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Book 2 Chapter 11-12
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Amidst the thunder, the door to his study opens suddenly, and the storm-worn Louisa is standing before him: ”so colourless, so disheveled, so defiant and despairing, that he was afraid of her.” I found it quite telling that Louisa, for all her plight, is still defiant, which shows what a spirited and proud woman she is. Now, after she has sacrificed her own will in the vain hope of benefitting her brother, she comes back and tells her father that she curses the hour she was born to such a destiny. She reproaches her father with the education she has received through him, an education which stifled all sensibilities within her – or, at least, which was meant to make her do so. Mr. Gradgrind is apparently sincerely shocked at these revelations, and he says that he did not know that Louisa was unhappy. At the same time, however, he supports his daughter with his arm.
Louisa describes herself as growing up ”‘[w]ith a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a moment appeased; with an ardent impulse towards some region where rules, and figures, and definitions were not quite absolute; I have grown up, battling every inch of my way.’” and then gives an account of what happened when Mr. Harthouse stepped into her life:
”’Father, chance then threw into my way a new acquaintance; a man such as I had had no experience of; used to the world; light, polished, easy; making no pretences; avowing the low estimate of everything, that I was half afraid to form in secret; conveying to me almost immediately, though I don’t know how or by what degrees, that he understood me, and read my thoughts. I could not find that he was worse than I. There seemed to be a near affinity between us. I only wondered it should be worth his while, who cared for nothing else, to care so much for me.’
‘For you, Louisa!’
Her father might instinctively have loosened his hold, but that he felt her strength departing from her, and saw a wild dilating fire in the eyes steadfastly regarding him.
‘I say nothing of his plea for claiming my confidence. It matters very little how he gained it. Father, he did gain it. What you know of the story of my marriage, he soon knew, just as well.’
Her father’s face was ashy white, and he held her in both his arms.
‘I have done no worse, I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, father, that it may be so. I don’t know.’”
Thus it becomes obvious how Louisa’s mirthless upbringing and her utilitarian education contributed to her becoming more susceptible to the machinations of somebody like Harthouse. Mr. Gradgrind seems to realize that very quickly – surprisingly quickly, if you ask me, considering that he has spent the better part of his life running along the lines of his utilitarian mindset – and he seems ready to forgive and shelter his daughter while in his fainting daughter he sees ” the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system, lying, an insensible heap, at his feet.”
As I’ve already said, his conversion away from his usual mindset appeared to happen quite easily and quickly – which is strange considering that not even the death of his wife was able to make him stop and think for a minute.
On a trivial note, I’d like to say that the present-day situation made me misread the first sentence of the chapter in a very peculiar way. Instead of reading,
”THE national dustmen, after entertaining one another with a great many noisy little fights among themselves, had dispersed for the present, and Mr. Gradgrind was at home for the vacation.”
I read the last word as “vaccination”. Honestly!
Tristram wrote: "the rather casual way in which the narrator mentions Mr. Gradgind’s reaction to his wife’s death made me pity her lot of having been married to him even more..."A quote from a previous chapter said a lot about the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind, and made me incredibly sad for her:
You must remember, my dear, that whenever I have said anything, on any subject, I have never heard the last of it: and consequently, that I have long left off saying anything.
How belittled and dejected she must have felt.
Did I miss it? Where was Tom when his mother was on her deathbed and being buried? I don't think he was even mentioned.
It seems as if there's been a subtle shift in Tom. At first he came across as surly and entitled. Now he seems preoccupied and ... worried? guilty? depressed? I'm not sure, but I feel as if things have shifted and his edges are no longer as sharp as they once were. Not better; just not as sharp.
Things have shifted with Louisa, too.
Tristram said: "I found it quite telling that Louisa, for all her plight, is still defiant, which shows what a spirited and proud woman she is."
Was she defiant before? I saw her as defeated, depressed, and apathetic. She never stood up to her father before, but had a "what does it matter?" outlook on life. Now Harthouse has stirred things up, for better or for worse, and Louisa has found her voice. Too little, too late? The comment her mother made on her deathbed that I quoted above may have stirred something in her, but it's certainly also the revelation that there's more to life out there, but she's already set her course with Bounderby.
Re: Mr. Gradgrind's so quickly coming around to seeing Louisa's point of view, I agree, but attribute that to the change in her. It must have been so out of character that it really shook him up. But if I'm imagining a similar scene between me and one of my daughters, I admit that I'd probably not be so quick to question myself, but would assume it was her trauma talking. That's just human nature, I think.
Mrs. Sparsit certainly has sunk to new lows, hasn't she? She is quite literally obsessed, and I still don't know what's driving her. I hadn't considered it before, but I think you're absolutely right, Tristram. The chapter's title is much more about Mrs. Sparsit than Louisa.
