Book 3 Chp. 06-09

[Tristram]

Dear Fellow Curiosities,

This week saw our last round of chapters from Hard Times, and we once again witness how Dickens ties his loose ends together and sees – nearly – every character out of the story. Some have had to leave earlier than others, though – and this is also the case in Chapter 6 of the Third Part, which bears the silvery title “The Starlight”. It begins on the Sunday after the revelation of Mr. Bounderby’s family affairs, and we accompany Rachael and Sissy, who met – whysoever – to walk in the country. As Coketown’s chimneys spoil the immediate countryside around it, they have to go by train for a few stations to find some unspoilt countryside to walk in, but even the place where they leave the train bears the marks of industrialization:

”They walked on across the fields and down the shady lanes, sometimes getting over a fragment of a fence so rotten that it dropped at a touch of the foot, sometimes passing near a wreck of bricks and beams overgrown with grass, marking the site of deserted works. They followed paths and tracks, however slight. Mounds where the grass was rank and high, and where brambles, dock-wee, and such-like vegetation, were confusedly heaped together, they always avoided; for dismal stories were told in that country of the old pits hidden beneath such indications.”

In one of these places, the two women find a hat which Rachael picks up and identifies as Stephen Blackpool’s property, his name being written on the inside. At first they think that maybe he has fallen victim to some highwaymen, but then they see ”the brink of a black ragged chasm hidden by the thick grass”, and they immediately realize that Stephen must have fallen into one of those abandoned and badly-secured pits. Sissy begs Rachael to remain at the opening of the pit while she herself rushes off to get some help, which gives me time to ask myself – and you Fellow Curiosities:

Is there any sort of pit, of misery, of humiliation, of dire strait that Stephen would not get himself into? A drunken wife, an unattainable love, being shunned by his fellow-workers and sacked by Bounderby, led down the garden path by the whelp and being suspected of a bank robbery, having to leave his hometown and to find a new job under a new name, slandered by Slackbridge, and now old Stephen falls into a deserted pit … and he loses his hat. But mind you! He never gets angry and thirsts for retribution, but he bears it all in a meek good spirit. I cannot really say that … but wait, Sissy is back!

Sissy has mustered some people for help. They say that the Old Hell Shaft – of course, Stephen would fall into a shaft with a bad reputation – has already taken quite a toll of human lives, and eventually they start their rescue measures for the person they have ascertained to be still alive. In the course of events, nearly all the important characters of the book are assembled in the place, i.e. Mr. Gradgrind, Mr. Bounderby and the whelp. When they finally retrieve Stephen, it goes like this:

”A low murmur of pity went round the throng, and the women wept aloud, as this form, almost without form, was moved very slowly from its iron deliverance, and laid upon the bed of straw. At first, none but the surgeon went close to it. He did what he could in its adjustment on the couch, but the best that he could do was to cover it. That gently done, he called to him Rachael and Sissy. And at that time the pale, worn, patient face was seen looking up at the sky, with the broken right hand lying bare on the outside of the covering garments, as if waiting to be taken by another hand.”

The “bed of straw” detail rang a bell in my mind, and my impression would become stronger when Stephen kept making references to a certain star – and then there is the title of the chapter, too. Now, Stephen asks Rachael to come near him and she does, and then Stephen gives quite a little monologue, and it stands to reason that he might have survived after all, had he not spent so much of his little strength on sermonizing and wasted so much time in doing so. But what he says, is probably essential to the message of the novel. Here are some bits:

”’ […] See how we die an’ no need, one way an’ another—in a muddle—every day! […]Thy little sister, Rachael, thou hast not forgot her. Thou’rt not like to forget her now, and me so nigh her. Thou know’st—poor, patient, suff’rin, dear—how thou didst work for her, seet’n all day long in her little chair at thy winder, and how she died, young and misshapen, awlung o’ sickly air as had’n no need to be, an’ awlung o’ working people’s miserable homes. A muddle! Aw a muddle! […]I ha’ seen more clear, and ha’ made it my dyin prayer that aw th’ world may on’y coom toogether more, an’ get a better unnerstan’in o’ one another, than when I were in ’t my own weak seln.’”

