simply waves her hands
in the air, feigning the motion of writing and this does her just as well. Not long
after this, Mrs. Gradgrind dies and little emotion is spent.

Analysis:

The characterization of Mrs. Sparsit focuses on her facial features and their
architectural composition. Her "Coriolanian" eyebrows and her dark, all-seeing eyes
are indicative of her powers of surveillance. In contrast to the images of Sissy
presented in Book III, Chapter One, Sparsit is not a site of refuge but her eyes are
"lighthouses on an iron-bound coast." This is a symbol of Sparsit's strength and
intensity but we will find in the later chapters of Book II is that she does not use
her powers of surveillance to save or rescue anybody. Sparsit presents herself as a
serene image. She moves without being seen but she sees all. This is not going to
remain for much longer though.

Chapter Ten: Mrs. Sparsit's Staircase

Mrs. Sparsit, once the excessively austere ascetic, is enjoying her weeks at
Bounderby's retreat, "feeding on the fat of the land." When she is in Mr.
Bounderby's presence she calls him her "benefactor" but when he is not around,
she addresses his portrait as "a Noodle." But Mrs. Sparsit's main area of concern is
not Mr. Bounderby but his wife and her increasingly dangerous relationship with Mr.
Harthouse. Mrs. Sparsit sees Louisa walking down an imaginary staircase that leads
to her doom and the unraveling of the marriage. Sometimes, Mrs. Sparsit becomes
frustrated because Louisa has an incredible reserve but Sparsit believes that time
will prove the story to be one of interest. And throughout the events that unfurl,
Sparsit makes no attempt to intervene.

49
Mr. Bounderby is spending more and more time at the bank ‹though the thief
remains free. Mrs. Sparsit focuses on Tom and tries to get information out of him
but of course, Tom is not perceptive enough to detect the shift in his sister's
relationship. As the chapter ends, Mrs. Sparsit prepares to do some detective
footwork and she is confident that she will be successful.

Analysis:

The staircase is a central symbol that functions on a number of levels. As far as

social commentary, the staircase's verticality expresses the rise and fall of fate as
far as social standing is concerned. Indeed, the fates of Mrs. Sparsit, Louisa, Mr.
Bounderby and Jem Harthouse are all dependent upon Mrs. Sparsit's staircase. A
second major facet of the staircase is, of course, the archetypal fall by temptation.
Much along the lines of the classic story of Eden, Louisa's descent down the
staircase is a "fall" that parallels the original fall of man by sin.

The title of the chapter seems to heavily foreshadow the events of the next two
chapters: "Lower and Lower" and "Down." Here, as always, we can expect that
Dickens will employ some type of reversal of meaning and the referents of "Lower
and Lower" and "Down" will be something other than we originally expected.

Chapter Eleven: Lower and Lower

Mrs. Sparsit keeps constant watch on everything that is happening and she is
dismayed that Louisa has taken such a long time to fall into the gulf at the foot of
the staircase. Her Gradgrind education has robbed her of the very fancies that
would prey upon her now. Tom informs Mrs. Sparsit that during this weekend, Mr.
Bounderby is remaining in town and he has the chore of meeting Mr. Harthouse at
the train station. Mrs. Sparsit then goes to Mr. Bounderby and wins permission to
lodge at the country-house for the weekend. After Tom leaves, Mrs. Sparsit realizes
that Tom has been fooled and that Louisa and James are planning a tryst.

Mrs. Sparsit watches from her post at the bank and then when the timing is right
she hastily makes her way to the country-house and sure enough she finds Louisa
and James sitting in a garden together. He confesses his love but Louisa remains
resistant. He implores her to at least commit to seeing him but she refuses. He
suggests a change of venue and the entire time, Mrs. Sparsit, hidden behind the
shrubs, gloats to herself that the two young people have no idea that they are
being watched.

Harthouse leaves and Louisa soon follows. Mrs. Sparsit assumes that Louisa has
eloped and that they have a planned meeting-place and so she trails Louisa as best
as she can. It is raining and Mrs. Sparsit is already dirty and muddy from hiding
and crawling through the bush. Sparsit follows Louisa to the train station and thinks
that Louisa has hired a coachman to get her to Coketown faster but after a few
moments Sparsit sees that she is incorrect. Louisa has boarded some train. "I have
lost her" is Mrs. Sparsit's exclamation of defeat and frustration.

Analysis:

The potential for romance between Louisa and James is juxtaposed with the war-
like relationship between Louisa and Mrs. Sparsit. Without speaking to one another,
both characters seem locked in combat and Sparsit takes it as a personal loss when
Louisa's "curious reserve" delays her long-awaited fall. Again, Louisa is portrayed
as a silent figure is not truly understood by the people around her ‹she remains
curious. Instead of talking to Louisa, Mrs. Sparsit initiates a form of apostrophe.

