So, I demand facts. Teach these boys and girls only facts. Life requires only facts. Plant nothing else and uproot everything else. The mind of a thinking animal can only be formed with the help of facts; nothing else benefits it. Here is the theory by which I raise my children. Here is the theory by which I bring up these children. Stick to the facts, sir!
The action took place in an uncomfortable, cold classroom with bare walls, like a crypt, and the orator emphasized each of his utterances for greater imposingness, running a square finger along the sleeve of the teacher. No less impressive than the speaker's words was his square forehead, which rose like a sheer wall above the foundation of the eyebrows, and under its canopy, in the dark spacious cellars, as if in caves, the eyes comfortably settled down. The orator's mouth was also impressive - large, thin-lipped and hard; and the speaker's voice is firm, dry and authoritative; his bald head was also impressive, with hair bristling along the edges like Christmas trees planted to protect its glossy surface from the wind, dotted with bumps like the crust of a sweet pie - as if the stock of indisputable facts no longer fit in the skull. An inflexible posture, a square frock coat, square legs, square shoulders - what's there! - even the tightly tied tie, which held the speaker tightly by the throat as the most obvious and irrefutable fact - everything about him was impressive.
- In this life, sir, we need facts, only facts!
All three adults - the speaker, the teacher, and the third person present - stepped back and looked around at the little vessels arranged in orderly rows on an inclined plane, ready to receive gallons of facts with which they were to be filled to the brim.
Chapter II
Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of sober mind. A man of obvious facts and precise calculations. A person who proceeds from the rule that twice two is four, and not one iota more, and will never agree that it could be otherwise, better and do not try to convince him. Thomas Gradgrind, sir - that's Thomas - Thomas Gradgrind. Armed with a ruler and scales, with a multiplication table in his pocket, he is always ready to weigh and measure any sample. human nature and unmistakably determine what it equals. It's just counting numbers, sir, pure arithmetic. You can console yourself with the hope that you will be able to drive some other, absurd concepts into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (imaginary, non-existent faces), but not into the head of Thomas Gradgrind, oh no , sir!
With these words, Mr. Gradgrind used to mentally recommend himself to a small circle of acquaintances, as well as to the general public. And, no doubt, in the same words - replacing the address "sir" with the address "pupils and pupils", - Thomas Gradgrind mentally introduced Thomas Gradgrind to the vessels sitting in front of him, into which it was necessary to pour as much as possible more facts.
He stood, menacingly flashing at them with his eyes hidden in the caves, as if a cannon stuffed with facts to the very mouth, ready to knock them out of their childhood with one shot. Or a galvanic device charged with a soulless mechanical force which should replace the tender childish imagination scattered to dust.
"Pupil number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind, pointing his square finger at one of the schoolgirls. - I don't know this girl. Who is that girl?
“Sessie Jupe, sir,” answered student number twenty, blushing with embarrassment, jumping to her feet and crouching.
- Sessy? There is no such name,” said Mr. Gradgrind. - Don't call yourself Sessy. Call yourself Cecilia.
“My papa calls me Sissy, sir,” the girl answered in a trembling voice, and sat down again.
"He shouldn't call you that," said Mr. Gradgrind. - Tell him not to do it. Cecilia Jupe. Wait a minute. Who is your father?
- He's from the circus, sir.
Mr. Gradgrind frowned and waved his hand in dismissal of such a reprehensible trade.
We don't want to know anything about this. And never say that here. Your father, right, rides horses? Yes?
- Yes, sir. When horses are obtained, they are circled in the arena, sir.
“Never mention the arena here. So, call your father a bereytor. He must be treating sick horses?
- Of course, sir.
- Excellent, so your father was a horseman - that is, a veterinarian - and a bereytor. Now, what is a horse?
(Sessie Jupe, terrified to death by this question, was silent.)
- Student number twenty does not know what a horse is! said Mr. Gradgrind, addressing all the vessels. - Student number twenty does not have any facts about one of the most ordinary animals! Let's hear what the students know about the horse. Bitzer, tell me.
The square finger, moving back and forth, suddenly stopped on Bitzer, perhaps only because the boy was in the path of that ray of sunlight, which, breaking into the uncurtained window of a heavily whitewashed room, fell on Sessie. For the inclined plane was divided into two halves: on one side of the narrow passage, closer to the windows, the girls were placed, on the other, the boys; and a ray of the sun, with one end touching Sessie, who was sitting at the last in her row, with the other end illuminated Bitzer, who occupied the last seat several rows ahead of Sessie. But the girl's black eyes and black hair shone even brighter in sunshine, and the whitish eyes and whitish hair of the boy, under the influence of the same beam, seemed to have lost the last traces of the colors released to him by nature. The boy's empty, colorless eyes would have been barely noticeable on his face, if not for the short stubble of darker lashes that bordered them. His short hair was the same color as the yellowish freckles that covered his forehead and cheeks. And the painfully pale skin, without the slightest trace of a natural blush, involuntarily suggested that if he cut himself, not red, but white blood would flow.
“Bitzer,” said Thomas Gradgrind, “explain there is a horse.
- Quadruped. Herbivore. Forty teeth, namely: twenty-four molars, four eye and twelve incisors. Sheds in spring; in swampy areas it also changes its hooves. The hooves are hard, but require iron horseshoes. Age is known by the teeth. - All this (and much more) Bitzer blurted out in one breath.
“Pupil number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “now you know what a horse is.
Sessie crouched down again and would have flared up even more brightly, if possible - her face was already on fire. Bitzer, blinking both eyes at Thomas Gradgrind at once, making his eyelashes flutter in the sun like the tendrils of fussy bugs, tapped his freckled forehead with his knuckles, and sat down.
A third gentleman stepped forward. Great master ill-conceived decisions, a government official with the habits of a fist fighter, always on the alert, always ready to forcibly shove down the public throat - like a huge pill containing a fair dose of poison - another daring project; always fully armed, loudly challenging all of England from his little office. To put it in boxing terms, he was always in excellent shape, wherever and whenever he entered the ring, and did not shun forbidden tricks. He angrily pounced on everything that opposed him, hit first with his right, then with his left, parried blows, inflicted oncoming blows, pressed the enemy (all of England!) To the ropes and confidently knocked him down. He so cleverly overturned common sense that he fell dead and could no longer get up in time. This gentleman has been entrusted with the mission of the highest authority - to hasten the coming of the millennium, when officials will rule the world from their all-embracing office.
"Excellent," said the gentleman, crossing his arms over his chest and smiling approvingly. - That's what a horse is. And now, children, answer my question: would any of you paste pictures of a horse in a room?
After a short silence, one half shouted "yes, sir!" in unison. But the other half, guessing from the gentleman's face that "yes" is not true, according to the custom of all schoolchildren, unanimously shouted "no, sir!"
- Of course not. And why?
Silence. Finally, one fat, slow-moving boy, apparently suffering from shortness of breath, dared to answer that he would not have wallpapered the walls at all, but would have painted them.
“But you must paste over them,” said the gentleman sternly.
“You have to paste over them,” agreed Thomas Gradgrind, “whether you like it or not.” And don't say you wouldn't paper the room. What is this news?
“I shall have to explain to you,” said the gentleman, after another long and painful pause, “why you would not paste pictures of a horse over the room. Have you ever seen horses walk up and down a wall? Are you aware of this fact? Well?
- Yes, sir! - shouted one.
- No, sir! others shouted.
“Of course not,” said the gentleman, casting an indignant glance at those who were shouting yes. “And you should never see what you don't really see, and you should never think about what you don't really have. The so-called taste is just the recognition of a fact.
Thomas Gradgrind indicated his complete agreement with a nod of his head.
- This new principle, a great discovery," continued the gentleman. Now I'll ask you one more question. Let's say you want to spread a carpet in your room. Would any of you lay a carpet with flowers on it?
By this time the whole class had already firmly believed that a gentleman's questions should always be answered in the negative, and the unanimous "no" sounded loud and harmonious. Only a few voices timidly, belatedly, answered yes, among them the voice of Sessy Jupe.
“Apprentice number twenty,” said the gentleman, smiling condescendingly from the height of his indisputable wisdom.
Sissy stood up, crimson with embarrassment.
- So, would you cover the floor in your room or in your husband's room - if you were a grown woman and you had a husband - with images of flowers? asked the gentleman. - Why would you do it?
“Because, sir, I love flowers very much,” answered the girl.
“And would you put tables and chairs on them and let them be trampled on with heavy shoes?”