This is the gist of it all, but Stephen says a lot more, but – as the narrator points out –

”He faintly said it, without any anger against any one. Merely as the truth.“

Had he said it with a little more anger, he might have seemed more like a real person and less like a cardboard character – but then this would have played into the hands of trade unionism and turned the whole problem from a merely moral question into a social one.

Before Stephen dies, he also asks Mr. Gradgrind to clear his name of all vile suspicion connected with the bank robbery, and he tells the old man that his son will be able to tell him how to do this. But alas! the whelp, whom no one but Sissy has up to now paid any attention to, has suddenly absconded.

[Tristram]

The next chapter with the very promising title „Whelp-hunting“ takes up the action exactly where the last chapter left it. The narrator informs us that while Mr. Gradgrind had been speaking with the moribund Stephen, Sissy clandestinely gave Tom fair warning that it might be better to leave right now – a hint that the young man readily takes up. Sissy also told him, as we later learn, that he should take hiding in Mr. Sleary’s circus, which Sissy knows to be in the vicinity (Liverpool).

Mr. Gradgrind is glad that for the moment his son is out of the way but also worried as to getting him out of the country in time. He has become quite a different, a meeker man, all in all, as the text points out:

”Aged and bent he looked, and quite bowed down; and yet he looked a wiser man, and a better man, than in the days when in this life he wanted nothing—but Facts.”

The narrator seems to have taken a little bit of inspiration from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner here. It also finally dawns upon Mr. Gradgrind what Sissy has done for him and his family. Not only did she befriend Louisa and Mrs. Gradgrind and made Jane quite a different girl from what Louisa was at her age, but she also provided a hiding-place for Tom. In the text it says:

”He raised his eyes to where she stood, like a good fairy in his house, and said in a tone of softened gratitude and grateful kindness, ‘It is always you, my child!’”

Gradgrind and Louisa and Sissy set out for Sleary’s circus, the latter two directly, the former in a more roundabout way in order to distract potential pursuers, and – to cut a long story short – they find young Tom in the guise of a black servant. It is, in a way, quite ironic that Gradgrind’s son should be saved by those whom Old Gradgrind used to despise as being useless and even detrimental to common sense. It is also quite ludicrous that Tom had to dress up as a kind of clown, in moth-eaten and shabby clothes, and with black dye in his face – this is, after all, what a child brought up according to the Gradgrind system looks like in the end. Tom confesses to his crime and tells his father how he had committed it and how he used the opportunity chance gave him to pin the crime on Blackpool. All the while, the ungrateful wretch utterly ignores Louisa.

Sleary has already worked out a plan of how to get Tom safely out of the country when suddenly Bitzer arrives on the scene, out of breath with running:

”There he stood, panting and heaving, as if he had never stopped since the night, now long ago, when he had run them down before.”

He instantly collars Tom, like Mrs. Sparsit had collared Mrs. Pegler some chapters before. Let’s see if he is more lucky than his companion at the bank. But in order to do this …

[Tristram]

… we must turn over to another chapter, namely Chapter 8, which declares to become quite “Philosophical“. And it really does in two ways.

The first kind of philosophy we get is Mr. Gradgrind’s utilitarian brew, which appears in a rather vulgarized form in Bitzer – but probably so because that was the way that it was ladled out to the pupils at Gradgrind’s school. Here are some example of this kind of vulgar utilitarianism and of how Mr. Gradgrind, quite belatedly, is made to taste his own stale medicine:

”‘Bitzer,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, broken down, and miserably submissive to him, ‘have you a heart?’
‘The circulation, sir,’ returned Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the question, ‘couldn’t be carried on without one. No man, sir, acquainted with the facts established by Harvey relating to the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart.’
‘Is it accessible,’ cried Mr. Gradgrind, ‘to any compassionate influence?’
‘It is accessible to Reason, sir,’ returned the excellent young man. ‘And to nothing else.’“

