Hard Times

Louisa is a cautionary tale for her father and a tragic illustration of the tension between Women and Society. Louisa is unique among the novel’s female characters because she’s the only one who appears to have passed her father’s educational standards. For her entire life, she’s taught to reject the qualities often associated with women in the Victorian era, such as sentimentality, imagination, and whimsy. Instead, she’s raised to follow her father’s cold, practical, self-interested philosophy. However, it doesn’t turn her into an upstanding member of the community, as he hoped; instead, it turns her into an emotionless husk. She feels nothing, to the point that the suggestion to marry Bounderby (a man 30 years her senior) is meaningless to her. As she tells several people, including her father, she feels nothing. She takes no joy from life and fears that she’ll never be capable of feeling anything. Louisa isn’t entirely correct in her self-diagnosis; she feels the emotions fear, anxiety, and sadness strongly. Her problem isn’t that she can’t feel; her problem, learned from her father, is that she lacks the capacity to engage with the more positive parts of existence—to process and express emotions positively. She can’t love, she can’t enjoy herself, and whenever she faces a decision, she can’t do anything but focus on the practical facts that are so important to Gradgrind. As a result, life seems to her an unending parade of numb misery.

The most obvious example of Louisa’s capacity to feel is her relationship with Tom. Although Louisa recognizes Tom’s many flaws, she can’t help but empathize with him. Of all the people in the world, he’s perhaps the only one who understands what their father did to them. Even the students in Gradgrind’s school had some reprieve from his philosophy when they went home. For Tom and Louisa, every moment of every day was an education in a set of beliefs and values that made their lives miserable. Louisa is willing to forgive Tom for anything. She indulges his vices and helps him when he accumulates large gambling debts, going so far as to marry Bounderby to help Tom. In this relationship, Tom isn’t an innocent victim. He manipulates Louisa by playing on her emotions, making her feel guilty for not helping him. Even as he’s leaving the country, he blames Louisa for not helping him enough. His emotional manipulation of Louisa is evidence—if nothing else—that she does feel emotions.

Louisa is the novel’s most tragic figure because she lacks the capacity to change. Gradgrind and Tom are both more villainous than Louisa but are able to reform themselves. Gradgrind has other children whose lives he doesn’t need to ruin, and Tom writes to Louisa from abroad, acknowledging his errors. Louisa must live with herself. She never remarries, and the only real emotions that she experiences are those she vicariously feels through Sissy’s children. These children love Louisa, but she never has an opportunity to have her own children and raise them in a way that rebukes her childhood. Instead, the rest of her story functions as a cautionary tale for the role of women in Victorian society. Estranged from her husband, lacking access to mental health facilities, and unable to access the power or privilege afforded to men in a patriarchal society, she’s pushed to the fringes and must live her life through other people’s children.

Like Louisa, Tom reveals the tragic consequences of his father’s beliefs. Like his sister, he was raised to follow his father’s utilitarian philosophy. While this drove Louisa into a deep unhappiness, Tom reacted differently. He was filled with a sense of self-loathing that he could address only through disruptive, rebellious acts. He drinks, smokes, and gambles in defiance of his father’s societal status. Tom’s scandalous behavior is unique in that he’s one of the few people who completely abandon any pretense of morality when given the option. He gambles himself into debt and then relies on his sister to either marry a rich man or sell her jewelry to help him out of his debts. Rather than teaching his son responsibility, Gradgrind’s influence on Tom was one of pure self-interest. Tom does whatever makes him happy in any given moment. Because his upbringing filled him with self-loathing, he lacks the capacity to express his emotions maturely, so he indulges his vices and urges instead. As a result, he’s selfish, manipulative, and dishonest.

Tom’s greatest crime isn’t robbing the bank but framing Blackpool for the robbery. Rather than accepting responsibility for the crime, Tom decides to pin the blame on an honest, vulnerable man. Blackpool is everything that Tom isn’t. He’s honorable and proud, even if he’s not always able to be the man he wants to be. He feels ashamed for wanting to divorce his wife and marry Rachael; these are feelings of guilt and shame that would never cross Tom’s mind. Even when Tom is revealed as the real criminal, he doesn’t take responsibility for his actions. Assisted by his family, he flees the country. Even though his family helps him, he still blames them. He notes that he’ll be miserable anywhere in the world because his father’s influence will never leave him, while he repeatedly accuses Louisa of not doing enough to help him. Tom departs the country in scandal; he faces the consequences of his actions, but only later, while dying far away, does he accept responsibility. He apologizes to Louisa and allows her to escape her guilt. Notably, however, he doesn’t excuse his father. Tom never escapes his father’s influence and never stops blaming him, right up until the moment of his death.

Sissy is one of the few working-class characters portrayed in Hard Times. Unlike the tragic life of Stephen Blackpool, Sissy’s role in the story is to provide a counterpoint to the philosophy of men who are far wealthier and far more powerful than she is. She comes from a poor family. Raised by her father and others at the circus, she learned the importance of community and charity at a young age. Everyone who works in the circus is poor, but they help one another as best they can. In school, she’s taught the curriculum developed by men like Gradgrind and Bounderby, which emphasizes self-interest above all else and shuns the whimsy, imagination, and sentimentality that she treasures. Sissy can never quite abandon her own worldview as others do. In her discussions with Louisa, she reveals that her poor record at school isn’t due to her lack of intelligence. Her critiques of societal inequality are poignant and well-reasoned even if they lack the right tone or academic language. Instead, however, she’s criticized for not internalizing the school’s philosophy. Despite this, Gradgrind permits her to work in his home. He views this as an act of charity toward a girl who will never succeed at anything because she failed to learn the lessons that he believes she must.

Sissy’s true success is retaining her identity despite the world around her. She doesn’t learn Gradgrind’s lessons at school but carves out a place for herself in society nonetheless—and plays an important role in raising his youngest children. As Gradgrind’s world crumbles and Louisa informs him that she wishes she’d never been born, Gradgrind reckons with the consequences of his beliefs. He realizes that Louisa suffered because of what he did to her. In stark contrast, his younger children benefit from Sissy’s influence. She imbues them with the wonder and imagination that he drove out of Louisa. Sissy’s compassion, emotional intelligence, and empathy are the natural counterpoint to a flawed utilitarian worldview built on self-interest. By retaining her self-identity as the characters around her suffer, Sissy quietly emerges as one of the novel’s smartest, most well-rounded figures.