Throughout the whole book, Dickens refers to Louisa’s suppressed spirit, but it is particularly evident in Book One. When Louisa is first introduced in chapter 3, “a Loophole”, Louisa is described as, “struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life itself somehow..” This description suggests that Louisa has not been completely manipulated by her father’s moulding and she still has life inside her, she just needs to know how to express and handle her emotions, which her father has never taught her to do. This is ironic as he has taught her facts upon facts about things she will probably never need to know. Dickens is highlighting the fact that Gradgrind’s utilitarian way of thinking does not account for the feelings of individual humans. Louisa is beginning to emerge as a fault in Mr Gradgrind’s system which he believes to be flawless. In chapter 4, “Mr Bounderby”, Mrs Gradgrind questions why Louisa went to the circus when she has enough to do with all the facts at home. Louisa says “that’s the reason!” suggesting that she is trying to let out her emotions and get away from the facts she has been forced to live by. However, her family are unable to recognise these emotions and ignore her, “don’t tell me that’s the reason, because it can be nothing of the sort.” Dickens uses the metaphor comparing Louisa’s suppressed character to fire again, to a greater extent, in chapter 8, “never wonder”. Throughout the scene she is “sat in the darker corner by the fireside...looking at the bright sparks as they dropped upon the hearth” showing the fire is captivating her. She gazes into it, “as if she were reading what she asked, in the fire, and it were not quite plainly written there,” this suggests she can see more than just fire in it. Her mind is able to comprehend more than just simple facts. She can see things for more than just what they are, which is a huge criticism of Gradgrind’s methods as he has taught his own children as models for others, and now Louisa is not conforming to his teaching. Louisa says to her mother, “I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by looking at the red sparks dropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying. It made me think, after all, how short my life would be, and how little I could hope to do in it.” To Louisa, these sparks represent her life going nowhere. They also represent her emotions and feelings – as soon as she feels anything it’s very unfamiliar and she doesn’t know how to handle it, so the emotions just die out and fade away. The chapter title alone is ironic and Dickens is using it to undermine Gradgrind’s methods. Louisa says, “I often sit here wondering” which again shows she has not been completely influenced by her father and is rebelling against his strict education. Eventually, Louisa’s inner fire and suppressed spirit become destructive and begin to burn “within her like an unwholesome fire.” Dickens is here suggesting the importance of imagination and emotion by showing the consequences of their restraint.
Fire is also presented in another element of the book – the factories and industries in Coketown. Gradgrind’s teaching methods are a parallel to Coketown. “It was a town of red brick, or a brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black…” also applies to the people in the education system. They would all be individual if it was not for the mechanical method by which they are taught. But they have all been changed into a multiple of something they’re not. All of the buildings are painted the same, and you don’t know what’s inside, “all the public inscriptions in the town were painted alike, in the severe characters of black and white”. This is similar to the pupils in the model school who are all manufactured to fit one moulded person so you don’t know what they’re actually like inside. Dickens sets up a link between Louisa and Coketown and the monotony in both her life and everyday life in the city. In chapter 15 the narrator describes, “The distant smoke very black and heavy” coming out of the factories. This highlights the bad products that the workers are producing. It suggests a darker side to the mechanism, on top of the good for the richer people. This echoes the fact that even though the model school is churning out many “model” pupils who fit Gradgrind’s ideal human, it also produces people like Louisa, who feel suppressed and don’t know how to handle their foreign emotions. Louisa says, “There seems to be nothing there, but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out, father!” This is her way of trying to express to her father that she has life inside her, but he is unable to recognize the parallel she is trying to draw between the facts and herself. He says plainly “I do not see the application of the remark.” Gradgrind’s “eminently practical” philosophy has made him unable to grasp these emotions which are vital to human beings.
Mr Gradgrind’s utilitarian thinking has a strong effect on the way Louisa and her Family relate to one another. The Gradgrind family are dysfunctional and unable to communicate in a normal way. Louisa is the only person who feels any sort of emotion and she is completely incapable of expressing them to any of her family, except for Tom. Louisa’s relationship with Sissy is another way Dickens undermines Gradgrind. In chapter 9, “Sissy’s Progress”, Sissy says, “it would be a fine thing to be you, Miss Louisa…I should not be the worse”, to which Louisa says, “I do not know that”. This is a good example of Dickens using Louisa to challenge Gradgrinds way of thinking. She is saying she is not happy with herself and her life which Gradgrind perceives to be unblemished. Louisa is fascinated by the relationship between Sissy and her father. She asks, “did your father love her…Tell me more about him…And you were his comfort through everything?...And your father was always kind? To the last?” She repeatedly questions her about this relationship, “with a strong, wild, wondering interest peculiar to her…contravening the great principle, and wondering very much.” Sissy has allowed Louisa to let out her emotions for the first time, “an interest gone astray like a banished creature, and hiding in solitary places.” She is so captivated by their bond as she has never been exposed to such a relationship with her father. Louisa would love to be close to her father like Sissy was with hers. Whilst talking to Sissy, “Louisa has a brighter laugh than usual” showing that Sissy makes her happy. Mr Gradgrind thinks Sissy is a bad example for his children, when in fact she is making Louisa happier and brings her out of her shell. Louisa admires Sissy and her ability to voice her feelings, but she is also jealous of her, “You are more useful to my mother, and more pleasant with her than I can ever be...you are pleasanter to yourself than I am to myself” Gradgrind’s own daughter is jealous of someone who has not been moulded by his manipulative education.