A few seconds later, Bitzer explains to Mr. Gradgrind how his interests undubitably lie with Mr. Bounderby and how they were saved best by bringing Tom to heel and delivering him up to Mr. Bounderby. He then resumes:

”‘I beg your pardon for interrupting you, sir,’ returned Bitzer; ‘but I am sure you know that the whole social system is a question of self-interest. What you must always appeal to, is a person’s self-interest. It’s your only hold. We are so constituted. I was brought up in that catechism when I was very young, sir, as you are aware.’”

Mr. Gradgrind now at the very latest must realize what his teachings amount to, and the narrator bitterly adds, as though to mock the schoolmaster:

”It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.”

Of all people, however, it is none other but Mr. Sleary – whom the former Mr. Gradgrind would merely have despised – who saves the day. He feigns to being brought round to Bitzer’s point of view and offers Bitzer a coach to avoid public notice – but at the same time he has concocted a trick to get one over on Bitzer and to help Tom escape. The exact details of the plan and its execution can be read in Chapter 8.

Sleary later tells Mr. Gradgrind that not long ago, when they were performing in Chester, a dog came to him whom he recognized as Merrylegs. The dog was quite exhausted and died on the spot, and the appearance of this dog can be seen as a sign of Sissy’s father having died, too, for the dog would never have abandoned its master. Sleary also gives Mr. Gradgrind another bit of philosophy, something more Epicurean in a way:

“’[…] Don’t be croth with uth poor vagabondth. People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a working, they an’t made for it. […]’”

[Tristram]

And here we are in the last Chapter of the book, which is called “Final” and which Dickens uses to give us some information on what befell his major characters.

We learn that Mr. Bounderby gets rid of Mrs. Sparsit because he thinks that dismissing her from his household is the highest form of personal gratification he can get from her after all that has happened. There is a very funny altercation between the bully and the griffin, and at the end the griffin will go back into a much more modest and meanly life, with Lady Scadgers, with whom she will fight an endless battle. We also learn that Bitzer will rise in the firm, but that five years later, Mr. Bounderby will die of a stroke and leave a will that will cause a lot of litigation and ill-will. Strangely enough, we do not learn anything about Mrs. Pegler anymore.

Of Louisa we learn that she will never re-marry but be a good friend to Sissy and her family. Mr. Gradgrind will live on according to his newly-learned principles, and Tom, in his exile abroad, will quickly come to regret his base and thankless behaviour to his sister – just as Louisa anticipated – but his own premature death will put an end to his plans to pay her a visit.

Of Rachael we learn that after a long illness she resumes her old life of factory work and that she even does acts of kindness to Stephen’s alcoholic wife, who is generally despised. Her life is hard and full of work, but she is content to do her work and prefers to do it “as her natural lot”.

That’s all, folks. Not a lot of merriment this time, is there?

[Julie]

Tristram wrote: "Is there any sort of pit, of misery, of humiliation, of dire strait that Stephen would not get himself into? A drunken wife, an unattainable love, being shunned by his fellow-workers and sacked by Bounderby, led down the garden path by the whelp and being suspected of a bank robbery, having to leave his hometown and to find a new job under a new name, slandered by Slackbridge, and now old Stephen falls into a deserted pit … and he loses his hat. But mind you! He never gets angry and thirsts for retribution, but he bears it all in a meek good spirit. I cannot really say that … but wait, Sissy is back!"


This is like a cross between an old radio play and a poem and I enjoyed it very much.

[Julie]

Tristram wrote: "That’s all, folks. Not a lot of merriment this time, is there?"


Kind of particularly hard on Louisa and Rachael, if you ask me. Possibly my least favorite thing about Dickens is all the women sacrificed on the altar of "once I loved."

