UNIVERSIDADE DE SÃO PAULO

FACULDADE DE FILOSOFIA, LETRAS E CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS

Departamento de Letras Modernas
Estudos do Cânon I

Prof Dr. Marcos Soares

SCHOOL AND CHILDREN

DEVELOPMENT IN HARD TIMES, BY
CHARLES DICKENS

Marcela Machado 5673949

Evening group
 This paper analyses some passages of chapter II of Hard Times, by Charles
Dickens.

‘Murdering innocents’ is the name assigned to the chapter and it begins with
a description of Thomas Gradgrind, the teacher. He is introduced as a man of
facts, carrying instruments of calculation, measurement and weighing, as if these
were the only things really important. For him, human nature ‘is a question of
figures and simple arithmetic’ and he could not be convinced otherwise; perhaps
other people whose surnames are Gradgrind, but of course such people do not
and could not exist.
An interesting thing to be noticed is that, by introducing himself in a whole
paragraph, using the common cliché that emphasizes his importance, in a sort of
James Bond style: “peremptorily Thomas – Thomas Gradgrind”, he also uses the
expression ‘sir’, repeated several times on the first paragraph. ‘Sir’ is a submissive
address, by which one marks his/her inferior position in relation to another person;
however, it is clearly stated in his whole introduction that, actually, the only
important person, acquainted with all the facts that matter is him and the students
are the ones who should address him as ‘sir’, and not otherwise. This submission
is expressed by the several curtseys made by Sissy Jupe and the various times
when she calls Gradgrind ‘sir’, while he calls her ‘girl’.
Thomas Gradgrind is described as a cannon loaded with facts, which could
be compared to the current circus act on which a clown is shot by a cannon into a
safety net. The fact that he is compared to a cannon represents a relation to the
circus world that he will so hard try to devalue; however, instead of being a cannon
that is meant for fun, Gradgrind is a cannon that is meant to destroy, to shape, to
disseminate the facts he thinks are the best things these children have to learn in
order to be educated. Then, he is also described as “a galvanizing apparatus,
charged with a mechanical substitute for the tender young imagination that were to
be stormed away”. This description shows how the type of education proposed is a
mechanical and repressing instrument of all the imaginative and creative character
that children are supposed to have.
 Gradgrind refers to students as numbers. Sissy Jupe is called ‘girl number
twenty’ and the only thing important she can provide is accurate descriptions and
explanations of things. When Gradgrind ‘squarely points his square forefinger’ to
her and asks her to give him a description of a horse, she does not know how to
answer, and then Gradgrind says: “Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!
(…) Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the
commonest animals!”. His speech is marked by a mechanical aspect, similar to the
education he proposes, and it also lacks verbs, as if he were a robot characterizing
girl number twenty. In addition, even his attitudes and gestures are as square as
his proposal of education (expressed by word squarely, square forefinger).
Teachers Gradgrind and McChoakumchild try to destroy all the imagination
their students have by always sticking to their conceptions of things and excluding
any other possibilities. They ask if the students would ever carpet their room with
representations of flowers or paper them with representations of horses. When
Sissy says she would carpet her room with representations of flowers and that she
would fancy, they interrupt her and tell her she must never fancy. Therefore,
according to the teachers, facts and fancy are complete opposites.
In fact, Dickens makes it obvious that Sissy’s explanation that there is no
problem on carpeting a room with representations of flowers, since they won’t be
crushed because they are not real, makes much more sense than the explanation
given by her teacher of facts, according to which “you don’t walk upon flowers in
fact; you cannot be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. (…) You never meet
with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds
represented upon walls”.
The teachers of Coketown, therefore, are the individuals responsible for
‘murdering’ all the innocent children who are naïve enough to trust their teachers’
knowledge to help them obtaining a good education. Students are so afraid of
these teachers that they get quite confused by their questions and think that ‘no’ is
always the right answer. Dickens shows us how bad this type of education is when
he enumerates all the facts and subjects known by Mr. McChoakumchild and
finishes his sentence by saying that “if he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely
better he might have taught much more”.
This critique might be compared to William Blake’s critique of the social
institutions, of which the school is one of his main examples. For Blake, the school
is an institution that represses and prevents freedom and is characterized by “do’s
and don’ts” and “you shall not” approaches. This is also present in Hard Times, in
the following speech given by the Mr. McChoakumchild:

“You are to be in all things regulated and governed by fact. (…) You must discard
the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in
any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact”.