Dickens also criticises Gradgrind through the relationship between Louisa and Thomas. In chapter 3 when they are first brought into the plot, they are immediately shown to be contrasting characters. When caught at the circus, Louisa is the one to stand up to her father, “But Louisa looked at her father with more boldness than Thomas did.” She is the one to tell him what they were doing, “wanted to see what it was like…I brought him father...” It suggests that Louisa is not fearful of her father and wants him to recognise that she is rebelling against his system. Louisa has not been manipulated to the same extent as Thomas, “Thomas gave himself up to be taken home like a machine.” Instead she faces Mr Gradgrind. Dickens is challenging Gradgrind’s teaching methods by bringing in Louisa as a rebel against her strict education, and contrasting her with her brother who has conformed to it. In chapter 8 he shows this further, “Tom, chafing his face on his coat-sleeve, as if to mortify his flesh, and having it is unison with his spirit.” Gradgrind’s ways have completely crushed Thomas’s spirit, leaving him lifeless and dull. When staring into the fire, which “so engrossed her”, Louisa is able to appreciate it more than Tom, “Except that it is a fire…it looks to me as stupid and blank as everything else looks.” He can only understand its factual purpose, “You seem to find more to look at in it than ever I could find” he says, putting this down to, “Another of the advantages…of being a girl” as his unimaginative mind cannot think of any other reason she can look deeper into the flames. Perhaps Dickens is alluding here to a tendency for females to be more emotional than men. Dickens also uses Louisa and Tom’s body language to undermine Gradgrinds approach to education. Tom is “sitting astride of a chair before the fire, with his face on his arms” where as Louisa, “sat in the darker corner by the fireside, now looking at him, now looking at the bright sparks” Tom, who is his model pupil, has his face in his hands suggesting he has no life left inside him, but his sister looks into the fire, as though she is looking to a light in the future.
Throughout the book, Louisa and Thomas refer to each other as “Loo” and “Tom”, which are not the factual names they were given. Their father calls them “Louisa” and “Thomas”, and chapter 2, Gradgrind tells Sissy off for not calling herself Cecilia. In chapter 8, “Never wonder” Louisa and Thomas are discussed in more detail. Tom is set up as a very selfish, self pitying character, “I am a donkey, that’s what I am...” He’s waiting for Louisa to compliment him. Louisa is very un self-centred and does everything she can for her brother, “think how unfortunate it is for me that I can’t reconcile you to home better than I am able to do…I can’t play to you or sing to you...” And Tom seems to take advantage of this. He exploits Louisa for his own good. When talking about his methods of “smoothing” Mr Bounderby Tom says to his sister, “it’s you. You are his little pet, you are his favourite, he’ll do anything for you. When he says to me what I don’t like, I shall say to him ‘my sister Loo will be hurt and disappointed, Mr Bounderby’…That’ll bring him about, or nothing will.” And later in Book Two, Louisa funds Tom’s gambling addiction. The “model” students he creates are not nice people, are selfish and who take advantage of others for their own benefit. In chapter 9, Tom further exploits Louisa when he enters the room and completely ignores Sissy’s crying state, going straight to Louisa, “Because if you come there’s a good chance of old Bounderby’s asking me to dinner; and if you don’t there’s none.” Tom is part of the reason Louisa accepts Bounderby’s marriage proposal. He pressures her into it to make his life easier. During Book One Tom becomes the embodiment of Gradgrind’s teaching.
From the beginning of the novel, Dickens sets up a very false relationship between Louisa and Mr Gradgrind. In chapter 3 it is clear that Gradgrind cannot comprehend Louisa’s feelings and emotions “his daughter stole a look at him, remarkable for its intense and searching character. He saw nothing of it.” Chapter 15, “Father and Daughter” is the main example of them relating to one another. The opening of the chapter sets up a sinister mood, “a deadly statistical clock in it, which measured every second with a beat like a rap upon a coffin lid.” It represents how time for the Gradgrinds is slow and painful. The repetition of the reference to Death proposes to the reader the idea that Louisa may die emotionally. Dickens then describes Gradgrind’s books as “an army constantly strengthening by the arrival of new recruits,” highlighting that Louisa is fighting against an army of her father’s facts. During the chapter, Gradgrind does not seem at ease with many of the questions Louisa faces him with. When she asks about human feelings her father does not quite know how to react. His mind is unable to recognise the emotions she talks of, “’do you think I love Mr Bounderby?’ Mr Gradgrind was extremely discomforted by this unexpected question. ‘Well, my child…I – really – cannot…” He speaks with a stutter and does cannot respond. However, when he is able to incorporate facts into his answer, he is again at ease and will go on talking for long periods of time, “as you have been accustomed to consider every other question, simply as one of tangible Fact…it is not unimportant to take into account the statistics of marriage, so far as they have yet been obtained, In England and Wales…” Louisa asks these questions with “great deliberation. She is trying to push him into saying something un factual and to feel something for once, giving her father a chance to redeem himself, after his bad upbringing of her. Eventually she gives up “what does it matter?” Gradgrind does not pick up on any of the chances his daughter is giving him.