50
Mrs. Sparsit threatens Louisa on the imagined staircase, just as she mocks the
portrait of Mr. Bounderby to his face. Within the theme of surveillance, Sparsit's
behavior makes sense because she is eager to see but reluctant to be seen. She
speaks to Louisa‹but not in a way that would allow Louisa to hear the threat: "all
your art shall never blind me." Sparsit is very concerned about not being blinded or
fooled but in the end of the chapter, she fools herself and misses her victory.

Sparsit wears her "threatening mitten" as a metaphorical glove, again symbolizing

the military operation she has undertaken. Sparsit's intentions are never fully
revealed. It certainly doesn't look like she has something against Louisa personally.
Rather, she intends to exploit a bad situation for her own personal gain. The
allusion to the Furies of Greek mythology is adequate evidence of Sparsit's high
tolerance for the pain of others. The rain that inundates the streets makes a muddy
mess and in the confusion, the "pipes burst" and the streets are underwater. When
Sparsit confesses: "I have lost her," we see that the rain has established a symbolic
confusion even as Sparsit's clothes are disoriented, torn and disheveled. Louisa is
expected to drown in the "gulf" prepared at the base of Mrs. Sparsit's staircase but
Sparsit is the most immediate sufferer here.

Chapter Twelve: Down

Louisa arrives at her father's house in Coketown, much to his surprise. She is
incredibly perturbed, but far from Mrs. Sparsit's expectations, she is not engaged in
any romantic enterprise. Louisa begins an angry interrogation of her father in
regards to her education‹where are her emotions: "the graces of my soul? Where
are the sentiments of my heart?" She explains to her father that he has done her a
horrible disservice and that she is now in a ruined position. Her capacity to love and
to differentiate between emotions is incredibly, deliberately deformed. Mr.
Gradgrind is moved with pity and he begins to make apology to Louisa, who has
become more distraught than ever before. She implores her father to save her from
her situation for he has gotten her into it. She then passes out on the ground and
Mr. Gradgrind's educational system has come crashing down with her. This is the
end of Book Two: Reaping.

Analysis:

The narrative structure offers a climax in this chapter, but overall Book Two ends
with more tension and drama. "Down" continues the trajectory of "Mrs. Sparsit's
Staircase" and "Lower and Lower" but in a reversal of expectations, "Down" does
not present the symbolic fall that was expected. Louisa does fall down literally, at
her father's feet. The metaphor of the fall extends also to the "House of Gradgrind"
and the prized educational system for Louisa was the pride and joy of the system.
Finally, it appears that Louisa's marriage is also on the verge of collapse. There are
many things that have fallen "down," but the phrase has come to mean something
larger than what was originally intended by Mrs. Sparsit and her staircase.

Louisa's characterization is more intense than in previous scenes. While Louisa's

repressed emotions have prevented her from becoming a full person, here the
tension between emotion, temptation and confusion becomes almost epic in its
proportions. In symbolic terms, Louisa confesses: "I crushed my better angel into a
demon." Her "better angel" is the fanciful, imaginative spirit that she has almost
murdered on account of the "demon" ‹hard facts, analysis and the suppression of
desire. The image of a shipwreck aptly characterizes the "insensible heap" that
Louisa has become and breakdown renders her temporarily unable to process any
emotions or thoughts.

51
Book III, Chapters 1-5

Book III: Garnering

Chapter One: Another Thing Needful

When she wakes up, Louisa is slightly disoriented. She does not immediately
remember what has happened the night before. Sissy has brought her to her old
room and she sees her younger sister, Jane. It is very clear to Louisa that Sissy has
had a positive effect on the family for her sister's face is far more radiant than
would have been expected. Mr. Gradgrind comes into the room to see Louisa and
he is not at all like his old self. He is, instead, full of sorrow, humility and apology.
He assures Louisa that he never meant to hurt her and that he has honestly only
done those things which he thought would be best for her.

Louisa asks her father for advice but he replies that he does not really trust himself
to give her the correct advice. To be honest, he simply does not know enough
about emotion to offer proper counsel. He considers his youngest daughter, Jane,
and points out that she is a happier case and that despite the rigorous education,
she has had daily associations with Sissy and this has made all the difference. Even
Mr. Gradgrind admits that he has also undergone a sort of change in large part
thanks to Sissy. It seems then, that Sissy might have some advice or counsel for
Louisa and later on, after Mr. Gradgrind leaves Louisa's room, Sissy enters.

