Thomas Gradgrind, in the novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens, is a
man who lives his entire life according “fact”. Fact is
his religion, his god, and his form of worship. Gradgrind, ascribing
to a philosophy known as Utilitarianism, believes that no good can
come to a community unless everyone in the community lives, thinks,
and behaves according to reason and logic. Thomas Gradgrind is a
pompous, wealthy man living in a grim factory town who has enough
money and prestige to get away with believing just about anything he
wants. In the first chapter Gradgrind is visiting the grammar school
he has just established as an institution to teach children facts and
is espousing his philosophy: “You can only form the minds of
reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any
service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own
children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these
children.” (Dickens)1
Gradgrind asks one young woman, Sissy Jupe, to define a horse and she
is unable to do so by fact alone. This scene in chapter two sets up
the tension of the entire novel: Thomas Gradgrind and facts vs. Sissy
Jupe, the child raised on the imagination and fancy of circus life.
When, through roundabout circumstances, Sissy Jupe comes to live with
the Gradgrinds, Thomas Gradgrind unknowingly introduces this tension
into the most intimate part of his life, the family. Sissy begins to
play a part in the lives of Thomas Gradgrind’s children and
does so even after she is removed from school for not conforming. Mr.
Bounderby, friend of Gradgrind and the hopeful husband of Gradgrind’s
daughter Louisa, worries that sissy may have a bad effect on Louisa.
Chapter eight brings the first overt mention of unhappiness in the
Gradgrind’s home, Stone Lodge. Louisa and her Brother are both
bored with the monotony of the life their father has taught them, and
tom finds solace only in the fact that his sister cares for him.
Louisa begins to wonder what is missing from her life and is
chastised by her mother not to wonder because it contradicts the
philosophy of facts. Though a growing friendship with Sissy, Louisa
begins to experience emotions through hearing about sissy’s
life. Chapter 10 introduces the reader to another cold side of
Utilitarian factory life, when the character of Steven Blackpool is
introduced. At first, Blackpool seems to have little relevance to the
Thomas Gradgrind, but when Blackpool is fired from his job and
chooses to leave town, Tom frames him for robbing Bounderby’s
bank. Eventually, Gradgrind asks his daughter to marry Bounderby and
Louisa aggress, choosing to look at the marriage as a logical
arrangement despite Bounderby’s attempt to sway her affections.
As Louisa falls in love with another man, she realizes the
predicament her father’s philosophy of facts has put her in. In
chapter twelve Louisa goes to her father and confesses her regret for
her childhood and tell him that his adhesion to facts, and
conditioning her to facts, has ruined her. Gradgrind is shocked by
her confession and filled with self-loathing. When Gradgrind sees how
his philosophy of fact has ruined his daughter he begins to reform.
Gradgrind confesses “The only support on which I leaned, and
the strength of which it seemed, and still does seem, impossible to
question, has given way in an instant.” (Dickens) As a
testament to how much Gradgrind is changed by the night Lousia comes
to him, when he speaks with her later he would rather see a flood of
emotions than reasonable behavior. “Her father was changed in
nothing so much as in the respect that he would have been glad to see
her in tears.” (Dickens) Sissy alone has the ability to wonder
and imagine, and as she nurses Louisa back to health she helps her
see beyond fact.
The healing begins to take place in chapter one of the third book.
The title of this chapter is a symbol of how Gradgrind has changed.
The title, “Another Thing Needful,” is directly parallel
to the title of the first chapter, “The One Thing Needful,”
indicating that Gradgrind is growing to accept the fact that fact
alone is not enough for a human to believe in. When Tom is discovered
to be the real bank robber, Gradgrind Sr. finds Tom among the circus
people. In the final scene of tension in the novel, the action rests
between the original parties- the circus, symbolic of imagination and
fancy, and the Bitzer, the student of chapter one who defined a horse
to the satisfaction of Mr. Gradgrind and who represents years of
school of facts and logic. Mr. Gradgrind appeals to Bitzer to forget
his schooling and have mercy on Tom, but having been corrupted by an
education of fact, Bitzer refuses to make an exception: “What
you must always appeal to, is a person's self-interest. It's your
only hold… I was brought up in that catechism when I was very
young, sir, as you are aware.” (Dickens) Mr. Gradgrind is
unable to break Bitzer of his schooling of facts and it is only by
the creative work of the circus that tom can be spared and enabled to
escape. In the end, it is not Gradgrind alone that suffers the worst
consequence of his philosophy, but his daughter Louisa. Although
Louisa is able to partially relive he childhood through interacting
with Sissy’s children, Louisa never again marries or has a
family of her own. Although Gradgrind’s philosophy of fact
nearly ruined himself and his family, he is saved from total ruin by
the fact that he was able to recognize his error and though he could
never completely correct it, he was able to somewhat repair his
relationship with his daughter and experience something of the
relationship they could have had all along.
Works Cited
Dickens, Charles. “The Project Gutenberg Etext of Hard Times,
by Charles Dickens.” Jan. 1997. Project Gutenberg. 8 Dec. 2003.
<http://ibiblio.org/gutenberg/hardt10.txt>
1
I used the online edition of the text, since it is easier to locate
and transcribe quotes. DB told me to cite online books as web
pages, so that is why there are no page numbers.