Louisa is very anxious to please everyone. She sees the proposal from Bounderby as an opportunity to please her father, this is one of the reasons she adheres to it. She is apathetic about her life towards her father, “While it lasts I wish to do the little I can, and the little I am good for. What does it matter!” She just wants to be a normal girl, which is another of the reasons she agrees to marry Bounderby – she feels it’s a normal thing to do. Mr Gradgrind sees it as a good thing that Louisa’s feelings are negative and suppressed, “you have been trained well.” There are many points in the chapter where Louisa and her father could have acted differently, “but to see it, he must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been erecting, between himself and all those subtle essences of humanity” however “the barriers were too many and too high for such a leap.” Gradgrind is so wrapped up in utilitarianism that he can not express his love for his own daughter. Louisa repeats “what does it matter” showing she feels so trapped and insignificant. At this comment, Mr Gradgrind “seemed to strike with some little discord on his ear,” recognising that she’s unhappy. He wants to comfort her and talk to her but once again, the barriers of his factual background are preventing him. At this point, Dickens is highlighting that the utilitarian philosophy has stopped Gradgrind himself from being able to express any emotions. Eventually Louisa accepts Bounderby’s proposal, “let it be so. Since Mr Bounderby likes to take me thus, I am satisfied to accept his proposal…repeat it, word for word...” She is adamantly clear that she is not happy to marry him, but satisfied. She is also clear that she wants Bounderby to know this.
When Gradgrind marries Louisa to Mr Bounderby, a pretentious man who cares for nothing but himself, he does not realise what harm he is doing. Louisa does not want to marry Bounderby; she just wants to add variation to her life. Even their wedding, which should be filled with emotions was solely factual, “the business was all fact, from first to last” Dickens then takes a very satirical approach to ridicule Gradgrind’s arranged wedding, “There was an improving party…who knew what everything they had to eat and drink was made of, and how it was imported or exported, and in what quantities, and in what bottoms, whether native or foreign, and all about it.” He is highlighting how boring these conformed people are and how Louisa doesn’t fit in with them.
It is not only the episodes described above setting Louisa against Gradgrind and his utilitarian philosophy – but also the language that Dickens uses throughout. He uses a satirical approach to Gradgrind. His name alone is a ridicule of his personality, shows the hard, industrial person who manufactures the children grinding the facts into them. Dickens’s reference to him as the “eminently practical” man is also using a mocking tone. The language attributed to Gradgrind is often pompous and reminiscent to the teaching style Gradgrind applies. Louisa on the other hand is given passionate and emotionally complex dialogue and is described more human terms, suggesting to the reader that she is in a genuine struggle to stay alive.
By the end of Book One it is not at all clear how the dynamic between Louisa and Gradgrind will develop, as they have been established as such opposite characters. At the end of Book Two, Mr Gradgrind and Louisa have another meeting, parallel to the first. The chapter, “Down” is set up exactly the same as “Father and Daughter”. However, in this meeting Gradgrind reacts to and treats Louisa differently. Louisa once again expresses how unhappy she is to her father, making it impossible for him to ignore it any longer, “I curse the house in which I was born to have such a destiny…I have almost repulsed and crushed my better angle into a daemon.” It is here spelt out to the reader that Gradgrinds suppressive ways have completely shattered what could have been a “million times wiser, happier, and more loving, more contented, more innocent and human in all good respects” in Louisa. Eventually Gradgrind “saw a wild dilating fire in the eyes steadfastly regarding him.” Louisa’s unhappiness has got to this extent before Gradgrind even has a glimpse of her suppressed spirit. At the very end of the chapter, Louisa breaks down saying “I shall die if you hold me! Let me fall upon the ground.” Gradgrind “laid her down there, and saw the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system, lying, an insensible heap, at his feet” Gradgrind has had to watch all of his hard work shatter before him, in the form of his own daughter. This is the ultimate point at which Dickens is criticising the Utilitarian philosophy. It is immensely heartening when Gradgrind capitulates at the end of the novel, as he realises the error of his thinking. However, for Louisa, it is too late and she is never truly fulfilled in the way the reader believes she might be.
