Look carefully at the first four chapters of "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens and explore some of the ways in which Dickens's attitudes are presented.
Paul Loughlin 11Aw
GCSE English
Coursework-Pre 1914 Prose
Look carefully at the first four chapters of "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens and explore some of the ways in which Dickens's attitudes are presented.
In this assignment I will be writing about the novel "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens. The novel is set among the industrial smokestacks and factories of Coketown, England. Dickens's was concerned with the miserable lives of the poor and working classes of England during his time. Dickens's uses the novel's characters and stories to expose a massive gap between England's rich and poor and the unfeeling self-interest of the middle and upper classes. Dickens's suggests that England itself is turning into a factory machine, and that the middle class was only concerned with making a profit in the most efficient and practical way possible, through the children in the schools. Even through its not Dickens's most popular novel, it is an important expression of the fundamental values of human existence. In this assignment I will be focusing on Dickens's attitudes and views towards education of the period of which Hard Times was wrote. Hard Times was wrote during the 1800s which education was strict and disciplined.
One significant aspect which Dickens uses is the presentation of the teacher and business man of the school. The business Thomas Gradgrind is a pivotal part in Dickens views. He is a dark-eyed rigid man who is a business man who has established a school in Coketown in the way which he sees fit. In the first chapter he pays a visit to his school to lecture his students in the way that he sees fit. Firstly his first name "Thomas" was taken of that of Thomas the doubter in the bible. His surname "Gradgrind" suggests that he is not a particular pleasant person and that he grinds people down. In this case are his students of his school who fall victim to his teacher's monotonous teaching of the grinding of facts into their young minds.
"The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim."
This quote suggests that the young children have empty minds which are ready to be filled to the brim with cold hard facts. A constant emphasis which is laid down in the first 4 chapters. This quote sums up Gradgrind's rationalist philosophy on education, in claiming that nothing else will ever be of service to his students. Gradgrind however is a father himself to the unhappy Louisa and Tom who question their fathers claim that "facts alone are wanted in life". Gradgrind treats his children as he does his students. He treats them like fertile soil which can sowed by machines. He is depriving their minds of feeling and fantasy. Dickens suggests that facts alone cannot bring intellectual pleasure.
Gradgrind is as referred to as a weapon by Dickens. He portrayed as a cannon as he his lecturing the children, rather that any other time of arms just to make the assault of facts upon the children more brutal.
"Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away."
Mr Gradgrind employs another teacher Mr McChoakumchild who he hopes will instil in the students nothing but, hard cold facts. The name Mr McChoakumchild also suggests that he is an unpleasant person who will "Choke" the facts into the children.
This suggests that Dickens's attitudes toward education, are that of the industrial actions. Destroying the minds of the children and turning them into machines to be prepared for the factory. This all for the middle classes as Dickens suggests that they are using the working classes as drones in a easy way to create a profit.
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Mr Gradgrind employs another teacher Mr McChoakumchild who he hopes will instil in the students nothing but, hard cold facts. The name Mr McChoakumchild also suggests that he is an unpleasant person who will "Choke" the facts into the children.
This suggests that Dickens's attitudes toward education, are that of the industrial actions. Destroying the minds of the children and turning them into machines to be prepared for the factory. This all for the middle classes as Dickens suggests that they are using the working classes as drones in a easy way to create a profit.
During the Second chapter: MURDERING THE INNOCENTS, the businessman Gradgrind paid a visit to his school and test to very different contrasting students to define a horse. He firstly asked a young girl named Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a horse-riding circus entertainer. All children are referred to numbers instead of their names as this enable teachers to teacher large classes (Monitorial education system.)
Sissy Jupe is referred to as number 20 which furthers the views of Dickens idea of the inhumanity of the factories cities springing up in England.
'Girl number twenty,' said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, 'I don't know that girl. Who is that girl?'
'Sissy Jupe, sir,' explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.
'Sissy is not a name,' said Mr. Gradgrind. 'Don't call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.'
'We don't want to know anything about that, here. You mustn't tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don't he?'
'If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.'
'Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.'