Louisa apologizes for her unpleasant attitude and she insists that Sissy must be
disgusted by her. But throughout the conversation, Sissy only extends the kindest
emotions towards Louisa who eventually ends up sobbing in Sissy's arms.

Analysis:

Book Three is entitled "Garnering" and the narrative structure of this final section,
reflects the author's efforts to conclude and organize the action and the dispersed
characters. One of the dominant symbols of the chapter is the unstable, no longer
solid "ground" upon which Gradgrind's system once stood. The not-solid ground is
literally the floor upon which Louisa has collapsed. The shakiness is echoed in
Gradgrind's trembling voice and his overall re-characterization as a humbled man
who has been brought down low. Dickens' characterization is not as entirely
negative as it might have been. Gradgrind's good intentions are taken into account,
and it is true that he has only sought to improve his children and never meant to
cause them pain.

After an extended absence from the story, Sissy reappears as the archetypal
heroine. We can fully expect that in Book Three, Sissy will play a savior-like role for
the Gradgrind family and she will care for them as best as she possibly can. There
is an intense contrast and reversal of fate for Sissy is the "once deserted" girl but
now she is the one who towers over Louisa and cares for the young woman who
described as a metaphorical shipwreck. The shipwreck image is furthered by Sissy's
depiction as a lighthouse or beacon for she "shone like a beautiful light upon the
darkness of the other."

Chapter Two: Very Ridiculous

James Harthouse has been restless for the last day and a half for he has received
no word from Louisa. He is Coketown, where he expected to see her again after
their encounter in the garden. He finds Louisa's brother, Tom, and interrogates him
but Tom has not seen Louisa. Also, Tom is more than a little upset about waiting in

52
the rain for Mr. Harthouse to show up‹and of course, Harthouse was up to other
things at the time. Harthouse spends the hours in his hotel room and after a certain
point, he is convinced that Mr. Bounderby must be aware of his relationship with
Louisa.

He considers his options and it occurs to him that he might have to box Mr.
Bounderby. He entertains himself with the ridiculous idea of training and having the
hotel waiters and staff assist him. He receives a message that there is a young lady
waiting to see him. It is Sissy and she has arrived to inform Harthouse that he is no
longer to see Louisa and that he must depart Coketown and never return.
Harthouse tries to impose his authority but to little avail. Sissy is firm in her
demands and she yields nothing. At the end of the chapter, Harthouse is astonished
that he could be so easily manipulated by a younger woman. His surprise reaches
its peak when he learns of Sissy's lowly upbringing amongst horse trainers.
Discontinuing his relations with Louisa before they amounted to fidelity is "about
the very best passage in his life" but Harthouse is incredibly ashamed of what he
perceives as a weakness.

Analysis:

This chapter pits Sissy against James Harthouse and even as this scene could
hardly have been predicted, Sissy's victory is also a surprise that we would not
have expected. Dickens takes great effort to continue the portrayal of the poor and
the reversals of fortune that he began earlier in the novel. The irony of the scene is
demonstrated in Sissy's rhetorical abilities in spite of her upbringing. Harthouse is
reduced to the paradox of a "Great Pyramid of failure." Harthouse is great, whether
he fails or succeeds, if only because of his noble birth. Dickens presents an
opportunity for Harthouse to show humility and grace, but Harthouse goes as far as
to renounce the good deeds that he has grudgingly agreed to carry out. His self-
image and characterization as a Pyramid somehow leads to the idea of escaping the
scene altogether and heading for Egypt. In contrast to men like Stephen Blackpool,
Harthouse has plenty of loopholes and opportunities for escape.

The imagery that surrounds Harthouse is largely negative. His hotel is described as
a symbolic hell, a "region of blackness." And Harthouse's idleness and inconsistency
is described as a moral weakness that is worse than more deliberate evils. The
sharpest metaphor for Harthouse's moral condition can be found in Dickens
explanation of the man's rhetoric: it was the "polishing of but an ugly surface."
Harthouse seeks to polish his appearance and justify his actions, but he is both
guilty (ugly) and superficial (surface). Even his wrongdoing is shallow and
incomplete, it seems.

Chapter Three: Very Decided

Mrs. Sparsit is still stirring up trouble. All of her running back and forth in the
nighttime rain has caused her to get a violent cold but this does not stop her from
completing her mission. She went as far as London to find Mr. Bounderby and
confront him with the news of Louisa's conversation in the garden, and her flight
from the country house‹presumably, to continue her romantic affair. After giving
the news, Mrs. Sparsit collapses in an incredibly theatrical display. Bounderby
brings her back to Coketown and he carries her along with him to Stone Lodge,
where he intends to confront Mr. Gradgrind (unaware that Louisa is also at Stone
Lodge).

