by Charles Dickens, 1854
It was good to read a classic again, but this one was more difficult than other Dickens novels. Here’s an example from Chapter 9, Final: “It is a dangerous thing to see anything in the sphere of a vain blusterer, before the vain blusterer sees it himself. Mr. Bounderby felt that Mrs. Sparsit had audaciously anticipated him, and presumed to be wiser than he. Inappeasably indignant with her for her triumphant discovery of Mrs. Pegler, he turned this presumption, on the part of a woman in her dependent position, over and over in his mind, until it accumulated with turning like a great snowball. At last he made the discovery that to discharge this highly connected female-to have it in his power to say, “She was a woman of family, and wanted to stick to me, but I wouldn’t have it, and got rid of her”-would be to get the utmost possible amount of crowning glory out of the connexion, and at the same time to punish Mrs. Sparsit according to her deserts.”
The city of Coketown is the setting. It’s an industrial town, covered in black smoke and noise, and the laboring class works all day, every day but Sunday, at machines. A weaver, Stephen Blackpool, is good-hearted, hard-working, but is mistreated and misunderstood and wrongly blamed for a crime he did not commit. There is a family headed by a Mr. Gradgrind, who believes only in facts, and his children are raised to not have any wonder or joy. Louisa grows up and is forced to marry Mr. Bounderby, a blustering fool of a man who owns the factories. He’s about 20 years her senior. Her brother, young Thomas Gradgrind, grows up to be a “whelp.” He loves no one but himself, and amasses gambling debts that he expects his sister to pay. He’s the one who arranges a theft of Bounderby’s money and has it blamed on innocent Stephen Blackpool. In the end, all is made right. The good guys win, the bad guys lose or repent.
Here’s where Stephen Blackpool is found lying at the bottom of a coal shaft, he was on his way back to prove his innocence, and he is discovered by sweet Sissy and Rachael, the love of his life, and rescued just in time to clear his name, without pointing fingers, and die. Here’s the end of that chapter: “They carried him very gently along the fields, and down the lanes, and over the wide landscape; Rachael always holding the hand in hers. Very few whispers broke the mournful silence. It was soon a funeral procession. The star had shown him where to find the God of the poor; and through humility, and sorrow, and forgiveness, he had gone to his Redeemer’s rest.”
It’s a beautiful tale about what is really good in life (nature, and light and air, and loving and caring for one another, and integrity). Contrast that with the evils of this world – dishonesty, pollution, injustice, greed, darkness. The father, Mr. Gradgrind, realizes late in life the harm he did to his children not letting them have any joy or wonder, only facts. Sissy, the circus girl he adopts when her father abandons her, is the first hint that there is a better way of life than just facts. She saves the day, in the end.
I love Charles Dickens!