Mary Lou wrote: "A quote from a previous chapter said a lot about the relationship between Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind, and made me incredibly sad for her: You must remember, my dear, that whenever I have said anything, on any subject, I have never heard the last of it: and consequently, that I have long left off saying anything.
How belittled and dejected she must have felt."
Agreed. It occurs to me that it's no surprise Louisa is Gradgrind's favorite child, because she clearly seems to take after her father more than her mother at least in energy of soul. Yes, as Mary Lou says, she has seemed "defeated, depressed, and apathetic" like her mother ever since her marriage, but I think that's less because she's given up her true nature than because she's kind of outsourced it to all those fires she's staring at all the time.
Maybe if Louisa had kept on without a Harthouse intervening she would eventually have been as worn-down as her mother--but I don't think so. For one thing, as bad as it would be to be married to Mr. Gradgrind, I think it would be worse to be married to Mr. Bounderby--especially if you only signed on to help out your useless brother who is obviously more useless every day despite your sacrifice. Louisa might have looked apathetic but I see her as a misguided crusader like her father, who has been burning up from within.
Tristram wrote: "Mr. Gradgrind seems to realize that very quickly – surprisingly quickly, if you ask me, considering that he has spent the better part of his life running along the lines of his utilitarian mindset"Mary Lou wrote: "Re: Mr. Gradgrind's so quickly coming around to seeing Louisa's point of view, I agree, but attribute that to the change in her."
Yes, I don't think this is realistic at all--but it is dramatic, especially in the middle of a storm like that. You might say the revelation hit him like a thunderclap. (Sorry.)
Tristram wrote: "which shows what a spirited and proud woman she is."I find it very impressive that inexperienced Louisa--who knows no men outside her family and must be like what, 18 years old?--has evaded the machinations of both Harthouse and Sparsit. She could have just said "what does it matter?" and run off to London, but she doesn't. I want to add "because she wants more for herself"--but I don't think that's true. The whole problem with Louisa is she's never been given an inkling that she might hope for anything more. I think it's instead because she wants to do the right thing, partly out of pride, even if she sees no hope in it. She may be one of my favorite Dickens characters.
Mod
A quote from a pr..."
I have no idea where Tom was during his mother’s last days of life or during her funeral. He is too much of a prop that comes on stage or exits the stage with little connection to anything. Perhaps he will serve a more concrete role in the remaining chapters.
Mod
Frequently, the female characters in Dickens novels are seen as being pale in comparison to the male characters. The more I think about it the more my impression is that Dickens’s female characters are more interesting than the male characters.
There is great psychological depth in the likes of Rosa Dartle, Lady Dedlock, Edith Dombey, her sister Alice and others. While more focus is put on such people as David Copperfield and the likes of Mr Dombey and Carker, there are many female characters who carry personal mysteries beyond the last words of many novels.
Mod
Frequently, the female characters in Dickens novels are seen as being pale in comparison to the male characters. The more I thin..."
Peter,
I have come round to that kind of thinking, too, by and by. While there are some rather one-dimensional female characters, such as Ruth Pinch, Little Nell, Esther and Ada, or Mary Graham, Dickens also offers us an Estella, a Miss Wade, a Caddy Jellyby, and those characters you listed, and what is more, he leaves it mostly to his readers to fathom the depths and intricacies of their inner souls. Our readings in the past few months have opened up a completely new vista into Dickens's works for me, which I had not really noticed before.
As to the question whatever would have happened to Louisa, if she had never met James Harthouse, I am in two minds: On the one hand, as Julie said, her not falling for the seductive powers of that cadger shows that she is indebted to herself and to her own notions of what is right, but on the other hand, Harthouse is the man who sparked some kind of emotion within her. Without this emotion, she might never have felt what it was exactly that was missing in her life. Maybe, she would have walked the path her mother did for such a long time that eventually even a disillusionment by Tom would not have made her rebel.
Seeking a separation from Mr. Bounderby is, indeed, an act of rebellation, especially for a girl her age and living in her day and age. Her turning to her father - of whom she could not be very sure to elicit some human response - shows that this is a step she does not dare go alone.
Apart from that, is not there a lot of irony in it that Mr. Bounderby, who berated Stephen for his question of how to get a separation from his wife, is now about to be a husband whose wife is going to separate from him? Or, after all, Louisa might not pull it through and return to him - who knows?