Mrs. Sparsit's story is presented and Mr. Gradgrind confesses that he is already
aware of these details and that Louisa has preserved her honor by returning to her

53
father's house when she did not know how to defend herself from temptation on
her own. Mrs. Sparsit is now considered in the worst light for she has cast
aspersions and criticized Louisa without due cause. She can do little more than
utter an apology and begin crying profusely as she is sent back to town.

Gradgrind and Bounderby continue their conversation and Gradgrind makes it clear
that he feels that his daughter has been wronged ‹both by his actions and
Bounderby's as well. In a partial retraction from his earlier positions, Gradgrind
looks at Louisa's age and her upbringing and he thinks that she would do well to
have a few weeks to emotionally recuperate at Stone Lodge, under Sissy's care.
Sissy understands Louisa and Louisa trusts Sissy. Bounderby is no less pleased by
this than by the rumored infidelity and he demands to have his wife back at his
house by noon the next day. Otherwise: the marriage will be annulled. Mr.
Gradgrind insists that a marital union is not so casual a thing to be rejected and
Bounderby is irritated by the repetition of words with which he once abused
Stephen Blackpool. When Louisa does not arrive the next day, Bounderby makes
good on his threat.

Analysis:

The narrative structure of this chapter works towards the plot coming "full circle."
In the most dramatic sense, Bounderby is frustrated in his conversation with Mr.
Gradgrind for he hears the repetition of the words that he once spoke to Stephen
Blackpool. The heavily foreshadowed collapse of the Bounderby marriage has finally
come about. With the dissolution of the marriage comes the imagery of loss and
ruin and Mrs. Sparsit, who is at the root of this unraveling, is characterized as a
"classical ruin." Just as her unraveling physical appearance reflects ruin, anguish
and haste, she has brought all of these negative conditions to life ‹but in the lives of
the people around her.

We can fully expect that Mrs. Sparsit will continue her nosiness and her
surveillance, and the theme of surveillance suggests that just as Mr. Gradgrind was
a faulty instructor, haughty individuals like Mrs. Sparsit are bound to fail in their
attempts to be God-like judges. In fact, the climax of Mrs. Sparsit's rise and fall will
come as a result of her own undoing. The use of the word "refuge" is a sarcastic
pun, referring to Bounderby's speedy dismissal of Mrs. Sparsit by coach. When her
snooping eventually creates a greater embarrassment for Mr. Bounderby, he will be
even harsher in his offering of "refuge."

Chapter Four: Lost

With his marriage dissolved, Bounderby takes a renewed interest in his bank. He is
especially interested in solving the robbery ‹for the case remains unresolved.
Stephen Blackpool remains under heavy suspicion for he has disappeared entirely.
The surrounding mystery is further amplified by "the mysterious old woman [who]
remained a mystery"‹Blackpool has been seen with her. Bounderby eventually
takes the law into his own hands, making up for his lack of evidence with his
abundance of power in excess. He has posters placed all over town demanding the
apprehension of Blackpool and offering a reward.

Slackbridge, the leader of the United Aggregate Tribunal, takes advantage of the
situation and relishes the news of Blackpool's alleged crime as further evidence that
the dissenter was a true traitor and a true thief. There are a few voices that cry out
against Slackbridge's slander but the response is overwhelmingly in the speaker's
favor. Rachael is worried about Stephen and she cannot bear to see his reputation

54
tarnished. She goes to see Mr. Bounderby and relays her story. Rachael, Mr.
Bounderby and Tom then go to Stone Lodge to see Louisa.

Rachael politely interrogates Louisa about the night when she and Tom arrived at
Stephen's room. Louisa confesses that she did see Stephen, Rachael and the old
woman and that while she offered Stephen money, he was very honest and
forthright and refused the offer and would only accept two pounds. Rachael's story
is verified before Mr. Bounderby but the question of Stephen's whereabouts
remains. Louisa is sorry to hear that Stephen has been branded as a thief but
Rachael remains highly suspicious for it seems that Stephen's alleged guilt bears
some connection to the visit that Louisa and Tom made that night.

Rachael is so confident in Stephen's innocence that she has written to him,

informing him of the charges leveled against him. When Bounderby interrupts that
he has word from the post office that no letters have been sent to anyone named
Stephen Blackpool, Rachael replies that Stephen is living under an assumed name
because he cannot get work as Stephen Blackpool‹thanks to Mr. Bounderby and Mr.
Slackbridge. Rachael is confident that Stephen will arrive and Sissy is very
supportive. She mentions that suspicion has fallen on Stephen because he was
seen lingering around the bank, but Rachael does not understand why Stephen
would have done this.

