The classroom in which this training takes place is described as a ‘plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom’ the word ‘vault’ is a metaphor suggesting that the classroom is an empty space used for storage. There is no room for any decoration in the room, any more than there is room for imagination in the training of the scholars. All attention is focused on facts; we are told the principle of education is to fill the ‘little vessels’ with facts. Dickens is describing the pupils as ‘little vessels’ meaning they are empty containers there to be filled. This relates to John Locke’s theory containing ideas that the mind is like a blank sheet of paper that we have to fill it with knowledge.
The two main children in the first two chapters are Sissy and Bitzer. A deep contrast is shown between the two and Dickens often compares them, Sissy is described as ‘so dark-eyed and dark-haired’ whereas Bitzer is described as ‘so light-eyed and light-haired.’ Gradgrind sees Bitzer as a model pupil, but he has made it clear he does not agree with the way Sissy has been brought up. For example, When Gradgrind asks for Sissy’s name she introduces herself as Sissy Jupe. Gradgrind takes offence at her given name and insists she calls herself Cecilia, ‘Sissy is not a name … Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’ When she points out her Father calls her Sissy Gradgrind begins to question her about her Father. She openly tells him he works with horses in a circus, Gradgrind does not agree with the circus as it is seen as an imaginative place and finds another way of describing Sissy’s Fathers occupation, ‘Very well then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier ad housebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse’ He moves away from the subject demanding a definition of a horse from Sissy, she fails to do this but Bitzer does, with a perfect dictionary definition. Wee are told Sissy was embarrassed by this, ‘She curtseyed again, and would of blushed deeper, if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time.’ ‘Blushed’ is repeated several times to emphasise this.
Dickens has used the beam of sunlight in the second chapter to highlight the physical difference between Sissy and Bitzer. Sissy is described as having, ‘a deeper more lustrous colour from the sun’ but Bitzer, ‘the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed.’ Bitzer seems very bleak, like the rest of the townspeople, but Sissy seems more colourful and imaginative as deeper words and colours are used to describe her. Sissy is one of Dickens’s heroines; she is pure and innocent. She is immediately associated with heavenly light and I are told the ray of light ‘irradiated’ her. Both Sissy and Bitzer are seen later on in the novel, Sissy a lot more than Bitzer. But Gradgrind has taken in Sissy, as her father abandoned her, she is now a friend to him and his family. Bitzer is not seen a lot, he was involved in the attempted arrest of Gradgrind and has therefore betrayed Gradgrind. Bitzer’s character never fully develops, he is unfeeling and unimaginative from the beginning to the end.
We are first introduced to Gradgrind’s voice at the start of the novel. He is teaching a large class with his sentiments about facts and the need for a pragmatic view of the world, this for him is what a sound education is all about. His appearance is threatening and unattractive, he is accompanied by two other adults, a schoolmaster, the other anonymous. The first description Dickens gives of Gradgrind uses repetition and builds an image of a bold, stern man straight away, ‘The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead …The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth…The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice…The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair…’ Repetition of ‘The emphasis was helped by’ gives the description a harsh tone and therefore we relate this to Gradgrind. Dickens also uses long, convoluted sentences, ‘and the speakers square forefinger emphasised his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve’ and ‘The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders’ Again repetition is used, and the fact that Gradgrind is ‘square’ gives the reader a feeling that he is sharp and precise with edges that can not be softened. This idea is furthered by the precise way he speaks, ‘Now what I want is facts.’ Dickens makes ‘Facts’ a proper noun in Gradgrind’s speech, making the reader understand the teacher considers ‘Fact’ an individual area of study. Gradgrind’s name grabs our attention straight away, ‘grad’ refers to the pupils but as graduates, it also concerns us with the different stages of our lives. The ‘grind’ refers to him being an educator and he will grind the graduates. Gradgrind never intentionally hurts anyone and as a result of him taking Sissy in, shows a more sensitive side to Gradgrind.
The two men who accompany Gradgrind are introduced to us in the second chapter. Half way through the second chapter we are introduced to the man who has remained anonymous until now is a government inspector. Dickens describes him as, ‘A mighty man at cutting and drying…’ Like Gradgrind he is ‘cutting’ which brings a sharp and edgy feel to him, ‘drying’ makes him sound cold and heartless. Dickens has used the sentence, ‘always with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus…’ to sound like force feeding, this reminds me of the pupils being taught facts forcefully. The government officer is there to back Gradgrind up in that fact should only be taught. He uses what decoration to have on wallpaper as an example, he explained to the class why you mustn’t have horses on wallpaper, ‘I’ll explain to you, then…why you wouldn’t paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up or down the sides of rooms in reality-in fact?’ He then goes on to talk about what you would have on your carpet; he questions Sissy about this and, as did Gradgrind, embarrasses her. After this he sounds very smug with himself, ‘… smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.’ The class is later told that ‘you must discard the word Fancy altogether.’ This clearly tells the reader that the government officer agrees with Gradgrind and is a standard way of teaching. ‘This is a new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.’ The government officer’s philosophy is that he believes facts are a way of life and are tasteful. I think Dickens included the government officer in the first two chapters as he thought they had too much to do with education and it was becoming very political.
M’choakumchild, the schoolmaster, is a product of the industrialisation of education, he is a teacher who follows the same beliefs as Gradgrind and the government officer, he too believes in facts. Dickens tells us that M’Choakumchild has a lot of factual knowledge but ‘If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!’ I think that Dickens is again expressing that he believes imagination is a must as M’Choakumchild has a lot of knowledge but his students will never be complete people as they will only ever see one side of life. The school itself is described as a factory, ‘He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory…’ This is what really built the image of the school up for me. It sounds as though the whole education system was made to run like a factory. The pupils are the machines and the teaches are the workers, like men and women who operate machinery are only useful to their masters for this, M’Choakumchild is only useful to Gradgrind because he is so full of facts.
Dickens believed that children should have an imagination, he was a romanticist. He wrote Hard Times at a time were everyone believed in empiricism, it was very different from other novels that were wrote at the time. Dickens has used characters to represent empiricism, for example Tomas Gradgrind, as he has with characters representing romanticism, for example Sissy Jupe. Dickens dedicated Hard Times to a philosopher friend of his, Tomas Carlyle, who felt very strongly that society was threatened by industrialism. In 1892 he made the following statement, “It is the age of machinery in every outward and inward sense of that word. Nothing is now done directly by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance … Men are grown mechanical in heard and in heart, as well as in hand.” Throughout Hard Times Dickens refers to the workers as ‘Hands’, men and women who are only important to their masters because they can manage machines. We can see that Hard Times reflects the issues in Carlyle’s statement, the themes of industrialism and everything following fact.