- I'm sorry, sir, but it wouldn't hurt them. They wouldn't break or wither, sir. But they would be reminded of what is very beautiful and cute, and I would imagine ...
- Exactly, exactly! exclaimed the gentleman, very pleased to have achieved his goal so easily. - There is no need to imagine. This is the whole point! Never try to imagine.
"See, Cecilia Jupe," said Thomas Gradgrind, frowning, "that it won't happen again."
- Facts, facts and facts! said the gentleman.
“Facts, facts, facts,” echoed Thomas Gradgrind.
“You must always and in everything be guided by facts and obey facts,” continued the gentleman. - We hope in the near future to establish a ministry of facts, where the officials will be in charge of the facts, and then we will force the people to be a people of facts, and only facts. Forget the very word "imagination". It is of no use to you. All household items or decorations that you use must strictly correspond to the facts. You don't trample on real flowers, so you shouldn't trample on flowers woven on a carpet. Overseas birds and butterflies do not sit on your dishes - therefore, you should not paint it with overseas flowers and butterflies. It does not happen that tetrapods walk up and down the walls of the room - therefore, it is not necessary to paste over the walls with images of tetrapods. Instead of all this, - concluded the gentleman, - you should use combinations and modifications (in the primary colors of the spectrum) of geometric figures, visual and provable. This is the latest great discovery. This is the recognition of a fact. This is the taste.
Sissy sat down again and sank into her seat. She was still very young, and, apparently, the picture of the future realm of facts seriously frightened her.
“And now, Mr. Gradgrind,” said the gentleman, “if Mr. Chadomore is ready to give his first lesson, I will be glad to comply with your request and become acquainted with his method.”
Mr. Gradgrind expressed his deepest gratitude.
- Mr Chadomor, please.
So the lesson began, and Mr. Chadomor showed his best side. He was one of those school teachers of which, in the amount of one hundred and forty pieces, were recently made at the same time, in the same factory, according to the same model, just like a batch of piano legs. He was driven through a myriad of exams and answered countless puzzling questions. Spelling, etymology, syntax and prosody, astronomy, geography and general cosmography, rule of three, algebra and geodesy, singing and drawing from nature - he knew all this like his five cold fingers. His path was thorny, but he reached list B, approved Privy Council Her Majesty, and joined the higher mathematics and physical sciences, learned French, German, Greek and Latin. He knew everything about all the watersheds of the world (no matter how many there were), knew the history of all peoples, the names of all rivers and mountains, the customs and customs of all countries and what they produce in which, the borders of each of them and the position relative to the thirty-two points of the compass. Isn't that too much, Mr. Chadomore? Oh, if he knew a little less, how much better he could teach immeasurably more!
In this first introductory lesson, he followed the example of Morgiana in the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves - namely, he began by looking in turn into all the jugs placed in front of him in order to familiarize himself with their contents. Tell me honestly, dearest Chadomor: are you sure that every time you fill a vessel to the brim with a boiling mixture of your knowledge, the robber lurking at the bottom - a child's imagination - will be immediately killed? Or can it happen that you only cripple and mutilate him?
Chapter III
Mr. Gradgrind went home from school in excellent spirits. This is his school, and he will make it exemplary. Every child in this school will be as exemplary a child as the young offspring of Mr. Gradgrind himself.
There were five young offspring, and every one of them could serve as models. They began to enlighten them from the most tender age; chased like young hares. As soon as they learned to walk without assistance, they were forced to go to the classroom. The first object that appeared in their field of vision and deeply engraved in their memory was a large blackboard on which scary ogre drew ominous white signs.
Of course, the offspring did not suspect the existence of the Ogre, and they had never even heard such a name. God forbid! I'm just using the word to describe a monster with a myriad of heads crammed into one that kidnaps children and drags them by the hair into the statistical cages of its dark castle of learning.
None of the young Gradgrinds ever said that the moon smiled: they knew all about the moon before they could talk. None of them ever babbled a stupid rhyme: “A star lit up in the sky, but where did you come from?” - and none of them ever asked themselves such a question: five years old they already knew how to dissect the Big Dipper as well as Professor Owen and drive the star Cart, like a machinist drives a train. Not one of the juvenile Gradgrinds, seeing a cow in a meadow, remembered the well-known hornless cow that kicked an old dog without a tail, which pats a cat by the collar that scares and catches a tit, or about that famous cow that swallowed a boy with a finger; they knew absolutely nothing about these celebrities, and for them the cow was only a herbivorous ruminant quadruped with several stomachs.
So Mr. Gradgrind, very pleased with himself, walked to his house - a true storehouse of facts - called Stone Lodge. He built this house after he retired from his wholesale trade hardware, and was now waiting for an opportunity to increase the sum of the units that make up Parliament. Stone Shelter stood on a wasteland a mile and a half from big city, which in this reliable guide is called "Cokestown".
Stone Shelter was a very distinct feature of the terrain. No subterfuge softened or obscured this undisguised detail of the landscape - it asserted itself as an inexorable and indisputable fact: a large, box-like two-story building with a massive colonnade that obscured the lower windows, like thick hanging eyebrows obscured the eyes of its owner. Everything is calculated, everything is calculated, weighed and verified. Six windows on one side of the door, six on the other; total on the facade twelve in the right wing, twelve in the left and, accordingly, twenty-four in the back wall. A lawn, a garden, and the beginnings of an alley, lined up like a botanical account book. Gas lighting, fans, sewerage and plumbing - all flawless devices. Staples and iron braces - a full guarantee against fire; there are mechanical lifts for the maids with their mops, rags and brushes; In other words, everything you could wish for.
Is that all? Apparently so. Underage Gradgrinds are provided with benefits for all kinds of scientific studies. They have a small conchological collection, a small metallurgical collection, and a small mineralogical collection; the samples of minerals and ores are laid out in the strictest order and provided with labels, and they seem to have been chipped from the parent rock by their own puzzling names. And if all this was not enough for the young Gradgrinds, then what else, pray tell, did they need?
Their parent returned home slowly, in the most iridescent and good mood. He loved his children in his own way, was a tender father, but himself (if he, like Sessie Joop, were required exact definition) would probably call himself "in the highest degree practical father. In general, he was extremely proud of the expression "highly practical", which was especially often applied to his person. Whatever public meeting took place at Cockestown, and whatever was discussed at that meeting, one could be sure that one of the speakers would certainly take the opportunity to mention his eminently practical friend Gradgrind. A practical friend invariably listened to it with pleasure. He knew that he was only being paid tribute, but it was still pleasant.
He had already reached the outskirts of Coxtown and stepped on neutral ground, in other words, he found himself in an area that was neither city nor village, but possessed the worst qualities of both city and village, when the sounds of music reached his ears. The drums and trumpets of the traveling circus, which had settled here, in a wooden booth, played with all their might. The flag fluttering from the tower of this temple of art announced to the whole world that none other than the "Sleary Circus" claims to the favorable attention of the public. Slery himself, placing a cash box beside him, settled down - like a monumental contemporary sculpture- in a booth, reminiscent of a niche in the early Gothic cathedral, and accepted the entrance fee. Miss Josephine Slery, as one could read on the very long and narrow posters, opened the program with her crowning number - "Equestrian Tyrolean Dance of Flowers." Among other amusing, but invariably strictly decent miracles - which must be seen with one's own eyes to be believed - the poster promised a performance by Signor Jupa and his excellently trained dog Veselchak. In addition, the famous "iron fountain" will be shown - best number signora Jupa, consisting in the fact that seventy-five quintals of iron, thrown upwards by his mighty hand, rise in a continuous stream into the air - a number the like of which has not yet happened either in our country or abroad, and which, due to the unchanging and frenzied success the public cannot be withdrawn from the program. The same Signor Jupe "in the intervals between the numbers will enliven the performance with moral jokes and witticisms in the spirit of Shakespeare". Finally, Signor Jupe will play his favorite part, that of Mr. William Button of Tooley Street in "a highly original and splendid hippo deville, The Tailor's Journey to Brentford."
Thomas Gradgrind, of course, did not even look at this vulgar fuss and proceeded on, as befits a practical person, trying to brush aside the noisy two-legged boogers and mentally sending them to jail. But a turn in the road brought him to the back wall of the booth, and at the back wall of the booth he saw a bunch of children and saw that the children, in the most unnatural poses, stealthily peek through the crack in order to admire at least one eye magical sight.
Mr. Gradgrind stopped.
“Those vagabonds,” he said, “they seduce even the pupils of an exemplary school.
