Performer Culture and Literature 1+2, pages 291, 292, 293

Coketown
Charles Dickens

Hard Times (1854)

Book I, Chapter 5

WARM UP

1) Look at the pictures on pages 292-293. What characteristics of the urban habitat you have just read
about are visible?
 Picture 1 displays a little street surrounded by buildings made up by dirty bricks (maybe red
bricks). The two women (one on the foreground and one on the background) are both wearing
very similar clothes (a long skirt with an apron, a dark blouse and a white cloth on their head)
and have a strict expression.
 In picture 2 an industrial landscape is shown: there is a vast area of very similar buildings,
where tall chimneys elevate themselves to the sky with their long serpents of smoke.

2) Read “Coketown” and point out the features of the pictures on pages 292-293 in the passage.
 “It was a town of red brick, or of red brick that would have been red if the smoke and the ashes
had allowed it” – picture 1
 “It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke
trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled” – picture 2
 “vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long”
– picture 1

COMPREHENSION

3) Read up to line 18 and say what kind of town Coketown was and what it contained.
 Coketown is an industrial city, described as a “triumph of fact”. All the buildings look like one
another: they are made up by red bricks that make the town look “like the painted face of a
savage” because of the black smoke and the ashes. Furthermore, the city is full of machinery
and tall chimneys that produce “interminable serpents of smoke”. There are also a canal and a
river, both of unnatural colours (black and purple) because of the pollution. The overall
atmosphere is terrifying and terribly monotonous: the movement of the steam-engines that
you can see from the windows of the factories is described as that of an “elephant in a state of
melancholy madness”; all the streets, small and big, look like one another and even the
physical appearance of the inhabitants and their daily routine are very similar.

4) Underline the list of the public buildings in Coketown in the fourth paragraph and say if there are
any differences among them.
 Chapels (like pious warehouses of red brick)
 The New Church
  The jail
 The infirmary
 The town-hall
 The M’Choakumchild school
 The lying-in hospital
 The cimitery

 Every building looks like the other ones: “the jail might have been the infirmary, the infirmary
might have been the jail, the town-hall might have been either, or both, or anything else, for
anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction”.

5) Answer the following questions. The last two paragraphs deal with the effect of such a town on its
inhabitants.

5.1) What did a native organization of Coketown want to do?

- A native organization of Coketown, that was to be heard of in the House of Commons, wanted to
make people religious “by main force”.

5.2) What did the Teetotal society show in tabular statements?

- The Teetotal society proved that the inhabitants of Coketown got drunk and that “no inducement,
human or Divine, would induce them to forego their custom of getting drunk”.

5.3) How did the chemist and druggist show that the inhabitants of Coketown took opium?

- The chemist and druggist proved that, when people didn’t get drunk, they took opium using other
tabular statements.

5.4) What was the aim of the jail chaplain?

- The jail chaplain wanted to prove that people met is some hidden places to hear some low singing and
to watch some low dancing, maybe also taking part in it.

5.5) What did Mr Gradgrind and Mr Bounderby want to prove?

- The two “gentlemen” wanted to impose their practical view of life through more tabular statements
derived from their own personal experience.

ANALYSIS

6) Define the type of narrator.

 The narrator is a third-person omniscient one.
7) Decide. What is the keyword of this passage, in your opinion?
 Fact: the whole city is built according to the principles of the utilitarian philosophy and
on a very materialistic and practical view of life.
8) Find the images used by Dickens to describe Coketown in the second paragraph and group them
according to:
 Similes: “Like the painted face of a savage”
“Like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness”
 “Like gold that had stood the fire”
 Metaphors: “Interminable serpents of smoke”
“Pious warehouses of red brick” (referred to the chapels)

What do they have in common? Is the process of industrialization approved of or criticized?

- The images used by Dickens to paint the picture of the typical industrialized town create a dark
and negative atmosphere that reinforces the strongly negative idea of such world the writer
wants to communicate.
9) The description gradually takes on an interior quality, since it moves its focus from the street to the
people (lines 13-18). The mechanical repetition of words and phrases and of the syntax combine to
express the main psychological features of the inhabitants of Coketown.

9.1) Find and underline the repetitions in the text.

Red x3 (lines 4-5)

Brick x2 (line 4)
Like one another x3 (lines 13-14-15)
Same x5 (lines 15-16-17)
Infirmary x2 (line 31)
Jail x2 (lines 31-32)
Fact x9 (lines 1,33,35,36,40)
Tabular statements x5 (lines 53,55,57,58,70)
Gentlemen x4 (lines 68,72,73,74)

9.2) What aspects of the inhabitants of Coketown do these linguistic devices underline? Tick as
appropriate and explain your choice(s).