I felt the concluding dialogue between Bounderby and Sparsit did not disappoint, particularly this:

Mr. Bounderby, very red and uncomfortable, resumed:

‘It appears to me, ma’am, I say, that a different sort of establishment altogether would bring out a lady of your powers. Such an establishment as your relation, Lady Scadgers’s, now. Don’t you think you might find some affairs there, ma’am, to interfere with?’

‘It never occurred to me before, sir,’ returned Mrs. Sparsit; ‘but now you mention it, should think it highly probable.’

One thing I have always liked about this book: Stephen tells Gradgrind that he "ha’ made it my dyin prayer that aw th’ world may on’y coom toogether more, an’ get a better unnerstan’in o’ one another." I tend to think understanding will only get you so far, and is better supplemented by labor organizing--but it is still valuable and necessary and I would say the goal of this book: people need to understand there's a problem and Dickens wants to point it out.

ANYWAY--he wants people to be more involved and hits out not just at utilitarianism but at laissez faire--literally let it be--economics: Stephen tells Bounderby earlier "lettin alone will never do ’t." This gets (to me) powerfully echoed in the last section, with the repeated refrain "Such a thing was to be" picked up in the final words:

Dear reader! It rests with you and me, whether, in our two fields of action, similar things shall be or not. Let them be! We shall sit with lighter bosoms on the hearth, to see the ashes of our fires turn gray and cold.

I always admired the wordplay with which Dickens flips the direction to do nothing and "let it be" (don't interfere with the economy) into the imperative for "you and me" to intervene and act and "Let them be" to hit his thesis home.

[[deleted user]]

Tristram wrote: "That’s all, folks. Not a lot of merriment this time, is there?"

I must admit, I had a bit of an 'and that's it, they all die in the end'-feeling with this ending. I was even a bit angry at Dickens that Louisa did not find someone to truly love and who loved her in return, after all the things he let her go through for all of those thankless men in her life.

[Tristram]

Julie wrote: "This is like a cross between an old radio play and a poem and I enjoyed it very much."

Thanks a lot, Julie!

[Tristram]

Julie wrote: "Tristram wrote: "That’s all, folks. Not a lot of merriment this time, is there?"


Kind of particularly hard on Louisa and Rachael, if you ask me. Possibly my least favorite thing about Dickens is ..."

I never noticed the double meaning of those words "Let it be" in the context of the novel, but now you are pointing them out, they seem like a typically Dickensian play on words to me. What I still find very naive, however, is Stephen Blackpool's idea that people coming together and developing an understanding for each other - an idea, by the way, expressed in a dialect that is anything but understandable - will be a step towards the solution of labour disputes and that, by implication, trade unions are not necessary. On the whole, Hard Times seems like an extremely simplistic approach to the social questions linked with industrialization, e.g. by making Mr. Bounderby the epitome of everything that is despicable and unjust, and Stephen Blackpool the blueprint of integrity. Mrs. Gaskell was a much more astute analyst in that respect, wasn't she?

[Tristram]

Jantine wrote: "Tristram wrote: "That’s all, folks. Not a lot of merriment this time, is there?"

I must admit, I had a bit of an 'and that's it, they all die in the end'-feeling with this ending. I was even a bit..."

I agree. After Mr. Bounderby's death, Louisa would have been a widow and free to choose a new husband, and it's strange that Dickens denies her one because her heart was never in her first marriage, and so you could argue that it was still free and had not been given to another man. We all know that the Victorian lady only gave her heart away once in her life ;-)

Another question: Whatever happened to poor Mrs. Pegler?

[Mary Lou]

Tristram wrote: "Chapter 6 of the Third Part, which bears the silvery title “The Starlight”..."

To paraphrase the Festivus episode of Seinfeld, "I got a lot of problems with this chapter!"

Dickens likes his coincidences, but having Sissy and Rachael take a train to walk through the quarry or near the mine shaft, or whatever it may have been, didn't need to be one of them. Would it not have been just as effective to have them hear a commotion as they were having their morning tea and learn of Stephen's plight that way? Going to the trouble of getting on the train, and just so happening to find the hat and surmise what must have happened.... well, it's ludicrous.