For his part, Tom shadows Mr. Bounderby as if he is very eager to apprehend the
thief. He follows the banker everywhere that he goes and he continually maintains
Stephen's guilt. For if Stephen is innocent, why doesn't he come back and defend
himself? Messengers report the news that Stephen did receive Rachael's letter and
he departed within the hour‹still, he should have arrived at Coketown but there is
no trace of him.

Analysis:

This chapter is entitled "Lost" and indeed, very much has been lost. The narrative
structure comes to rely upon the suspense and indefinite aspect of the title word.
What precisely has been lost? Just as the chapter entitled "Down" offered a
departure from the trajectory established with "Mrs. Sparsit's Staircase" and "Lower
and Lower," whatever is "Lost" in this chapter is not necessarily what will be
"Found" in the next chapter. One thing that has been lost is the Bounderby
marriage; this will not return in Chapter Five. Indeed, there is an allusion to the
Roman goddess of love, Venus, describing Bounderby's new found love for his bank
as a replacement, rebirth and re-direction of the love he was incapable of
sustaining in his marital union.

The image is a corrupted one though, for just as the love of a bank is a dirtier idea
than marital bliss, Venus's birth out of the sea foam of Cythera is likened to
Bounderby's birth out of the mud. The contrast between Venus's sea foam and
Bounderby's foul mud is enough to invert the image. Symbolically, this re-birth is
not a true birth and what is lost (Bounderby's soul) will remain that way. Just as
Harthouse could not polish his dirt, Bounderby cannot nobly rise out of the mud
with any newfound loves.

The motif of cleanliness and dirt extends the themes of fidelity and honesty. In the
most dramatic sense, Louisa's fidelity and Bounderby's annulment reflect two
opposites capacities for devotion. In this chapter, we find another example of
dishonesty in Tom's false efforts to "assist" Bounderby locate the thief. Of course,
Tom is the true thief and his assistance is simply his form of surveillance: he figures
that as long as he is aware of the investigation's progress, he is in the clear.

55
Chapter Five: Found

Two days pass and there is still no trace of Stephen. Sissy goes to visit Rachael to
comfort her and to see if there is any news. Rachael still works her long hours in
the factory, in spite of her anxieties. She confesses to Sissy that there are hardly
any individuals who still believe in Stephen's innocence. She adds that she is afraid
that perhaps Stephen has been a victim of some violence ‹deliberate or accidental,
for he would have done his best to arrive in Coketown as soon as possible. She is
afraid that he has been murdered. Sissy offers some hope and suggests that
perhaps he has fallen ill and had to stop along the road. But Rachael replies that all
of the stops along the way have been searched and Stephen has not turned up in
any of them. Sissy reassures Rachael that everything will work for the best in the
end. It is Friday and she decides that if no news arrives on Saturday, they will walk
into the country on Sunday morning and the calm will strengthen Rachael for the
week ahead. Rachael agrees with the plan.

As Rachael and Sissy are walking in the street they observe a commotion taking
place outside of Mr. Bounderby's house. Mrs. Sparsit is at the center of the scene
and she is dragging the "mysterious old woman" behind her. Sparsit has been
continuing her investigations and has located the woman who calls herself Mrs.
Pegler. About twenty-five neighbors and other bystanders follow Sparsit into the
house and of course, Rachael and Sissy enter as well. Sparsit has Mr. Bounderby
sent for and the old woman makes an unsuccessful attempt to escape.

Mr. Bounderby arrives with Mr. Gradgrind and Tom and he is astonished when he
sees the old woman. He demands to know why Mrs. Sparsit has brought this
woman into his house. Mrs. Pegler pleads that she tried very hard to escape and
insisted that Mr. Bounderby would not want to see her but to no avail. She calls Mr.
Bounderby "my dear Josiah" and "my own boy." Bounderby suggests that Mrs.
Pegler ought to have overpowered Sparsit but the old lady replies that Sparsit had
threatened to call the constables and she no choice but to come quietly.

Pegler maintains her decency, saying: "I have always lived quite and secret, Josiah,
my dear. I have never broken the condition once. I have never said I was your
motherŠ" This mortifies Mr. Bounderby‹for in her defense, Pegler has‹for better or
worse‹uncovered her secret. Mr. Gradgrind suggests that Pegler ought to be
ashamed of herself for arriving at the scene after deserting her son in his youth and
leaving him in the care of his drunken grandmother. Pegler is furious at the attack
and she wonders, aloud, how Mr. Gradgrind would dare to attack her as a cruel
mother when her son is present and would surely defend her honor. Furthermore,
her mother died in her arms before Josiah was even born.

