Sleary applies that people can’t always be bombarded with facts and need entertainment so they can relax with no learning involved and sometimes, need entertainment to keep them sane and going to the circus is perfect example of relaxation.
Sissy conveys of a character that once permitted to grow and flourish, the ‘bright childish imagination’ cannot be easily destroyed. Sissy becomes a student at the Gradgrind school but a quite advanced age. Previously, she spent her ‘formative’ years in the circus and no matter how heavy the influence of the school system, it can never expel/ overpower Sissy’s love for imagination. (Her resistance to the Laws of Fact carries on even when she is a part of the Gradgrind household..)The situation overflows with irony, although for by the standards of the school, Sissy is surely seen as a failure. At the beginning of the book, she is incapable of defining a horse.
“Give me your definition of a horse…Girl number twenty
unable to define a horse! Girl number twenty possessed
of no facts,… to one of the commonest of animals.”
Although she has more knowledge about horses than anyone else in her class and her failure is so a reflection on the falseness of the educational method other than Sissy’s own inadequacy. In a deep, meaningful dialogue with Louisa, she talks about her further failure to met M’Choakumchild’s standards by referring to the National Prosperity as the Natural Prosperity and admits statistics with stuttering. (Eventhough, Dickens may want the reader to send a sort of natural wisdom even in her own faults.) She has a ‘very dense for figures.’ Nevertheless, her understanding of the realities behind the arithmetical problems and facts suggests that Sissy, the ignoramus of the school, had wisdom far above that of her teachers. This can be seen when Sissy was asked to calculate the percentage of people who lose their lives at sea and she replies that a minor statistic is:
“Nothing… to the relations and friends of the people that were killed.”
This means that the questions’ answer is of no significant importance compared to the number of people who lost family members and companions due to death at sea.
Sissy’s wisdom and strong moral sense can also be shown in her close relationship with Louisa. The social differences between Louisa and Sissy are inverted, in moral terms. Sissy, the circus child who has been provided with a home out of condolence shows herself to be anything but as she is soon becomes superior to Louis, the middle class girl. Sissy is the first to sense that Louisa agreeing to marry Bounderby is not very clever and just spells calamity and it is her that Louisa inevitably turns for guidance and reassurance. It is also Sissy who an even stronger reversal, send James Harthouse by stating some home truths.
However, Sissy never actually experiences the major things in life until the end until later in the novel. It is peculiar that Sissy just ‘disappears’ for the central part of the novel, given the fact that the strong impact she had on the Gradgrind family, although Dickens’ does make it clear that Sissy influences them. For example, when Louisa meets her sister Jane and Louisa remarks on her ‘beaming face,’ Jane refers it to Sissy when she says “I am sure it must be Sissy’s doing.”
Sissy’s persistent compassion is a scheme that satisfies the Gradgrind and Stephen Blackpool plots. This is as Sissy supports Rachael and is important in the final discovery of Stephen. The only offer for help only derived from Sissy and is to be opposed from the harsh refusal for assistance by the industrialist Bounderby.
Sissy’s encounters of such grim reality as the loss of a father (who abandoned her) may well as seen as being prepared for dealing with other harsh characteristics in life. Sissy’s experience perhaps be useful in aiding to make more rational her influence over James Harthouse who change his mind because of her.
I think that Sissy’s role in the novel is of great significance. She develops a ‘wisdom of the Heart’ other than ‘wisdom of the Head’ and she determines to her follow her own moral instincts and moral judgements. Sissy triumphs to the extent that even Mr Gradgrind realises that Sissy is right and embodies a bold enigma as Sissy. At the beginning of the novel, appears to possess little force and strength, less than nearly everyone except Mr Gradgrind but at the end of the novel, Sissy turns out to be the strongest and most effective of all the characters in Coketown.
Sissy’s part is concluded in Dickens’ epilogue to the novel where he speaks of her of continuing this in later life: (being influential in a positive notion)
“To know her humbler fellow creatures and to beauty their
lives of machinery and reality with those imaginative graces
and delights… without which the heart of infancy will wither up.”
Sissy ‘s children loved her because of her positive, kind attitude and the quote above suggests that without Sissy the world would be a worsen place as Sissy brings out the best in people.