Since he was separated from his young pets by a strip of land, where stunted grass made its way between heaps of garbage, he took a lorgnette out of his vest pocket and began to peer to see if there were any children known to him by their last names, whom he could call out and drive away from here. And what was revealed to his eyes! The phenomenon is mysterious, almost unbelievable, although clearly visible: his own daughter, metallurgical Louise, clinging to the pine boards, did not stop looking into the hole, and his own son, mathematical Thomas, crawled on the ground in the most humiliating way, hoping to see at least one hoof from the "Tyrolean horse dance of flowers"!
Mr. Gradgrind, in silent astonishment, went up to his children, engaged in such a shameful business, and, touching him on the shoulder prodigal son and the prodigal daughter, exclaimed:
- Louise!! Thomas!!
Both jumped up, red and embarrassed. But Louise looked at her father more boldly than Thomas. As a matter of fact, Thomas did not look at him at all, but obediently, like a machine, let himself be dragged away from the booth.
- Here it is, idleness, here is recklessness! exclaimed Mr. Gradgrind, seizing them both by the arms, and leading them away. - For heaven's sake - what are you doing here?
"We wanted to see what it was," Louise answered curtly.
But every time when this novel falls into the hands modern reader, the question may arise: what do " Hard times» for our time? Is the novel outdated? After all, Dickens dreamed of a very modest prosperity for “the lower classes, they should have bread, primary education and leisure for entertainment. The contemporary working class of England has since won substantial concessions from the bourgeoisie. Even one of the government parties from the beginning of the 20th century calls itself "Labor" (from English word"labor" - "work"). Yes, and modern bounderbies act more subtle, they have to give up gross arbitrariness. But they haven't changed in the main. Like a hundred and twenty-five years ago, they hide the fact that they profit from the labor of workers. And the government's "Times" still assures that the "whole" nation is "happy" and constitutes a "single whole" - a "welfare society of all its citizens."
Of course, the working class England is still fighting for a better life, but modern bounderbies and gradgrinds are trying to use this struggle to his detriment. Workers have achieved a reduction in the working day. Their leisure has increased. Modern gradgrinds do not prevent them from having fun, they "only" want to subjugate the spiritual life of the workers, and make entertainment a means of "distraction". The man is walking in the cinema, picks up a book, sits down to the TV - and everywhere they show him, they convince him: the main thing in life is material success and comfort, and all this can be obtained for money. Make money - you will get all the joys of life and be happy! In modern England there are no former Mr Dombeys, but modern Dombeys are also convinced that money can do anything. Everything in society, as before, is built on selfish calculation, the law of "purchase and sale", on "things". TV, refrigerator, fashion clothes, car, entertainment, sports, aren't these the main "facts of being", without which life is not life! This is how today's gradgrinds preach, helping today's bounderbies to keep the people in line. Like Thomas Gradgrind, they are enemies of the "imagination", that is, the living, inquisitive, doubting
mind. They also need unthinking "cogs", "servants of the machine."
And it turns out that Dickens at one time, having portrayed Cockstown, foresaw, in modern terms, a “model” of anti-humanistic relations in modern bourgeois society. But a man should not be either a "servant of the machine" or a "machine", wrote Dickens, nor an obedient robot, we add, who does whatever the owner wants, and rests as the owner pleases, and loves as the owner pleases.
Man himself must be the master of life, of his own destiny, he must respect the personality in himself, or, as Dickens said, his "immortal nature." That is why the novel "Hard Times" is consonant with our time, when in world goes the struggle for true happiness and the harmonious development of man, the struggle against all attempts to suppress, humiliate, vulgarize his unique individuality.
Novel "Hard Times" is close to us also because the humanist Dickens contrasted living people - a traveling circus troupe - who love to work and know how to bring joy to others, to the soulless world of "facts". Riders and gymnasts, they are often in danger of injury, and even death. No wonder the daughter of Sliri, the rider Josephine, already at the age of twelve made a will. But these people are helped to live by friendship, camaraderie, the desire to help others. They touchingly love little Sessy and with a heavy heart let her go with Gradgrind, not wanting to interfere with her "well-being". life rules Sleary is much higher, more worthy and more humane than the theory of facts and figures. Gradgrind himself is convinced of this when his son is saved from persecution by none other than the "circus performer" Sliri.
In contrast from other works of Dickens, "Hard Times" does not even have "half" happy ending like "Barnaby Rudge" or " cold house". From final words By the author, we learn that Sessy is happy, but she is the only one who is lucky. Louise was wrecked, the swindler Tom ended his miserable days in the hospital, the honest worker Stephen died, and Rachel is doomed to work at Bound Derby until the end of her days. Bounderby himself prospers, despite an unsuccessful marriage and a shameful revelation: he was not at all "born in a canapé" - he was raised by a kind mother, who gave him an education on a meager widow's pennies. The former first student of Bitzer, who firmly mastered Golden Rule Gradgrain-yes, that you need to buy at the lowest price, and sell
by the highest. By sending mother in a workhouse, he "sold" himself for a profitable place.
Two close friends live in the city of Coxtown - if one can speak of friendship between people equally devoid of warm human feelings. Both of them are at the top of the social ladder: and Josiah Bounderby, "a famous rich man, banker, merchant, manufacturer"; and Thomas Gradgrind, "a man of sober mind, clear facts and accurate calculations", who becomes the MP for Cocketown.
Mr. Gradgrind, who worshiped only facts, brought up his children (there were five of them) in the same spirit. They never had toys - only teaching aids; they were forbidden to read fairy tales, poems and novels, and in general to touch what is not connected with immediate benefit, but can awaken the imagination and is related to the sphere of feelings. Wishing to spread his method as widely as possible, he organized a school on these principles.
Perhaps the worst student in this school was Sessy Jupe, the daughter of a circus performer - a juggler, a magician and a clown. She believed that flowers could be depicted on carpets, and not just geometric figures, and she openly said that she was from the circus, which was considered an obscene word in this school. They even wanted to expel her, but when Mr. Gradgrind came to the circus to announce this, the flight of Sessy's father with his dog was vigorously discussed there. Sessy's father grew old and did not work as well in the arena as in his youth; less and less he heard applause, more and more often he made mistakes. Colleagues have not yet thrown bitter reproaches to him, but in order not to live to see this, he fled. Sissy was left alone. And, instead of expelling Sessie from school, Thomas Gradgrind took her to his house.
Sessy was very friendly with Louise, eldest daughter Gradgrind until she agreed to marry Josiah Bounderby. He is only thirty years older than her (he is fifty, she is twenty), “fat, loud; his eyes are heavy, his laugh is metallic. Louise was persuaded to this marriage by her brother Tom, who was promised many benefits by his sister's marriage - a very tireless job in the Bounderby bank, which would allow him to get out of the hated home, which bore the expressive name "Stone Shelter", a good salary, freedom. Tom perfectly learned the lessons of his father's school: the benefits, the benefits, the absence of feelings. Louise, from these lessons, apparently lost interest in life. She agreed to the marriage with the words: “Does it matter?”
In the same city lives the weaver Stephen Blackpool, a simple laborer, fair man. He is unhappy in marriage - his wife is a drunkard, a completely fallen woman; but in England divorce is not for the poor, as Bounderby, his master, to whom he came for advice, explains to him. So Stephen is destined to carry his cross further, and he will never be able to marry Rachel, whom he has loved for a long time. Stephen curses such a world order - but Rachel begs not to say such words and not to participate in any turmoil leading to its change. He promises. Therefore, when all the workers join the "Joint Tribunal", only Stephen does not do this, for which the leader of the "Tribunal" Slackbridge calls him a traitor, a coward and an apostate and offers to ostracize him. Upon learning of this, Stephen is summoned by the owner, arguing that it would be nice to turn a rejected and offended worker into an informer. Stephen's flat refusal leads to Bounderby firing him with a wolf ticket. Stephen announces that he is forced to leave the city. The conversation with the owner takes place in the presence of his household: his wife Louise and her brother Tom. Louise, imbued with sympathy for the unjustly offended worker, secretly goes to his house to give him money, and asks her brother to accompany her. At Stephen's they find Rachel and an unfamiliar old woman who introduces herself as Mrs. Pegler. Stephen meets her for the second time in his life at the same place: at the Bounderby house; a year ago she asked him if his master was healthy, if his master looked good, now she is interested in his wife. The old woman is very tired, kind Rachel wants to give her tea; so she ends up with Stephen. Steven refuses to take Louise's money, but thanks her for her good intentions. Before leaving, Tom takes Stephen to the stairs and promises him a job in private, for which you need to wait at the bank in the evenings: the messenger will give him a note. For three days, Stephen regularly waits, and, without waiting for anything, leaves the city.