Gradgrind is the one who is astonished and when he asks Pegler is she denies
leaving her son in the gutter, she most wholeheartedly denies the accusation and
explains that her house was a humble one but she and her husband cared for their
son. They were proud of how he worked hard and they made sacrifices to afford
him opportunities. After she was widowed, Mrs. Pegler had Josiah set up as an
apprentice and when he became wealthy she agreed to his conditions: He did not
want to be embarrassed or hampered by his humble upbringings so Pegler agreed
to conceal the secret of his family background and in return Josiah gave her (a
measly) thirty pounds a year. But she has only been grateful and proud from a
distance. Still, her love is strong and she assures Mr. Gradgrind that Mr. Bounderby
will attest to her story.

The bystanders all have sympathy for Mrs. Pegler and also for Mr. Gradgrind who
was simply repeating the story they had all heard countless times. Bounderby

56
makes no apology or explanation and he orders everyone out of his house though
he is hardly the bully he once was. He has lost all respect. The robbery remains
unsolved and it is now Louisa who worries not only that her brother is guilty but she
also fears that something might have been done to Stephen and that Tom might be
involved in this as well.

Analysis:

Indeed, the person who is "found" in this chapter is not at all the person that
anyone had in mind. Part of the irony of what has been lost and found comes in
Mrs. Pegler having found her son even as she was once of the suspects, presumed
"lost." There is also the contrast of Mrs. Sparsit's victorious exclamation here: "She
belongs to me" and her dismay at the end of "Lower and Lower" when she admits
of Louisa: "I've lost her." Mrs. Sparsit fully intends to use this situation to get back
in Mr. Bounderby's good graces but her plans backfire.

Earlier in the novel, Dickens made an allusion to Bunyan's work, Pilgrim's Progress.
Again, Dickens alludes to the work when he describes Mrs. Sparsit as being in the
"Slough of Despond." The climax of the chapter comes when Bounderby suffers his
own fall‹for pride goes before the fall. All of his stories about being "in the gutte r"
become a metaphorically truth made out of a literal lie, for Bounderby was never
living "in the gutter"‹but the crowd agrees that morally, he is certainly in the
gutter. Bounderby's stinginess is especially loathsome when we compare the thirty
pounds that he gives his mother each year to the one hundred and fifty pounds that
is being so vigorously pursued.

By the end of the chapter, Dickens' thematic concern regarding "surveillance" is

largely complete. Here at the end of the chapter called "Found," all of the efforts to
find the missing individuals and money have been unsuccessful and those most
under watch have frustrated the efforts of would-be spies and snoopers. Yet again,
the chapter ends with the ever-pressing concern for Stephen Blackpool. The sad
reality of the scene is that the characters are able to find everything and everyone
that they are not looking for.

Book III, Chapters 6-9

Chapter Six: The Starlight

Sunday morning, Sissy and Rachael begin their walk into the country as planned.
While they are walking they decide to follow various paths to see if there are any
traces of Stephen. Rachael finds his hat and sure enough, the name Stephen
Blackpool is printed inside. Sissy looks to see if there is any blood on the hat and
fortunately there is no sign of violence. After looking around the area for more
clues, they find an old pit and at the bottom of the ditch they see Stephen's body.
It is unclear whether he is dead or alive. They split up and go for help, running into
the neighboring village and rousing as many people as possible. A messenger is
sent to Coketown with a message for Louisa.

The village people are aware the pit, known as Old Hell Shaft, and it is not clear
whether or not Stephen is going to survive. By the time that Mr. Gradgrind, Louisa,
Tom and Mr. Bounderby arrive on the scene, there is already a crowd. A surgeon is
waiting on the side and the men have made a sort of pulley that will lower one man
into the shaft and he will then bring Stephen back up with him. After a few
minutes, the man announces that Stephen is alive but badly hurt. His body is so
twisted that they do not know the best way to get him out of the pit, but they
eventually do.

57
When he is out of the pit, Stephen is set on a bed of straw and given something to
drink. It is clear that he has survived but he is not going to live for much longer. He
sees Rachael and thanks her for her devotion and her efforts to prove his
innocence. He explains that he had taken a shortcut to arrive in town faster but he
was not aware of the shaft and accidentally fell. He adds that he worries that there
may have been some plot between Louisa and her brother, but Louisa assures him
that she has not wronged him in the slightest. As he approaches death, Stephen is
confident in his innocence and he asks Mr. Gradgrind to take the obligation of
defending him and proving his innocence. As Stephen dies, a bright star lights up
the sky and the crowd mourns the death of a good man.