This week our reading schedule only covers two chapters, which made 13 pages in my Penguin edition, but still a lot of things happen in these two chapters. Chapter 11 is entitled “Lower and Lower”, and we might infer that it refers to Louisa. First of all, though, we learn that Mr. Gradgrind comes down from London when he is told of the death of his wife, and he ”buried her in a business-like manner.” Afterwards he returns ”with promptitude to the national cinder-heap”. When you come to think of it, it is very sad that a husband should not feel more emotional about the death and the funeral of his wife, and the rather casual way in which the narrator mentions Mr. Gradgind’s reaction to his wife’s death made me pity her lot of having been married to him even more.
In the meantime, Mrs. Sparsit keeps up her relentless watch on Louisa and Mr. Harthouse even though she spends the greater part of the week at the bank. When one day, Mr. Bounderby is called away on business for a couple of days, Mrs. Sparsit suspects that Louisa might in time arrive at the lowest step of her imaginary staircase, and so she sounds Tom as to Mr. Harthouse’s relation to Louisa and as to his whereabouts. Tom finally says that he is expecting Harthouse for the following day, the Saturday. She also asks Tom to tell Louisa that – contrary to Mr. Bounderby’s expectations, actually – she will not come down to the Bounderbys’ place for the weekend this time, which Tom in a rather impolite fashion agrees to do. As to Tom, he really seems to hide something or to have a bad conscience, or at least some kind of uneasiness about something as this passage implies:
”He had long been a down-looking young fellow, but this characteristic had so increased of late, that he never raised his eyes to any face for three seconds together.“
The next day, Mrs. Sparsit eagerly waits for the evening and then makes her way to the station, where she witnesses Tom waiting in vain for his friend Harthouse. Mrs. Sparsit concludes that this is a red herring, “’[…] a device to keep him [i.e. Tom, T.S.] out of the way […] Harthouse is with his sister now!” It is this certainty that gives wings to the jealous woman and makes her go to Bounderby’s country house, where she suspects Louisa and Harthouse to cuckold Mr. Bounderby. Not finding anyone in the house, she creeps into the garden, and the narrator describes it like this:
”She went up to the house, keeping within the shrubbery, and went round it, peeping between the leaves at the lower windows. Most of them were open, as they usually were in such warm weather, but there were no lights yet, and all was silent. She tried the garden with no better effect. She thought of the wood, and stole towards it, heedless of long grass and briers: of worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be. With her dark eyes and her hook nose warily in advance of her, Mrs. Sparsit softly crushed her way through the thick undergrowth, so intent upon her object that she probably would have done no less, if the wood had been a wood of adders.
Hark!
The smaller birds might have tumbled out of their nests, fascinated by the glittering of Mrs. Sparsit’s eyes in the gloom, as she stopped and listened.”
It’s marvellous how Dickens uses the idea of “worms, snails, and slugs, and all the creeping things that be” in order to associate the sneaking eavesdropper with a creeping kind of – I’d say – Reptile. Mrs. Sparsit here appears like a snake, which is even able to charm smaller birds into falling out of their nests, and the high grass that is mentioned is redolent of the phrase “snake in the grass”. One can note that in the course of this chapter, Mrs. Sparsit is surprised by a heavy thunderstorm – the rain and thunder themselves probably being symbols of further disorder – and that the narrator will again and again dwell on her becoming more and more soaked and dirty and dishevelled, but still she is so full of hatred and glee at the apparent proof of Louisa’s unfaithfulness that she does not seem to mind all that in the least. We readers, however, know that now has come the time when Mrs. Sparsit drops her mask of gentility and high breeding and shows herself in her true colours, which are rather dirty. Maybe the title of the chapter is more ambiguous in that the words “lower and lower” refer to Mrs. Sparsit, who is ready to stoop very low indeed in order to satisfy her malevolent curiosity.
Apparently, however, Mrs. Sparsit is quite correct in her assumptions about Mr. Harthouse, who is definitely making love to Louisa and tries to coax her into meeting him in private in the absence of her husband. How will Louisa decide? Mrs. Sparsit is quite sure of knowing the answer and when Louisa is seen by her leaving the house a little later, she anticipates that the young woman is going to leave her husband. Mrs. Sparsit follows Louisa to the station but later she eventually loses track of her – only we readers are treated to imaginative passages like this:
”The seizure of the station with a fit of trembling, gradually deepening to a complaint of the heart, announced the train. Fire and steam, and smoke, and red light; a hiss, a crash, a bell, and a shriek; Louisa put into one carriage, Mrs. Sparsit put into another: the little station a desert speck in the thunderstorm.”
Now all the fire and steam, and smoke, the hissing and crashing do not forebode very well for Louisa and they might even mirror the inner state of her mind; all this is, of course, grist to Mrs. Sparsit’s ghastly mill. At the end, however, that hate-fuelled spinster has to admit with tears of bitterness that she has lost Louisa, and this, too, might be read in more senses than only one.