Meanwhile, Tom, having escaped from the Stone Orphanage, leads a wild life and gets entangled in debt. At first, Louise paid his debts by selling her jewelry, but everything comes to an end: she has no more money.
Tom, and especially Louise, is closely watched by Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby's former housekeeper, who, after the owner's marriage, takes up the position of bank caretaker. Mr. Bounderby, who likes to repeat that he was born in a ditch, that his mother abandoned him, and raised the street and he achieved everything with his mind, is terribly flattered supposedly aristocratic background Mrs. Sparsit, living solely on his favors. Mrs. Sparsit hates Louise, presumably because she wants to take her place - or at least is very afraid of losing hers. With the appearance in town of James Harthouse, a bored gentleman from London who intends to run for Parliament for the constituency of Coxtown to strengthen the Hard Figures Party, she raises her vigilance. Indeed, the London dandy, according to all the rules of art, besieges Louise, having felt her Achilles heel - love for her brother. She is ready to talk about Tom for hours, and during these conversations, young people gradually draw closer. After a private date with Harthouse, Louise becomes frightened of herself and returns to her father's house, announcing that she will never return to her husband. Sessy, whose warmth now warms the entire Stone Shelter, takes care of her. Moreover, Sessy own initiative goes to Harthouse to convince him to leave the city and not pursue Louise anymore, and she succeeds.
When the news of the bank robbery spreads, Louise faints: she is sure that Tom did it. But suspicion falls on Stephen Blackpool: after all, it was he who was on duty at the bank in the evenings for three days, after which he disappeared from the city. Enraged by Louise's escape and the fact that Stephen has never been found, Bounderby puts up an announcement all over the city with Stephen's signs and the promise of a reward to whoever turns up the thief. Rachel, unable to bear the slander against Stephen, goes first to Bounderby, and then, together with him and Tom, to Louise and tells about last night Stephen in Cocktown, about the arrival of Louise and Tom, and about the mysterious old woman. Louise confirms this. In addition, Rachel reveals that she sent Stephen a letter and he is about to return to the city to justify himself.
But days go by, and Stephen doesn't come. Rachel is very worried, Sessy, with whom she became friends, supports her as best she can. On Sunday they drive out of town from smoky, stinking industrial Cockstown for a walk and accidentally find Steven's hat in a huge terrible pit- at the Devil's Mine. They raise the alarm, organize rescue work - and the dying Stephen is pulled out of the mine. After receiving Rachel's letter, he hurried to Coxtown; saving time, went straight ahead. The workers in the crowd curse the mines that took their lives and limbs when they were in operation, and continue to take them when they are abandoned. Steven explains that he was on duty at the bank at Tom's request and dies without letting go of Rachel's hand. Tom manages to escape.
Meanwhile, Mrs. Sparsit, wanting to show her diligence, finds a mysterious old woman. It turns out that this is the mother of Josiah Bounderby, who by no means abandoned him in infancy; she kept a hardware store, gave her son an education and was very proud of his success, meekly accepting his command not to appear next to him. She also proudly announced that her son took care of her and sent thirty pounds annually. The self-made myth of Josiah Bounderby of Cockstown, who rose from the mud, collapsed. The immorality of the manufacturer became evident. The culprit of this Mrs. Sparsit lost the warm and satisfying place for which she fought so hard.
In the Stone Shelter, they experience the shame of the family and wonder where Tom could hide. When Mr. Gradgrind comes to the decision to send his son away abroad, Sessy reveals where he is: she suggested that Tom hide in the circus where her father once worked. Indeed, Tom is hidden securely: it is impossible to recognize him in the make-up and costume of the black man, although he is constantly in the arena. The owner of the circus Mr. Sleary helps Tom get rid of the chase. To Mr. Gradgrind's gratitude, Mr. Slery replies that he once did him a favor by taking Sessie in, and now it's his turn.
Tom makes it safely to South America and sends letters from there full of remorse.
Immediately after Tom's departure, Mr. Gradgrind puts up posters naming the true culprit of the theft and washing away the stain of slander from the name of the late Stephen Blackpool. In a week, becoming an old man, he is convinced of the failure of his education system, based on exact facts, and refers to humanistic values trying to make figures and facts serve faith, hope and love.
The novel Hard Times.
Novels of the 1950s begin as social and end as family-psychological ("Hard Times") or adventurous plot ("Bleak House", "Little Dorrit").
Dickens in all the novels of the 50s continues to preach altruism and optimism, but he no longer believes in the effectiveness of his sermon. This explains the growth of dreary intonations in his novels of this time, the unconvincingness of their happy endings, which do not fit well with the development of previous events. The happy ending of the novels, which by no means contradicted the philosophy of the young Dickens, already in Dombey and Son seems unjustified. Happy endings in the novels of the 50s cease to convince the reader. Shifts in the consciousness of the writer were reflected in the manner of revealing the characters he portrayed. The novels are built on a combination of strictly realistic paintings with a pointed-satirical grotesque image. In the depiction of those characters who are subjected to the most acute satirical disclosure, caricature elements bordering on the grotesque increase (Crook in Bleak House, Gredgrind and Bounderby in Hard Times, Polyps in Little Dorrit, etc.). Turning to caricature and the grotesque, Dickens expanded the allegorical meaning of many images. The external ugliness of the images emphasized their internal ugliness. The method of leitmotif revealing images was preserved only in the grotesque.
None previous novel Dickens does not have such a sense of social relationships, there is no such deep understanding of the fate of each individual in relation to the fate of the whole class and, more broadly, the entire social organism. Personal secrets, hidden testaments, committed atrocities are not only milestones that mark private destinies, they are a derivative of social processes. Secrets also have their own laws, and when they are revealed, they reveal the hidden springs of a huge social organism.
Dickens' magnificent novel Hard Times is the strongest literary and artistic blow to capitalism that was dealt to him at that time, and one of the strongest that A.V. Lunacharsky In difficult times, Dickens responded to the main social issue of our time - the conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
Hard times show England split into two worlds, and these antagonistic camps are presented in the novel in a state of struggle. One of the leading satirical themes of the novel Hard Times is ridicule and exposure against the inhuman bourgeois ideology that reduces a person, his work, his activity, his requests to a simple fact, to the sum of figures, to statistical data. The factory town in the north of England, bearing the symbolic name of Cocktown, the city of coal, is the personification of the cruelty and callousness of the capitalist system, a symbol of all of England.
The brightest satirical image novel - Thomas Gredgrind, a bourgeois theoretician, a man of reality, a man of facts and figures, as its author characterizes. Gradgrind's appearance is an illustration of the theory of facts - a rectangular frock coat, rectangular legs, shoulders, even a tie that holds him by the throat, like an intractable fact. In all his activities, Dickens invariably emphasizes a deadening, icy indifference to the fate of living people, an inability and unwillingness to go beyond dry statistics.
Gredgrind's political career is disgusting not only because of its senselessness, utter insignificance, but also objectively brings the greatest harm to the country. Gradgrind's pedagogical activity brings a lot of harm. His concern for the upbringing and education of children in Cocktown, the patronage that he gives to the exemplary school where his pedagogical principles, where children, in order to avoid any manifestation of emotionality, are deprived of a name and are called by numbers, where thought, feeling, fantasy are expelled, where any independence of the child is suppressed, where the teacher bears the expressive grotesque surname Chokamchaidl strangler of children, the author directly calls the murder of minors. Gradgrind expresses his thoughts in a dry pseudo-scientific language and, using the terms of political economy and statistics, tries to explain ordinary human concepts.
Gradgrind persuades her daughter to marry a man more than twice her age, for whom she has an invincible disgust.
Father's arguments in favor of this marriage are based on exact calculations. There is some discrepancy in your age, but as regards your means and social position, there is no discrepancy, on the contrary, there is a great correspondence. Gradgrind invites his daughter to take into account the digital data on unequal marriages in all corners the globe. Business turns and terms displace from his speech everything that even remotely approaches the expression of feeling.
Diligently avoiding the word love, he expresses this, from his point of view, a harmful and unnecessary concept for marriage in such a way that Mr. Bounderby does not want to put you in an uncomfortable position and does not pretend to be anything dreamy, fantastic, or I use sentimental synonyms.
Maybe the expression itself is not entirely appropriate. Turning to her father for advice, Louise asks with bitter irony What would you advise father to replace the word I just used? My inappropriate expression? A kind of parody of the language of Gredgrind is the speech of his wife, who learned only the form of the endings of absolutely incomprehensible scientific words. Everything related to concepts that are mysterious to her, she simply calls ation, ology, and even resorts to a kind of word creation, composing such a scientific word as something logical. Turning to Louise before her death, Mrs. Gradgrind wants to say goodbye to her, but she can no longer express her feelings simply, humanly.