Analysis:

Stephen Blackpool's story is one of many "dismal stories" that concern the "Old Hell
Shaft." The characterization of Blackpool may be troubling because Blackpool's
decent character is juxtaposed with his steady descent, bad luck, ill treatment and
miserable fate. His name‹Blackpool‹seems to have foreshadowed his fall into the
ditch. And while few images are as negative as "the Old Hell Shaft" there is a more
uplifting contrast in the starlight that appears at the end of the chapter. This is a
redemption and restoration of Stephen's good name. Despite his bad luck, he has
remained a pure person and the symbol of the starlight is as heavenly as the Old
Hell shaft as not.

To the degree that Blackpool was "stoned" by his friends, his story also parallels
that of his namesake, St. Stephen who is considered to be the first Christian
martyr. The saint also saw a heavenly image at the scene of his death, and was
similarly disparaged by his enemies only to be vindicated later. The novelist's social
commentary seems more focused on the affairs of this world than the supernatural
though. Dickens's phrase the "God of the poor" is not religious sentimentality but is
instead a very pointed phrase that seems two-edged: one side, Dickens exposes
the irreligious and hypocritical life of the wealthy and noble individuals who
presume themselves to be the moral superiors of the poor. At the same time,
Dickens challenges the "God of the poor" for his followers are poor, and in
Stephen's case, his good deeds and faith only furthered his doom.

Chapter Seven: Whelp-Hunting

While the crowd was watching over Stephen, Tom Gradgrind disappeared from the
scene, but not before Sissy had the opportunity to whisper something in his ear.
Gradgrind assumes that Tom is with Mr. Bounderby and when he sends for his son,
he receives the reply that Tom was assumed to be at Stone Lodge as he was
certainly not with Bounderby. Louisa is dismayed and she does not think Tom will
appear for awhile. The next morning, Gradgrind goes to the bank and tells Mr.
Bounderby that Tom is going to be gone for a few days but he does not go into any
details.

Louisa and her father are both convinced that Tom is involved in the theft and
Louisa correctly suspects that after she left Stephen's room, Tom made some sort
of false offer to Stephen, in her name, encouraging him to loiter outside of the
bank. Mr. Gradgrind agrees that Tom has probably done this, knowing that Stephen
planned to leave town and would be the most logical suspect.

In this moment of despair, again it is Sissy who has orchestrated a plan for
deliverance and rescue. She could easily see that Tom was guilty and she sent him
to Mr. Sleary and her old friends who were only a few towns away. Tom said that
he had very little money and did not know who could hide him and this was the

58
most reasonable solution as Sissy had read of the circus in the paper just the day
before. It is also favorable that the town is only a few hours from the port of
Liverpool and Mr. Gradgrind hopes that he might be able to get his son passage on
a ship that will send him far away from shame and punishment.

Sissy, Louisa and Mr. Gradgrind find Sleary's circus and they find that Tom has
been successfully hidden as a member of the group. He is, in fact, performing as
part of the troupe. After his performance, Tom is cleaned up and he confesses his
crime without remorse. His amoral attitude is yet another blow to Mr. Gradgrind's
educational system and it is especially disappointing to see that Tom does not
regard his sister kindly even though she offers him forgiveness and assures him
that she still loves him. Mr. Gradgrind is ready to take Tom to Liverpool but he is
stopped by Bitzer, who has arrived with full intention of seizing Tom and claiming
his reward.

Analysis:

The "hunt" for Tom, the whelp, parallels the "Lost" and "Found" conditions that
were presented a few chapters before. Yet again another character has turned up
missing. The same motifs of disguise and hidden identities are employed as a
means of circumventing surveillance and also sustaining the suspense. As a
narrative strategy, it could be argued that Dickens is trying to keep the story away
from the reader much as various characters are trying to avoid being discovered.
The suspense comes precisely in these strategies of hide-and-seek.

In this chapter, young Tom's characterization reaches its most negative point. His
identity as a "whelp" symbolizes his debased, animal status and goes to show how
far he has fallen. Using the traditional imagery of his culture, Dickens also describes
the "dark view" of Tom and in the circus scene, Tom is a "blackamoor" character
whose face has been painted black. This dark/black imagery is supposed to
represent Tom's immorality and sin, though for contemporary readers these
stereotypical rhetoric doesn't exactly work the way it did for Dickens' mid-19th
century British and American audiences. The final irony of Tom's painted state is
the fact that the only thing that will make his face clean is beer. The use of alcohol
to clean the black paint is an interesting juxtaposition to Harthouse's more
metaphorical polishing of his own "ugly surface."