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
'Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!' said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. 'Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy's definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.'
Sissy Jupe's father is part of the travelling circus as stated and it is quite obvious that Gradgrind hates all aspects of the circus as it represents fun and fantasy, all aspects that Gradgrind wants to eradicate from the children's minds. It also shows that Gradgrind does not allow sissy to reveal her fathers true profession, as he changes it into a more respectable form. As it is his school that he runs how he sees fit he thinks he should change any facts that he finds distasteful.
Afterwards he asks a young pale-freckled boy named Bizter to give a definition of a Horse.
'Bitzer,' said Thomas Gradgrind. 'Your definition of a horse.'
'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.' Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
The definition given pleases Gradgrind as it is a cut and dried answer. However the answer given by bitzer is factual but lifeless description. Gradgrind ultimately puts down Sissy Jupe as she is unable to give a textbook answer. As she was born and raised in a circus environment and the daughter of a horseman, she is probably more knowledgeable about the animal than any one else in the room and that includes Gradgrind himself.
In the next part of the chapter , Gradgrind tells the children of why animals and plants should not be painted upon household objects as they are not "fact" but "fantasy". The discussion of the proper use of the ornamentation sounds ridiculous enough hat we might imagine that Dickens invented the issue to lampoon the speakers. But this obsession with the literal was part of one school of criticism of the time, which held that you shouldn't ornament walls, floors or furniture with objects that did not literally belong there.
"Mr. Gradgrind was much obliged. 'Mr. M'Choakumchild, we only wait for you.'
So, Mr. M'Choakumchild began in his best manner. He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs."
In this quote Dickens uses a metaphor to describe the schoolmaster's training is brilliant and rich with meaning. The schoolmaster is one of 140 identical, interchangeable teachers created in a teacher education factory. Dickens describes the teachers as pianoforte legs, so in others words the teachers are relatively insignificant blocks of wood shaped to prop up a complex musical instrument, which, we can infer, is the society of England. A piano is a complex musical instrument to be played by a skilled musician, which is Gradgrind and the other elite members of the country's power structure in been able to control society. The teacher is a holding for society at the right height, for the current industrial situation in the country.
He went to work in this preparatory lesson, not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M'Choakumchild. When from thy boiling store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by-and-by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within - or sometimes only maim him and distort him.
This warning at the end of the chapter, suggests that if we even felt a desire to kill all fantasy in children and transforming them into soulless drones, to fill the factories. With the mention of Morgiana in the Forty Thieves this suggests that the teachers have not explored the finds of the children but poured the facts without hesitation, just like Morgiana who poured the hot oil into the pots in which the thieves were hiding.
In chapter 3- The Loophole we have the school room for good, but now we learn a bit more about Gradgrind's views and education and the way that he raises his children.
While Gradgrind walks back to his appropriately named Stone-Lodge home, Dickens touches on his thoughts of education.
"No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles's Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs."
Gradgrind suggests that none of his children were ever exposed to fantasy but only to facts. He had raised his children in his philosophy of fact and having permitted them no imaginative entertainment. But as Gradgrind walks home in a satisfied frame of mind, he is amazed to find his own children Louisa and Thomas spying through the fence at the circus. A world of fantasy unknown to them. He can expect that Sissy Jupe's father is part of this circus.
"A space of stunted grass and dry rubbish being between him and the young rabble, he took his eyeglass out of his waistcoat to look for any child he knew by name, and might order off. Phenomenon almost incredible though distinctly seen, what did he then behold but his own metallurgical Louisa, peeping with all her might through a hole in a deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself on the ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower-act!
Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot where his family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, and said:
'Louisa!! Thomas!!'"
He is astonished and becomes furious with his children. Louisa looks at her father with more boldness than Thomas did.
"Indeed, Thomas did not look at him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a machine."
This quote suggests that with Gradgrind's philosophy of education, it has dulled Tom's sense of freedom, and his education have rendered his thoughts and actions mechanical, like the children of the "industrial school".
But Louisa is a lot more bold to her father and admits that curiosity drew her to have a look at the circus and trying to defend her brother by saying that she dragged Tom to the fence to have a look.