Mrs. Gradgrind's life in fear and subjugation of her husband, in admiration for theories inaccessible to her understanding, leads to the fact that her timid dying protest against the philosophy of bourgeois egoism in the last address to her daughter takes the form of a parodic turn of something - not at all logic. Consistently debunking the philosophy of facts, Dickens forces Gredgrind, under the pressure of difficult life trials, to admit, in the end, all the inconsistency, all the harm of his theories.
On the fate of his own children, he sees the complete collapse of his entire system - the life of his daughter is broken and mutilated, his son became a criminal. his show school.
In vain does he strive to awaken in his interlocutor human feelings. Having firmly mastered the basic principles of the Gradgrind system and successfully applying them in his life, Bitzer cannot understand the question of his former teacher, just as Gradgrind himself was once deaf to all manifestations of human feelings in those around him. Bitzer with surprise rejects the accusation of heartlessness, since he perceives the word heart in a purely physiological sense and is content with a pseudoscientific explanation of the activity of the heart.
Bitzer, do you have a heart asks Gradgrind. Circulation, Sir replied Bitzer, smiling at the oddity of the question, could not be maintained without a heart. No man, sir, who knows the facts established by Harvey concerning the circulation of the blood, can doubt that I have a heart. The principle of hyperbolization, so characteristic of Dickens, reaches the highest power of generalization and typification in creating satirical images of the novel Hard Times. A friend and follower of Gredgrind, a rich man, a banker, a merchant, a manufacturer, Bounderby is the embodiment of the theory of facts in practice.
Insolent, cynical, grossly ignorant, sincerely convinced that money is omnipotent, a cruel exploiter of the workers, he considers all their legitimate demands, all their attempts to improve his lot with the desire to ride in a carriage or eat turtle soup from a golden spoon. An uneducated upstart, Bounderby demagogically boasts that he found his wealth with his own hands, made himself. He importunately opposes his current well-being to the hardships, insults, and need that he allegedly experienced in childhood.
Complacency, arrogance are so bursting with Bounderby that even outwardly he resembles an inflated balloon, ready to fly away. The tragic fate of a woman in bourgeois society, the lies and hypocrisy of a bourgeois family based on property is a constant theme of Dickens' satire.
Marriage in a capitalist society is a trade deal, the writer repeatedly emphasizes. Louise's life is ruined. Until the end of her days, she will drag out a dull lonely existence in her father's house. The central conflict of the novel Hard Times is the clash between the workers and entrepreneurs of Cocktown. Dickens shows the workers with exceptional warmth and sympathy. Contrasting them with heartless manufacturers who have lost their human appearance, the writer, as always, is looking for the truth among the people.
Genuine human feelings, great self-sacrificing love, camaraderie, mutual solidarity characterize the workers in work, in struggle, and in their personal lives. Through the mouth of a simple worker, Stephen Blackpool, Dickens denounces social inequality, bourgeois legislation, leads the reader to the idea that in England the laws are different for those who have money and for those who have nothing. Advances in industry do not change the hard life of the workers. See how the factories flourish! All this does not bring us closer to anything but death.
See how you treat us, what you write about us, what you talk about the yoke and send deputations to the ministers complaining about us, and how you are always right, and we are always wrong. The ugly laws of the bourgeois world cripple the fate of the positive characters of the novel - Stephen and his beloved girlfriend Rachel and are the cause of his premature tragic death. In the capitalist world, the worker ceases to be a human being for the entrepreneur, he becomes an appendage to the machine.
In The Condition of the Working Class in England, Engels wrote that the relation of the manufacturer to the worker is not human, but purely economic. The manufacturer does not want and cannot understand that the worker is not labor, but a man who, it is true, possesses, among other traits, the ability to work. He cannot understand that besides the relations of purchase and sale between him and the workers other relationships he sees in them are not people, but only hands, as he constantly calls his workers to their faces. In the novel Hard Times, Dickens reads the humiliating nickname hands working hands in a new way.
With the help of a visual image, the writer concretizes the term that is common in the mouths of English entrepreneurs. common name working hands are a breed of people that would arouse some more favorable attitude towards themselves if nature created them consisting of one hand, or, like the lower animals found on the seashore, from one hand and stomachs. Bounderby expresses this idea of the manufacturers of the workers. I know the bricks of this city, and I know the workshops of this city, and I know the chimneys of this city, and I know the smoke of this city, and I know the working hands of this city. The same construction is repeated five times, only one word changes, the line between the bricks, smoke and chimneys of factory buildings and the living people who work there is blurred.
But for Dickens, hands are living people. Working hands he writes men and women, boys and girls, went home. One of important episodes novel is a description of the Cocktown workers' strike.
The writer showed the people not only suffering, but also struggling to change their lives. Far from understanding everything in this struggle, the writer managed to create a collective image of workers, determined to defend their rights, understanding that their strength is in unity. Dickens convincingly shows the reasons that led the workers to strike, he understands its inevitability.
Giving the floor to his favorite character Stephen Blackpool, the writer claims that the surrounding life is a quagmire. Thousands of workers fall into the same quagmire says Stephen Blackpool. There is a black impenetrable world between them and the entrepreneurs, and it will last long or short, as long as such poverty can be endured. However, in the depiction of the striking workers, in the attitude of the writer towards them, the main contradictions of his work are sharply revealed. Sympathizing with the plight of the workers who came out in defense of their rights, Dickens remains a supporter of moral strength, refuses to accept the path of the active struggle of the English proletariat, the policy of the revolutionary wing of Chartism.
Hence the duality of the image of Blackpool. When he acts as a defender of the interests of ordinary people, a spokesman for their aspirations and aspirations, his speeches sound truthful and convincing. But the writer inevitably departs from realism, making his hero the bearer of the ideas of reconciliation between classes, preaching the dubious truths of Christian socialism. The tendentious-caricature figure of the agitator Slackbridge, whom the author considers responsible for unrest and unrest at the factory, does not correspond to the truth of life either.
According to the writer, the worst thing in the existing social relations- this is that impassable abyss that lies between the classes, the black impenetrable world, the quagmire. The humanism of Dickens rebels against the existing order of things, but cannot find a way out. The only thing that the writer still wants to oppose to the callous law of facts and figures is pure humanity, the kind soul of a man from the people.
The common sense of a child, a simple good girl Sissy Joop, her clear logic, her pure heart should, according to Dickens, expose the spiritual poverty of the representatives of the bourgeois world, the poverty of their philosophy. Sissy Jupe is the worst student at the Gradgrind school. She mercilessly distorts scientists, words she does not understand, cannot pronounce the words of statistics or understand what the people's welfare, which she stubbornly calls natural, is. She is instructed by Dickens to break down and debunk the main provisions of the philosophy of facts and figures. Sissi's answer to all the pseudoscientific questions of a school teacher is built on a complete discrepancy between two points of view, two fundamentally opposite views on life, and therefore is made in two different speech styles - the simple speech of a child and the speech of a teacher littered with terms of political economy and statistics, designed to educate children in the spirit of bourgeois ideology.
Here is what the lesson on the welfare of the people looks like. Let's imagine that this classroom - the people says the teacher and this people has fifty millions of money.
Can we assume that these people prosper? Sissi can't answer this question, as she doesn't know who got the money or if she got anything. Then the teacher asks the children to imagine that the classroom is a huge city and that there are a million inhabitants in it, and that only twenty-five of them died of starvation in the street during the year. How should Sissy assess such a fact? I think she says ingenuously for those who died of hunger, it was equally bad - whether there were a million inhabitants or a million million. Teacher last time asks the girl Here are the statistics of accidents at sea. Let's assume that in this moment one hundred thousand people went on a long voyage, and only five hundred of them drowned or burned down.
What percentage will it give? And the girl says that none for relatives and friends of the dead. Together with his little heroine, Dickens refuses to accept the inhuman principles of bourgeois selfishness.
The great importance of the novel Hard Times was once emphasized by N. G. Chernyshevsky. Speaking about the destructiveness of the development of capitalist relations for the lives of ordinary people, he referred to Dickens' novel for proof. A difficult revolution is taking place in the West in France; wants to read monographs on Chartism. Our time is a difficult time, a gloomy hopeless era - such is the starting point of Dickens.
