Hard Times

We enter the innermost part of Coketown — courts upon courts, close streets upon streets — where the factory workers known as 'the Hands' live. Among them is Stephen Blackpool, forty years old though he looks older, a good power-loom weaver and a man of perfect integrity. He holds no place among the skilled debaters or self-educated remarkable Hands. He has known, in his own words, 'a peck of trouble.' The factory bells have rung for the night. Stephen stands in the wet street waiting for Rachael — a woman of thirty-five, with a quiet oval face, dark hair in perfect order, and very gentle eyes. When he finds her walking ahead, he quickens his pace and calls her name. They walk home together, carefully. She tells him it is better not to walk together too often — people might talk. He accepts this as law, because her word always is. His word for everything in his life is muddle: 'Awlus a muddle. That's where I stick.' He goes home. Going to the hearth to set down his candle, he stumbles against something. It raises itself from the floor into the form of a woman — his wife. A disabled, drunken creature, barely able to sit upright, tangled and foul. She has come back. He passes to the far end of the room with his face in his hands. Eventually she throws herself onto the bed and falls asleep snoring. He sinks into a chair and moves but once all that night — to throw a covering over her, as if his hands were not enough to hide her even in the darkness.