This is my 3rd reading of Hard Times that I can recall, and one of the things I remember most each time is what Tristram pointed out about Stephen's death scene:

...it stands to reason that he might have survived after all, had he not spent so much of his little strength on sermonizing and wasted so much time in doing so.

Seriously. For the love of God, just die already! Had I been there, I might have poked him in the side with a spear myself. Sheesh.

[Mary Lou]

Tristram wrote: "The next chapter with the very promising title „Whelp-hunting“ ..."

For some reason I'd misremembered (is that a word?) Tom as hiding in plain sight by wearing clown make-up. Perhaps I'm mixing him up with Jimmy Stewart's character in "The Greatest Show on Earth". At any rate, perhaps the blackface is one reason that Hard Times hasn't been adapted by the BBC or assigned much in schools. Or maybe it's just because it's an inferior book.

Was anyone else surprised and disappointed that Sissy not only kept her mouth shut about Tom, but actively abetted in his escape? Okay... he didn't kill anybody, but he did steal from the bank and set up Stephen, which indirectly led to his death. Surely, even in a world with emotion and compassion, there should be retribution for such behavior. I suppose we can chalk it up to Sissy feeling gratitude and an obligation towards the Gradgrinds for taking her in. And from a literary standpoint, we all knew that Sleary and the circus troupe would have to make another appearance. I would have been less bothered if Tom had shown any remorse.

[Mary Lou]

Tristram wrote: "And here we are in the last Chapter of the book, which is called “Final” and which Dickens uses to give us some information on what befell his major characters...."

The only thing I really enjoyed in this wrap-up was the interaction between Sparsit and Bounderby. I love the English. They seem to be able to say the most cutting insults in the most charming, benign way. It's a delight to read such interactions.

As for the rest of the characters. Eh. Perhaps I would have a stronger opinion had I cared more. But they were all so 2-dimensional for me. Some were nice enough, some not, but I just didn't feel any real connection. It's a shame Dickens didn't use the bulk of the words he spent on Stephen's death speech to give us a fuller look at Rachael, for example. We know nothing about her. Why, for example, did she have Stephen make the promise to not get involved in the union? Kind of a pivotal plot point that isn't explored at all.

It's disappointing because we all know Dickens can do so much better than this. :-(

[Julie]

Mary Lou wrote: "At any rate, perhaps the blackface is one reason that Hard Times hasn't been adapted by the BBC or assigned much in schools."

It gets taught a lot--it's currently one of 6 Dickens novels available in a Norton Critical Edition for the classroom the others being Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Great Expectations, Bleak House, and Tale of Two Cities: https://wwnorton.com/catalog/college/...

I think Hard Times's place on the list is probably due to how short it is. You can fit one regular-length Victorian novel into a 10-week syllabus (and even then you will get a ton of complaints on your student evals), but if you pick Hard Times you can get in full works by 2 novelists, so you don't have to choose between say Dickens and Eliot/Hardy/a Bronte. So it's like a twofer.

[Julie]

Tristram wrote: "I agree. After Mr. Bounderby's death, Louisa would have been a widow and free to choose a new husband, and it's strange that Dickens denies her one because her heart was never in her first marriage, and so you could argue that it was still free and had not been given to another man. We all know that the Victorian lady only gave her heart away once in her life ;-)"

My sense is Harthouse came close enough to contaminate her pure heart. Bummer.

[Peter]

Tristram wrote: "Dear Fellow Curiosities,

This week saw our last round of chapters from Hard Times, and we once again witness how Dickens ties his loose ends together and sees – nearly – every character out of the..."

Yes. Stephen is a bit too much. Dickens did go overboard with Stephen’s saintly portrayal. It was also quite amazing that after no one else could find Stephen his hat makes an appearance for Sissy and Louisa and this leads them to the Hell that Stephen has fallen into.