People in some strange blindness set out to eradicate bright romance, kindness and sympathy from life, substituting benefit, benefit, fact in their place. And what does all this lead to? Take a look at the front modern city, industrial Cocktown, calls the author on those who are invested with power and profess the most modern scientific views. It was a city of red brick, or of brick that would have been red but for smoke and ashes, but under the circumstances it was a city of an unnaturally red and black color, like the painted face of a savage.
It was a city of machines and tall chimneys from which endless smoke snakes stretched and stretched and never curled up to rest.
It had a black canal, a river red-violet from the stinking paint flowing into it, and vast piles of buildings, full of windows, where something rumbled and trembled around the clock and where the piston of a steam engine monotonously rose and fell, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy insanity. It consisted of several large streets, very similar to one another, many small streets, even more similar to one another, inhabited by people who were just like each other, who entered and left at the same hours with the same the same noise, on the same pavements, for the same work, and for whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year a double of the past and the next. Primitive and soulless, reduced to a utilitarian fact, both the material and spiritual life of Cocktown The prison could be a hospital, the hospital could be a prison, the city hall could be one or the other, or both, or something else, because there was nothing in any of these buildings that contradicted the details of the construction of the others. , and everything was a fact from the maternity hospital to the cemetery, and that which could not be expressed in numbers or bought at the cheapest price and sold at the most expensive, was not and will not be forever, amen. So, facts and figures, naked, undisguised calculation, nothing based on feelings, on mutual trust, people's sympathy for each other.
The reader did not need to look for the factory town of Cocktown on the map.
He understood that this was not Birmingham or Manchester, hiding behind the transparent pseudonym of the city of coal Coctown, but that this was the image of all industrial England.
In his novel, the writer gives a decisive battle to the utilitarian philosophy of fact and practical utility, maliciously ridiculing the doctrines of the Manchesterites, students and followers of Bentham.
My satire, written by Dickens to C. Knight on January 13, 1855, is directed against those who see nothing but numbers and averages. The laborer writes further Dickens, who has to walk twelve miles a day back and forth to his place of work, will not be relieved if he is comforted by the fact that the average distance from one place of residence in England to another in general is no more than four miles. Exposing the theory of facts and figures, the statistical approach to people, Dickens stands for trampled human dignity, against the inhumanity of the capitalist system.
No matter what motives people put into practice utilitarian doctrines, whether they are blind fanatics of the idea of Gredgrind, or prudent businessmen who bring a theoretical basis for their egoism Bounderby, Bitzer, the son of Gradgrind - Thomas, or, finally, Gradgrind's daughter - Louise, simply victims of these theories - all the same, they themselves, like their city, like everything around them, bear the stamp of inferiority, human inferiority.
Such is the school trustee Gredgrind, champion of economic doctrines. He names his own children with the sacred names of Adam Smith and Malthus. The educator who introduces the theory of facts into young souls is at the same time the victim of this philosophy. All good human feelings are suppressed in him, sacrificed to calculation, to dry, inhuman statistics.
Disfiguring others, he himself was disfigured by the theories of utilitarianism. Thomas Greedgrind, sir. Reality man. A man of facts and figures. A man who operates on the principle that two plus two equals four and nothing more, and whom you cannot persuade to admit anything else but this Always with a ruler and scales and a multiplication table in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any scrap of human nature and tell you exactly what it is good for.
This is purely a question of numbers, a simple arithmetic problem. This is how Gradgrind recommends himself. So, any shred of human nature is measured, evaluated, and therefore bought and sold. This is the logical conclusion from the theory of utilitarians, and not only his students follow this conclusion, but he himself, in fact, sells his daughter, forcing her to marry the hated rich man Bounderby. Such a system of education brings corresponding results. Gradgrind's son - Thomas, for the sake of his own career, incites his sister to agree to marriage with Bounderby, later he robs a bank, arranging everything in such a way that suspicion falls on the other, and being caught, he cynically reminds his father that a certain percentage of people turn out to be, in his own words not trustworthy.
I have heard from you hundreds of times that this is the law. What can I do against the laws? With such things, father, you consoled others. May this be your consolation. The best student of Gradgrind Bitzer - the most colorless personality, the writer gives him colorless eyes and hair, becomes a complete scoundrel.
Obsequious to the authorities, an exemplary student who has firmly mastered the precepts of utilitarianism, he lives only for himself, without a twinge of conscience having sent his own mother to the workhouse. Gradgrind only teaches children facts. Utilitarians do not allow fantasy, imagination. If a person recognizes facts and only facts, then he thereby recognizes the existing social order, and if, God forbid, he begins to fantasize, then he may come to doubt the legitimacy of the entire social system.
Imagination is considered by utilitarians to be fraught with protest and revolution. The pathos of Dickens's book is pain for a man trampled on by capitalism. For utilitarians, there are only human units. Thus, Gradgrind believes that the significance of the amount of national income is an indicator of the well-being of the whole nation, while his pupil Sissy Joop, a girl of 20 - as Gradgrind calls her, expresses doubt whether a people can be called prosperous if it is not yet known who got the money.
Through the mouth of a girl from the people, Dickens expresses distrust of lovers of utilitarian statistics, who claim that the relatively small percentage of people who died of starvation on the streets of London testifies to the prosperity of the country. Behind the seeming innocence of Sissy Jupe's bewildered questions, a very sharp, unambiguous criticism of the apologetic philosophy of the ruling circles of England during the period of prosperity is revealed. Yes, in the 1950s the national income increased, and it is also true that the position of a section of the working class was eased.
But all these favorable average figures could not hide the continued impoverishment of the broad masses of the working class in England. Just as inhuman is another bearer of the utilitarian doctrine, the manufacturer Bounderby. Although outwardly these people are dissimilar, Gradgrind is a dry, balanced person, a walking figure, whose rectangular finger, as it were, helps the facts to penetrate the heads of his students.
Bounderby, on the other hand, is a huge man with a low forehead, with a loud, brassy voice, noisy, boastful, unceremonious. But, in essence, they are one field of berries. Bounderby is also a fan of facts, practical benefits. As for all Cocktown manufacturers, workers for him, as the novelist notes, are only the hands of aspiration and desire, the human demands of these hands do not touch him. A typical Malthusian, he considers any demand of the workers as an encroachment on the existing order of things, as an encroachment of those deprived at the feast of life to possess supernatural blessings.
Therefore, he willingly supports the legend widespread in Cocktown that any poor person can go out into the world, become a wealthy manufacturer. Dickens shows that between capitalists and workers there is nothing in common either in convictions or in moral character. These are completely different people, different nations. His artistic portrait of these two nations superbly confirms Engels' judgment. The English working class has in the course of time become a completely different people than the English bourgeoisie. The workers speak a different dialect, have different ideas and ideas, different customs and moral principles, a different religion and politics than the bourgeoisie. Engels notes that Dickens assigned a place in the novel to the aristocracy, corresponding to that which she actually received in the honorable backyard of a bourgeois mansion, the satirical image of Mrs. Sparsit, Mr. The aristocrats in the image of Dickens are parasites and playboys.
So, Mr. Harthouse - a man without any convictions - is ready to serve any political party, just to get more.
Depicting a Chartist rally and a crowd of workers eagerly listening to a visiting speaker, Dickens seeks to emphasize that these are the best people of Cocktown, who were not broken by horrific living and working conditions. They are courageous, sincere, completely alien to back thoughts, they are somehow childishly simple-hearted and trusting. The author convincingly depicts proletarian solidarity, the firm decision of the workers not to back down from their demands. However, the writer himself considers their intention to go on strike a delusion.
Dickens is not inclined to regard Chartist agitation as the main reason for the aggravation of relations between workers and manufacturers. Yes, the Chartist orator Slackbridge, calling on the workers to revolt, is depicted as a crafty demagogue. But the writer shows that the determination of the workers is a consequence of the appalling living conditions, and not just the appeals of the Chartist leaders. Therefore, Slackbridge's words - whatever Dickens' motives for his speech - fall on prepared ground. The workers are driven to the extreme.
Chapter I
One on demand
So, I want facts. Teach these boys and girls only facts. Life requires only facts. Plant nothing else and uproot everything else. The mind of a thinking animal can only be formed with the help of facts; nothing else benefits it. Here is the theory by which I raise my children. Here is the theory by which I bring up these children. Stick to the facts, sir!