'I brought him, father,' said Louisa, quickly. 'I asked him to come.'
'I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time,' said Louisa.
'Tired? Of what?' asked the astonished father.
'I don't know of what - of everything, I think.'
The second lines of the quote suggest that Louisa is determined to break free of her fathers shackles of his philosophy on education, as she have been deprived of fantasy all of her life.
Gradgrind is almost embarrassed to see his children standing next to circus, as he despises all aspects of fantasy including the circus which was touched on in the second chapter. He asks angrily what Mr Bounderby would say, who we find out about in the next chapter.
'Say not another word,' returned Mr. Gradgrind. 'You are childish. I will hear no more.' He did not speak again until they had walked some half-a-mile in silence, when he gravely broke out with: 'What would your best friends say, Louisa? Do you attach no value to their good opinion? What would Mr. Bounderby say?' At the mention of this name, his daughter stole a look at him, remarkable for its intense and searching character. He saw nothing of it, for before he looked at her, she had again cast down her eyes!
'What,' he repeated presently, 'would Mr. Bounderby say?' All the way to Stone Lodge, as with grave indignation he led the two delinquents home, he repeated at intervals 'What would Mr. Bounderby say?' - as if Mr. Bounderby had been Mrs. Grundy.
In chapter four-Mr Bounderby, we have our first encounter of the wealthy, boastful who owns various factories and a bank. We find in the drawing room of Stone lodge telling Mrs. Gradgrind of his poverty-stricken childhood. He talks of his birth in a ditch and his mother abandoning him and how he was raised by a cruel alcoholic grandmother. He is a clearly covering up his real story and sexing it up, to make him look like an even more impressive person. At this point Gradgrind enters with his children and Gradgrind explains there actions. Mrs Gradgrind reacts as if they are a disgrace to the family.
'Dear me,' whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind. 'How can you, Louisa and Thomas! I wonder at you. I declare you're enough to make one regret ever having had a family at all. I have a great mind to say I wish I hadn't. Then what would you have done, I should like to know?'
Mrs Gradgrind scolds her children, which shows she uses the same philosophy as Gradgrind in education. But Louisa reacts to the comments and suggests that she did it because of the very philosophy. Louisa seems to be torn between a world of her upbringing and a deeper inner desire to experience imagination and feeling.
Gradgrind touches on the Sissy Jupe situation. The daughter of the circus entertainer who attends his school.
'Stop a bit!' cried Bounderby, who all this time had been standing, as before, on the hearth, bursting at the very furniture of the room with explosive humility. 'You have one of those strollers' children in the school.'
'Cecilia Jupe, by name,' said Mr. Gradgrind, with something of a stricken look at his friend.
It is obvious that Mr Bounderby shares the same the same love of fact as Gradgrind does and the same hatred for fantasy and entertainment. The two of them decide to inform Sissy's Father that she is no longer welcome at the school.
'Now I tell you what, Gradgrind!' said Mr. Bounderby. 'Turn this girl to the right about, and there's an end of it.'
Just before leaving, Gradgrind addresses his younger sons Adam Smith and Malthus. These children play no part in the novel but their names are relevant to dickens's themes. Adam Smith was a Scottish economist who produced the theory that the economy is controlled by an "Invisible hand" and that employers and workers do not control the fluctuations of supply and demand. The other name of Malthus was a economist who argued that poverty is a result of overpopulation and that the poor must have smaller families in order to improve the general standard of living in society. Both of these writers addressed poverty of mind and body that accompanies industrialization Through these two names, Dickens suggests that the philosophy of fact which Gradgrind subscribes and the deleterious social effects of the Industrial revolution are inextricably related.
'It's all right now, Louisa: it's all right, young Thomas,' said Mr. Bounderby; 'you won't do so any more. I'll answer for it's being all over with father. Well, Louisa, that's worth a kiss, isn't it?'
This quote at the end of the chapter sees Bounderby's obvious attraction towards Louisa, serving as the catalyst for the principal conflict in the novel.
