“It had a black canal in it…like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.” The black canal and the purple-running-river with ill-smelling dyes both return back to the images of unnaturalness, and also they give us a feeling of grossness and disgust. It exemplifies the conditions in which ‘Coketowners’ lived and worked in, and it shows that since they can live in conditions such as these, then they too must have very unnatural personalities. Dickens then speak of the rattling of the windows and the monotonous working of the piston. To us in the twenty-first century, the sounds of rattling windows and steam-engine pistons would be very loud and quite a shock at first a listen. But Dickens, using the words of ‘monotonously’ and ‘all day long’, make these sounds seem very boring and dull, and it echoes the unnaturalness of Coketown and the Coketowners, as they are very used to these sounds. He compares the piston of the steam-engine to an elephant in a state of melancholy madness to symbolise a wild beast being tamed by its own self-depression and insanity.
“It contained several large streets all very like one another…and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.” Dickens emphasises on how everything is the same and that everyone is the same and does the same things and how it is completely irregular and bizarre, and once more, the abnormal unnaturalness of Coketown is present.
“You saw nothing in Coketown but what was severely workful…for anything that appeared to the contrary in the graces of their construction.” Dickens tells us that any religious building can be easily be mistaken for a factory, and that a church is just another warehouse but with a religious value. A church is a building that is meant to be one of supreme grace and beauty, yet in Coketown, the churches are simply another red brick building. Dickens mentions the exception, the New Church, which he describes to be very beautiful, complete with stuccowork and excessively decorative pinnacles, and this could be to symbolise some unique and exceptional characters in Coketown, that are tired of being part of the system of fact. Dickens goes on to echo the lack of uniqueness in the buildings, as you could mistake the infirmary for the jail. This deficiency of some uniqueness is a lack of imagination, and as we know, imagination is practically illegal in Coketown.
“Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town…world without end, Amen.” The rule by which Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby live by is the way in which the town has been designed and created. It is as if Coketown was actually created by Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. The plenitude of fact in the town symbolises its hard-edged environment, and being a fact-bound environment, and insufficient amount of fancy and imagination, it is once more unnatural and manufactured like a machine. The imagery of Coketown helps to bring across two of the major themes in the novel: ‘Fancy vs. Fact,’ and ‘Unnaturalness.’
In Chapter seven of book one, Dickens introduces Mrs Sparsit. Mrs Sparsit is Mr Bounderby’s housekeeper and she is a widow of considerable high-born and family pretensions, with a bedridden great-aunt Lady Scadgers. Sparsit’s officiousness is quickly portrayed when Dickens writes, “she was a prominent figure in attendance on Mr Bounderby’s car.” This also gives us a feeling that she is overzealous.
Mrs Sparsit’s interfering is shown in several places in the novel, for example in Chapter three of book three, Mrs Sparsit, having found out about the affair of Louisa, pursues Mr Bounderby to London, in order to tell him all that she believes of the relationship between Mr James Harthouse and Louisa Bounderby. Not only does this scene show her intrusiveness but also her pretentiousness.
Mr Bounderby and Mrs Sparsit are compelled to each other by their own high position in society. “If the position I shall assume at the Bank is one that I could occupy without descending lower in the social scale,” Mrs Sparsit practically fears that if she leaves Mr. Bounderby then her position in society will become lower as she believes that living with Mr. Bounderby actually keeps her in a high place in the social scale. In some ways, Mr Bounderby and Mrs Sparsit seem feed each others’ egos; Mr Bounderby boasts about having such a highly-connected lady living in his house, but gloats over her downfall in society, Mrs Sparsit makes Mr Bounderby’s negative slights into positive virtues for her own security, and she knows how to manage Mr Bounderby in his blustering moods.
“With the Coriolanian style of nose and the dense black eyebrows,” Dickens makes Sparsit a very grotesque figure. Her grotesque figure is quite unnatural, and it is intertwined with the previously stated theme in the book: ‘Unnaturalness.’ Her Coriolanian (Roman) nose clearly symbolises her pride, or more probably, her having too much pride. Dickens’ continuous mentioning of this nose could symbolise her being a ‘big-nosed’ person, someone who meddles into other peoples’ affairs, someone who is very intrusive and officious.
“Chiefly noticeable for a slender body, weakly supported on two long slim props, and surmounted by no head worth mentioning.” Her ‘grotesque’ figure is similar to that of the young Mrs Sparsit when she had just come of age. Dickens describes Mrs Sparsit to have looked like a very lanky young lady, almost malnourished. He also makes her face appear to have been quite ugly, and all in all, makes her to have looked like a very scrawny person.
Dickens’ imagery of Mrs Sparsit gives a feeling of her being proud, and of her being a ‘snooper’ – someone who meddles into other peoples’ affairs. Dickens makes Mrs Sparsit one of the ugly creatures, both in her appearance and her intensions. Sparsit is a key character in creating another major theme in the novel: ‘Officiousness, Spying and Knowledge.’ She also plays a large part in revealing the theme of ‘Unnaturalness.’ The author, in some ways, makes Mrs Sparsit a ‘goodie two shoes’ to Mr Bounderby, as if she were some kind of servile mistress of Bounderby’s; soothing his pain, calming his anger, obeying his commands. Dickens gives Mrs Sparsit a much exaggerated personality, like a caricature, and he makes her some kind of bird of prey; with a beak, symbolising her Roman nose, flying high in the social scale above the Hands of Coketown, along with the other ‘well-connected’ people, from a position whence she can spy on everyone and everything that goes on.