The action took place in an uncomfortable, cold classroom with bare walls, like a crypt, and the orator emphasized each of his utterances for greater imposingness, running a square finger along the sleeve of the teacher. No less impressive than the speaker's words was his square forehead, which rose like a sheer wall above the foundation of the eyebrows, and under its canopy, in the dark spacious cellars, as if in caves, the eyes comfortably settled down. The orator's mouth was also impressive - large, thin-lipped and hard; and the speaker's voice is firm, dry and authoritative; his bald head was impressive, too, with hair bristling along the edges like fir trees planted to protect its glossy surface from the wind, dotted with bumps like the crust of a sweet pie - as if the stock of indisputable facts no longer fit in the skull. An inflexible posture, a square frock coat, square legs, square shoulders - but what's there! - even the tightly tied tie, which held the speaker tightly by the throat as the most obvious and irrefutable fact - everything about him was impressive.
“In this life, sir, we need facts, nothing but facts!”
All three adults—the speaker, the teacher, and the third person present—stepped back and looked around at the small vessels arranged in orderly rows on an inclined plane, ready to receive gallons of facts with which they were to be filled to the brim.
Chapter II
Massacre of the innocents
Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of sober mind. A man of obvious facts and precise calculations. A person who proceeds from the rule that twice two is four, and not one iota more, and will never agree that it could be otherwise, better and do not try to convince him. Thomas Gradgrind, sir - that's Thomas - Thomas Gradgrind. Armed with a ruler and scales, with a multiplication table in his pocket, he is always ready to weigh and measure any specimen of human nature and accurately determine what it equals. It's just counting numbers, sir, pure arithmetic. You can console yourself with the hope that you will be able to drive some other, absurd concepts into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (imaginary, non-existent faces), but not into the head of Thomas Gradgrind, oh no , sir!
With these words, Mr. Gradgrind used to mentally recommend himself to a small circle of acquaintances, as well as to the general public. And, no doubt, in the same words - replacing the address "sir" with the address "pupils and pupils", - Thomas Gradgrind mentally introduced Thomas Gradgrind to the vessels sitting in front of him, into which it was necessary to pour as many facts as possible.
He stood, menacingly flashing at them with his eyes hidden in the caves, as if a cannon stuffed with facts to the very mouth, ready to knock them out of their childhood with one shot.
Or a galvanic device charged with a soulless mechanical force, which should replace the tender childish imagination scattered to dust.
“Pupil number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, pointing a square finger at one of the schoolgirls. I don't know this girl. Who is that girl?
“Sessie Jupe, sir,” answered student number twenty, blushing with embarrassment, jumping to her feet and crouching.
- Sessy? There is no such name,” said Mr. Gradgrind. Don't call yourself Sessy. Call yourself Cecilia.
“My dad calls me Sissy, sir,” the girl answered in a trembling voice and sat down again.
"He shouldn't call you that," said Mr. Gradgrind. “Tell him not to do it. Cecilia Jupe. Wait a minute. Who is your father?
- He's from the circus, sir.
Mr. Gradgrind frowned and waved his hand in dismissal of such a reprehensible trade.
“We don’t want to know about this here. And never say that here. Your father, right, rides horses? Yes?
- Yes, sir. When horses are obtained, they are circled in the arena, sir.
“Never mention the arena here. So, call your father a bereytor. He must be treating sick horses?
“Of course, sir.
- Excellent, so your father was a horseman - that is, a veterinarian - and a caretaker. Now, what is a horse?
(Sessie Jupe, terrified to death by this question, was silent.)
“Pupil number twenty doesn’t know what a horse is!” said Mr. Gradgrind, addressing all the vessels. “Student number twenty has no facts about one of the most common animals!” Let's hear what the students know about the horse. Bitzer, tell me.
The square finger, moving back and forth, suddenly stopped on Bitzer, perhaps only because the boy was in the path of that ray of sunlight, which, breaking into the uncurtained window of a heavily whitewashed room, fell on Sessie. For the inclined plane was divided into two halves: on one side of the narrow passage, closer to the windows, the girls were placed, on the other, the boys; and a ray of the sun, with one end touching Sessie, who was sitting at the last in her row, with the other end illuminated Bitzer, who occupied the last seat several rows ahead of Sessie. But the black eyes and black hair of the girl shone even brighter in the sunlight, and the whitish eyes and whitish hair of the boy, under the influence of the same beam, seemed to have lost the last traces of the colors released to him by nature. The boy's empty, colorless eyes would have been barely noticeable on his face, if not for the short stubble of darker lashes that bordered them. His short hair was the same color as the yellowish freckles that covered his forehead and cheeks. And the painfully pale skin, without the slightest trace of a natural blush, involuntarily suggested that if he cut himself, not red, but white blood would flow.
“Bitzer,” said Thomas Gradgrind, “explain there is a horse.”
- Quadrupedal. Herbivore. Forty teeth, namely: twenty-four molars, four eye and twelve incisors. Sheds in spring; in swampy areas it also changes its hooves. The hooves are hard, but require iron horseshoes. Age is known by the teeth. - All this (and much more) Bitzer blurted out in one breath.
“Pupil number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “now you know what a horse is.
Sissy crouched down again, and would have flared up even brighter if that had been possible—her face was already on fire. Bitzer, blinking both eyes at Thomas Gradgrind at once, making his eyelashes flutter in the sun like the tendrils of fussy bugs, tapped his freckled forehead with his knuckles, and sat down.
A third gentleman stepped forward: a great master of ill-considered decisions, a government official with the habits of a fist fighter, always on the alert, always ready to forcibly shove down the public throat - like a huge pill containing a fair dose of poison - another audacious project; always fully armed, loudly challenging all of England from his little office. To put it in boxing terms, he was always in excellent shape, wherever and whenever he entered the ring, and did not shun forbidden tricks. He angrily pounced on everything that opposed him, hit first with his right, then with his left, parried blows, inflicted oncoming blows, pressed the enemy (all of England!) To the ropes and confidently knocked him down. He so deftly overturned common sense that he fell dead and could no longer rise in time. This gentleman was entrusted with the mission of the highest authority to hasten the coming of the millennium, when officials from their all-embracing office would rule the world.
“Excellent,” said the gentleman, crossing his arms over his chest and smiling approvingly. - That's what a horse is. And now, children, answer my question: would any of you paste pictures of a horse in a room?
After a short silence, one half shouted "yes, sir!" in unison. But the other half, guessing from the gentleman's face that "yes" was wrong, as is the custom of all schoolchildren, unanimously shouted "no, sir!"
- Of course not. And why?
Silence. Finally, one fat, slow-moving boy, apparently suffering from shortness of breath, dared to answer that he would not have wallpapered the walls at all, but would have painted them.
“But you must paste over them,” said the gentleman sternly.
“You should paste over them,” said Thomas Gradgrind, “whether you like it or not.” And don't say you wouldn't paper the room. What is this news?
“I shall have to explain to you,” said the gentleman, after another long and painful pause, “why you would not paste pictures of a horse over the room. Have you ever seen horses walk up and down a wall? Are you aware of this fact? Well?
- Yes, sir! - shouted one.
- No, sir! others shouted.
“Of course not,” said the gentleman, casting an indignant glance at those who were shouting yes. “And you should never see what you don't really see, and you should never think about what you don't really have. The so-called taste is just the recognition of a fact.
Thomas Gradgrind indicated his complete agreement with a nod of his head.
“It is a new principle, a great discovery,” continued the gentleman. Now I will ask you one more question. Let's say you want to spread a carpet in your room. Would any of you lay a carpet with flowers on it?
By this time the whole class had already firmly believed that a gentleman's questions should always be answered in the negative, and the unanimous "no" sounded loud and harmonious. Only a few voices timidly, belatedly, answered yes, among them the voice of Sessy Jupe.
“Apprentice number twenty,” said the gentleman, smiling indulgently from the height of his indisputable wisdom.
Sissy stood up, crimson with embarrassment.
“So, would you cover the floor in your room or in your husband’s room—if you were a grown woman and you had a husband—with images of flowers?” asked the gentleman. – Why would you do it?
“Because, sir, I love flowers very much,” answered the girl.
“And would you put tables and chairs on them and let them be trampled on with heavy shoes?”
“I'm sorry, sir, but it wouldn't hurt them. They wouldn't break or wither, sir. But they would be reminded of what is very beautiful and cute, and I would imagine ...
- Exactly, exactly! exclaimed the gentleman, very pleased to have achieved his goal so easily. “Just don’t need to imagine. This is the whole point! Never try to imagine.
“See, Cecilia Jupe,” said Thomas Gradgrind, frowning, “that this will not happen again.
– Facts, facts and facts! said the gentleman.
“Facts, facts, facts,” echoed Thomas Gradgrind.