Monotony , Amusement, Alienation, Creativity

YOUR TURN

10) Discuss what Victorian issues Dickens emphasises in this passage.

- The extract under analysis deals with many aspects of the Victorian age, for example
industrialisation and its main principles, which were all based on facts.
Indeed, the writer gives the reader a quite detailed picture of how life was probably like in a
typical industrialized city, which is represented by Coketown, the town of tall chimneys,
machinery and pollution. In this village, people almost live in a situation of slavery and
complete monotony: every day is exactly like the day before and all forms of creativity are
denied (“What you couldn’t state in figures was not and never should be, world without end,
Amen”). Everything is based on “tabular statements”, numbers and facts. In this way, Dickens
probably wants to criticize the lack of every form of human positive feelings in the
utilitarian/practical mentality that characterised the philosophy of that time.
TEXTUAL ANALYSIS

The text under analysis is an extract from “Hard Times”, a novel written by Charles Dickens and published in
1854. In this passage the author describes Coketown, which could be considered as the typical
industrialised city.

The first paragraph has the function to introduce the description of the city and of its inhabitants’ lifestyle.
Two characters, Mr Gradgring and Messrs Bounderby, are walking through the town, which is “a triumph of
fact”. The word “fact” is used more times in the following paragraphs and perfectly sums up the very
practical and materialistic mentality of people in Coketown.

In the second part of the text the city is described through two colours: red and black, or better, “an
unnatural red and black, like the painted face of a savage”. Right from the beginning, the writer does not
give to the reader a positive image of the place; furthermore, it seems quite strange that the industrialised
town, based on the principle of fact, is compared to the face of a savage. Indeed, it seems as if all the
technical progress produced an involution rather than an evolution of the civil society of Coketown.
Everything is surrounded by ashes and dirt, tall chimneys produce long serpents of smoke and the canal
and the river are painted of unnatural colours (black and purple) because of pollution. The rhetorical figure
of similitude is again used in the following lines, referring to the steam engines of factories: the atmosphere
of total monotony and alienation is perfectly represented by the image of an elephant who shakes his head
“in a state of melancholy madness”. This aspect is even more underlined by the following description of the
city, in which the rhetorical figure of repetition highlights the total lack of creativity in the structure of the
city: “It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one
another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the
same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as
yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next”.

The third paragraph aims at introduce the fourth one, where other features of the city (those that are not
related to the working sphere) are introduced. Indeed, the fourth section of the text deals with the main
features of the public buildings of the town.

As the streets and the inhabitants’ lifestyle, also the church, the hospitals, the cemetery and the town-hall
look exactly like one another. The chapels are built like “pious warehouses” and this comparison well
anticipates the expression in the following paragraph according to which the town was “sacred to fact”.
Indeed, even religious places are built according to utilitarian standards: “Fact, fact, fact”. Everything is
based on facts and what can’t be stated in figures doesn’t and should never be, “world without end,
Amen”. Also, this ironic use of a typical religious expression aims at underlining the distort vision of the
world and of religion of Coketown’s inhabitants. Moreover, all the buildings look like one another: the jail
might have been the infirmary, the lying-in hospital might have been the cemetery and so on. Every
relationship between workman and master, between student and teacher is based on fact; there are no
authentic human feelings and even the relation between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery is based on
practical principles.

The following paragraph focuses the reader’s attention on the expression “tabular statements”. Indeed,
every discussion or assertion in Coketown has to be supported by concrete, scientific proofs. In particular,
the objects of the most important debates in the city are alcoholism, drugs and the jail-chaplain’s
indignation because of some “low singing and dancing”.
At the end of the text the narration goes back to Mr Gradgring and Mr Bounderby, who are described as
“the two gentlemen of the town”, both extremely practical and able to “furnish more tabular statements
derived from their own personal experience, and illustrated by cases they had known and seen”. The word
“gentlemen”, referred to the two men, is repeated more times and this aims at underlining the contrast
between their wealthy status and their moral poverty and lack of gentleness and gratitude (“do what you
would for them they were never thankful for it”, “they lived upon the best”).

In conclusion, the city of Coketown in general and the characters of Mr Gradgrind and Mr Bounderby in
particular are a clear example of how the Industrial Revolution produced wealth without producing well-
being: the technical improvements have made of Coketown a city totally based on facts, where alienation
and monotony paint every day the “savage face” of industrial progress.