I wish Stephan had some flaw, even a tiny one. If he did I would feel more sympathy for him than I do.

[Peter]

Tristram wrote: "Julie wrote: "Tristram wrote: "That’s all, folks. Not a lot of merriment this time, is there?"


Kind of particularly hard on Louisa and Rachael, if you ask me. Possibly my least favorite thing abo..."

This novel is too flaccid to be either a direct indictment of the trade union movement or attack on the factory owners.. Sadly, this is the only novel in which Dickens tackles the issues of unions in any meaningful way. I find that perplexing. Dickens was not a supporter of the titled, privileged, or upper classes and during the time of his writing career industrialism and all its ills were present. Still, Bounderby comes off as more of a buffoon than an evil factory owner. The labour organizers are equally reprehensible.

I think back to the Iron master Mr Rouncewell. He certainly was given a more favourable treatment than Bounderby. Bounderby is such a flat character. He has less interest than the cabbages he shared his alleged early life with in the gutter.

[Peter]

As Hard Times comes to an end I wonder what -if anything - Dickens was up to with his final portrayals of Bitzer and Tom. On the one hand, Bitzer is described as being very white, almost like an albino. On the other hand, Tom has been obliged to adopt a black face disguise. Are we meant to make anything of this?

And poor Louisa. Once having been lured to the brink of an affair she finds herself after the death of her husband a widow for the rest of her life. To what degree is this a self-punishment? Little Em’ly comes to mind. She too finds herself after her time with Steerforth as a woman consigned to the sidelines of life.

[Tristram]

Mary Lou wrote: "To paraphrase the Festivus episode of Seinfeld, 'I got a lot of problems with this chapter!'"

Actually, I was singing the praise of that very episode to a colleague of mine the other day.

As to Stephen's prolonged death scene, it does have something of the opera about it, doesn't it - there is this guy, lying on a stretcher and declaiming his life out of himself (with all the bystanders probably stealthily consulting their pocket watches and cudgelling their brains about a fib that would allow them to get out of there - à la George Costanza).

Rachel and Sissy stumbling over Stephen is indeed a striking coincidence, but it allows Dickens to build up the rescue passage in an admirably dramatic way.

[Tristram]

Mary Lou wrote: "It's a shame Dickens didn't use the bulk of the words he spent on Stephen's death speech to give us a fuller look at Rachael, for example. We know nothing about her. Why, for example, did she have Stephen make the promise to not get involved in the union?"

I think that Rachel was more or less a prop to help put some flesh on the bones of the Stephen character. The motive behind the promise would indeed have been interesting, all the more so as I think it needs explaining because without the promise Stephen would have had to take a stance on the union movement against a background of political reasoning, and this would have given the novel a more complex dimension, taking it from the realm of sentimentality and moralizing to the one of contrasting interests regardless of moral questions. In a way, it would also have forced Dickens himself to come clean about his own attitude towards unionism on the one hand and paternalism on the other. I would have liked to read about questions like these.

[Tristram]

Julie wrote: "Tristram wrote: "I agree. After Mr. Bounderby's death, Louisa would have been a widow and free to choose a new husband, and it's strange that Dickens denies her one because her heart was never in h..."

He most certainly did. Otherwise, Louisa would not have resorted to such a desperate measure as escaping to her father's.

[Tristram]

Peter wrote: "I wish Stephan had some flaw, even a tiny one."

You mean, apart from his being a dreadful bore? ;-)

[Tristram]

Peter wrote: "As Hard Times comes to an end i wonder what -if anything - Dickens was up to with his final portrayals of Bitzer and Tom. On the one hand, Bitzer is described as being very white, almost like an al..."

I saw Bitzer's paleness as a sign of his blood- and inner lifelessness as a product of the Gradgrindstone. In that context, I found it very ironic when he answers Mr. Gradgrind's question as to whether he had a heart by saying that of course, he had, because without circulation he would not be able to live. In fact, he is best proof of the contrary :-)