“You must always and in everything be guided by facts and obey facts,” continued the gentleman. – We hope in the near future to establish a Ministry of Facts, where the officials will be in charge of the facts, and then we will force the people to be a people of facts, and only facts. Forget the very word "imagination". It is of no use to you. All household items or decorations that you use must strictly correspond to the facts. You don't trample on real flowers, which means you shouldn't trample on flowers woven on a carpet. Overseas birds and butterflies do not sit on your dishes - therefore, you should not paint it with overseas flowers and butterflies. So it doesn't happen that quadrupeds walk up and down the walls of the room? - therefore, it is not necessary to paste over the walls with images of quadrupeds. Instead of all this, the gentleman concluded, you must use combinations and modifications (in the primary colors of the spectrum) of geometric figures that are illustrative and demonstrable. This is the latest great discovery. This is the recognition of a fact. This is the taste.
Sissy sat down again and sank into her seat. She was still very young, and, apparently, the picture of the future realm of facts seriously frightened her.
“And now, Mr. Gradgrind,” said the gentleman, “if Mr. Chadomore is ready to give his first lesson, I shall be glad to comply with your request and become acquainted with his method.”
Mr. Gradgrind expressed his deepest gratitude.
“Mr. Chadomore, please.
So the lesson began, and Mr. Chadomor showed his best side. He was one of those school teachers who, in the amount of one hundred and forty pieces, were recently made at the same time, in the same factory, according to the same model, just like a batch of piano legs. He was driven through a myriad of exams and answered countless puzzling questions. Spelling, etymology, syntax and prosody, astronomy, geography and general cosmography, the triple rule, algebra and geodesy, singing and drawing from life - he knew all this like his five cold fingers. His path was thorny, but he reached list B, approved by Her Majesty's Privy Council, and joined the higher mathematics and physical sciences, learned French, German, Greek and Latin. He knew everything about all the watersheds of the world (no matter how many there were), knew the history of all peoples, the names of all rivers and mountains, the customs and customs of all countries and what they produce in which, the borders of each of them and the position relative to the thirty-two points of the compass. Isn't that too much, Mr. Chadomore? Oh, if he knew a little less, how much better he could teach immeasurably more!
In this first introductory lesson, he followed the example of Morgiana in the tale of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, namely, he began by looking in turn into all the jars placed in front of him in order to familiarize himself with their contents. Tell me honestly, dearest Chadomor: are you sure that every time you fill the vessel to the brim with a boiling mixture of your knowledge, the robber lurking at the bottom - a child's imagination - will be immediately killed? Or can it happen that you only cripple and mutilate him?
Chapter III
lye
Mr. Gradgrind went home from school in excellent spirits. This is his school, and he will make it exemplary. Every child in this school will be as exemplary a child as the young offspring of Mr. Gradgrind himself.
There were five young offspring, and every one of them could serve as models. They began to enlighten them from the most tender age; chased like young hares. As soon as they learned to walk without assistance, they were forced to go to the classroom. The first object that appeared in their field of vision and deeply engraved in their memory was a large blackboard on which the terrible Ogre was drawing ominous white signs.
Of course, the offspring did not suspect the existence of the Ogre, and they had never even heard such a name. God forbid! I'm just using the word to describe a monster with a myriad of heads crammed into one that kidnaps children and drags them by the hair into the statistical cages of its dark castle of learning.
None of the young Gradgrinds ever said that the moon smiled: they knew all about the moon before they could talk. None of them ever babbled a stupid rhyme: “A star lit up in the sky, but where did you come from?” - and none of them ever asked themselves such a question: five years old they already knew how to dissect the Big Dipper as well as Professor Owen and drive a star cart, like a train driver drives a train. Not one of the juvenile Gradgrinds, seeing a cow in a meadow, remembered the well-known hornless cow that kicked the old dog without a tail, which pats the cat by the scruff of the neck, which scares and catches a titmouse, or about that famous cow that swallowed the Little Thumb ; they knew absolutely nothing about these celebrities, and for them the cow was only a herbivorous ruminant quadruped with several stomachs.
So Mr. Gradgrind, very pleased with himself, walked to his house - a true storehouse of facts - called Stone Lodge. He built this house after he had retired from his wholesale hardware business, and was now looking for an opportunity to increase the sum of the units that make up Parliament. Stone Lodge stood in the heath about a mile and a half from the great city which in this trustworthy guide is called Coxtown.
Stone Shelter was a very distinct feature of the terrain. No subterfuge softened or obscured this undisguised detail of the landscape - it asserted itself as an inexorable and indisputable fact: a large, box-like two-story building with a massive colonnade that obscured the lower windows, like thick hanging eyebrows obscured the eyes of its owner. Everything is calculated, everything is calculated, weighed and verified. Six windows on one side of the door, six on the other; total on the facade twelve in the right wing, twelve in the left and, accordingly, twenty-four in the back wall. A lawn, a garden, and the beginnings of an alley, lined up like a botanical account book. Gas lighting, fans, sewerage and plumbing are all flawless devices. Staples and iron braces - a full guarantee against fire; there are mechanical lifts for the maids with their mops, rags and brushes; In other words, everything you could wish for.
Is that all? Apparently so. Underage Gradgrinds are provided with aids for all sorts of scientific pursuits. They have a small conchological collection, a small metallurgical collection, and a small mineralogical collection; the samples of minerals and ores are laid out in the strictest order and provided with labels, and they seem to have been chipped from the parent rock by their own puzzling names. And if all this was not enough for the young Gradgrinds, then what else, pray tell, did they need?
Their parent returned home slowly, in the most iridescent and pleasant mood. He loved his children in his own way, was a tender father, but himself (if he were required to be precise as from Sessie Jupe), he would probably call himself "a supremely practical father." In general, he was extremely proud of the expression "highly practical", which was especially often applied to his person. Whatever public meeting took place at Cockestown, and whatever was discussed at that meeting, one could be sure that one of the speakers would certainly take the opportunity to mention his eminently practical friend Gradgrind. A practical friend invariably listened to it with pleasure. He knew that he was only being paid tribute, but it was still pleasant.
He had already reached the outskirts of Coxtown and stepped on neutral ground, in other words, he found himself in an area that was neither city nor village, but possessed the worst qualities of both city and village, when the sounds of music reached his ears. The drums and trumpets of the traveling circus, which had settled here, in a wooden booth, played with all their might. The flag fluttering from the tower of this temple of art announced to the whole world that none other than the "Sleary Circus" claims to the favorable attention of the public. Slery himself, with a cash drawer beside him, sat like a monumental modern sculpture in a booth that looked like a niche in an early Gothic cathedral, and accepted the entrance fee. Miss Josephine Slery, as one could read on the very long and narrow posters, opened the program with her signature number - "Equestrian Tyrolean Dance of Flowers." Among other amusing, but invariably strictly decent miracles - which must be seen with one's own eyes to be believed - the poster promised a performance by Signor Jupa and his excellently trained dog Veselchak. In addition, the famous "iron fountain" will be shown - the best number of Signor Jupa, consisting in the fact that seventy-five centners of iron, thrown up by his mighty hand, rise in a continuous stream into the air - a number that has not yet happened in our country. , nor outside it, and which, due to its constant and wild success with the public, cannot be withdrawn from the program. The same Signor Joop "in the intervals between numbers will enliven the performance with moral jokes and witticisms in the spirit of Shakespeare." Finally, Signor Jupe will play his favorite part, that of Mr. William Button of Tooley Street in "a highly original and hilarious hippo deville, The Tailor's Journey to Brentford."
Thomas Gradgrind, of course, did not even look at this vulgar fuss and proceeded on, as befits a practical person, trying to brush aside the noisy two-legged boogers and mentally sending them to jail. But the turn of the road brought him to the back wall of the booth, and at the back wall of the booth he saw a bunch of children and saw that the children, in the most unnatural poses, stealthily peek through the crack in order to admire the magical spectacle with at least one eye.
Mr. Gradgrind stopped.
“Those vagabonds,” he said, “they seduce even the pupils of an exemplary school.
Since he was separated from his young pets by a strip of land where stunted grass made its way between heaps of garbage, he took a lorgnette out of his vest pocket and began to peer in to see if there were any children known to him by their surnames, whom he could call out and drive away from here. And what was revealed to his eyes! The phenomenon is mysterious, almost unbelievable, although clearly visible: his own daughter, metallurgical Louise, clinging to the pine boards, did not stop looking into the hole, and his own son, mathematical Thomas, crawled along the ground in the most humiliating way, hoping to see at least one hoof from the "equestrian-Tyrolean flower dance"!