The chapter establishes a clear difference between the two worlds of the
novel: Coketown and the circus, the first characterized by utilitarianism, mechanical
relations, individualism, facts and square personalities, attitudes and points of view;
the latter characterized by fancy, collectivity, solidarity, creativity and variety.
This difference is expressed by the opposite relations between Sissy and
Bitzer, representatives of the circus and Coketown, respectively. Bitzer knows
everything Sissy does not; he is the one who answers the question about the
description of a horse asked by Gradgrind. His answer is an encyclopedia listing
method, cold and objective, marked by an exhaustive enumeration with very few
verbs, similar to the way his teacher talked about girl number twenty:

“Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four grinders, four eye-

teeth, and twelve incisive. (…) Age known by marks in mouth”.

Sissy, on the other hand, is not acquainted with the world of facts, and her
answers are always full of the ideas of ‘fanciness’. She is also described as
“frightened by the matter-of-fact prospect the world afforded”.
The different relations and ideologies between Sissy and Bitzer are also
expressed by their different positions taken in the classroom. They are both seated
on opposite sides, caught by both ends of a ray of sunlight, she at the beginning,
and he at the end. Dickens describes their different appearances and how they are
emphasized by the sunlight that shines over them, which also a representation of
their different underlying ideologies:

“But whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired that she seemed to
receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun when it shone upon her,
the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the selfsame rays appeared to draw
out of him what little colour he ever possessed”.

This way, they are both described as perfect opposites, individuals that are
both caught by the same ray of sunlight, but reflect completely different images.
The ray of sunlight can be interpreted here as the environment that contains both
students. They are both part of the same life style, but are completely different in
nature.
Raymond Williams says that “Hard Times is composed from two
incompatible ideological positions, (…) first, that environment influences and in
some sense determines character; second, that some virtues and vices are original
and both triumph over and in some cases can change any environment”. For him,
the ideological contradiction present in Hard Times is that if the environment
determines how people will be, then all people should be equal. The question that
remains, however, is how can some people then be different? Sissy and Bitzer are
the examples that this contradiction is not completely incoherent, since it is
possible in society.
In this chapter, Dickens presents the mechanical education of Coketown,
with its repressive and intolerant teachers who think are building up educated and
knowledgeable individuals, but who are actually building up serious individuals who
are going to have all their imagination stormed away. Dickens also shows the
ideological contradictions which are part of the same environment, represented by
both Sissy Jupe and Bitzer, and how individuals can present different reactions to
the same motivations. Coketown and the circus are contrasted in terms of their
point of view in relation to education and life in general; for the first world, children
need to have their imagination and creativity repressed and for the latter, children
have the right and duty to grow up free and natural as birds. In Blake’s words:

“How can the bird that is born for joy

Sit in a cage and sing? (…)
How shall the summer arise in joy,
or the summer fruits appear?
Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
or bless the mellowing year,
When the blasts of winter appear?”

Maybe that is what Dickens was trying to tells us: that there is no way
children will not grow up and be little Gradgrinds and McChoakumchilds if they
have a type of education that repress rather than stimulate them; that there is no
way they will produce good fruits if their environment suppresses any kind of
freedom and ‘fanciness’. If some people say that there is no way one can escape
and be free from the industrial and capitalist lives that torture the individual,
Dickens is telling us that there has to be a way out, or else the future will not be so
valuable.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES

BLAKE, William. The Schoolboy. 1789

WILLIAMS, Raymond. The reader in Hard Times. In “Writing in Society”. London:

Verso, 1983: 166-74.