Chapter Eight: Philosophical

Bitzer is unwilling to compromise his duty and Mr. Gradgrind finds that his appeals
to emotion and mercy are unsuccessful because Bitzer's education at the Gradgrind
school has been so thorough. Mr. Sleary eventually agrees that if Tom has
committed this crime then he cannot assist in the escape and he will take Tom and
Bitzer into town. Once Bitzer is out of ear-shot, Sleary sends the message to the
Gradgrinds that he will help Tom escape because they have been good to Sissy. He
also informs Mr. Gradgrind that Sissy's father has died in the interim of years
passed but they decide not to tell Sissy. With the help of a trained horse and the
dog, Merrylegs, the Sleary company sends Tom off to Liverpool while detaining
Bitzer, who is unaware of what is happening.

Analysis:

As it is the next to last chapter in the novel, this "Philosophical" chapter uses a
good deal of repetition to tie up some of the loose ends in the novel. The
characterization of Bitzer recalls his days in Gradgrind's classroom and
unfortunately, he has hardly progressed or matured morally. The last two chapters

59
don't offer very much in the way of symbols or imagery as most of the drama is
literal. Dickens's standard reversals and ironic contrasts are present in this chapter.
On a broad level, we have found the unraveling of the Gradgrind educational model
and here we find that the teacher receives instruction from the fool ‹the clowning
Mr. Sleary. The archetypal role of the wise fool is as old as Shakespeare (we might
recall the "Yorick" allusion from Book II Chapter 8). While Mrs. Sparsit is a fool who
perceives herself to be wise, Mr. Sleary is a wise man who is perceived by all
(including himself) to be a fool.

Dickens's sentimentality dominates his social commentary. What we have found

thus far is that the more fashionable, upper-class characters tend to be dominated
by moral faults, though not necessarily bad intentions. While Dickens's does not
universally portray the poor in a positive light (Slackbridge and Blackpool's drunk
wife, for example), all of his heroes rise from the ranks of the poor without
necessarily rising in social standing. Here, we find Sleary's company conveniently
nearby so that they can assist Mr. Gradgrind whose son, ironically, has become a
culprit. Many critics argue that Dickens's characters are "straw men" who simply
represent ideas. At best, the characters might be considered caricatures ‹and for
what it's worth, Dickens's original serialized versions were famous for the drawings
that accompanied them. These scenes were caricatured in the most literal sense.

Chapter Nine: Final

Back in Coketown, Mr. Gradgrind still has the shameful obligation of clearing
Blackpool's guilt and implicating his own son in the process. But he does all of this
faithfully, for he has given his word. Mrs. Sparsit is relieved of her services in Mr.
Bounderby's household and as she departs, she confesses that she has never
respected the man and that she has often called him a Noodle to his face.

The final pages of the novel present the future of the main characters and for most
of them the future is bleak. Mrs. Sparsit spends the rest of her days with the Lady
Scadgers, an old family member and the two are miserable towards one another.
Mr. Bounderby only lives for another five years and then al of the wealth that he
has built up is squandered by ill-intentioned "humbugs." Mr. Gradgrind truly
repents of his old philosophies and he becomes an old and decrepit man who
spends many hours in Parliament trying to present his facts and figures in the
service of "Faith, Hope, and Charity." But his work is strenuous and his labors are
largely unsuccessful. Indeed, he is taunted by those who were once his
compatriots.

Louisa and Rachael both remain unmarried, though Louisa lives her years in
comfort and Rachael works well into her old age, caring for those around her and
fully content to live what she sees as "her natural lot." Years later, Tom is lonely,
thousands of miles away and eventually he comes to see the error of his youth and
he appreciates his sister's love. He writes her a letter of confession and begins the
journey home but unfortunately, he is delayed by illness and he eventually dies
before he makes it home. His last word is Louisa's name. Finally, Sissy's story is the
brightest of all for she has happy children and they are also a comfort to Louisa.
"Happy Sissy's happy children" escape the emotional destruction of the Gradgrind's
educational system and they love Louisa who becomes their wonderful teacher. She
has "grown learned in childish lore" and she assures their escape of what almost
destroyed her. In the end, she performs this service not out of any vow or pledge
but "simply as a duty to be done."

Analysis:

60
This concluding chapter develops the motif of the "pictures in the fire" that
appeared earlier. This time, Dickens takes a direct role in the writing, appealing to
the audience. The pictures in the fire are a form of augury, or fortune-telling. It is
difficult to read, the main argument discusses the ability to predict and prepare for
the future. What seems to be the case overall, is that most of the characters' lives
change in such a way that they cannot truly predict how they will live their lives.
This seems to reflect Dickens' narrative style if anything, for as we have seen he is
very fond of plots that twist and turn.

61