The mills wake again, and Dickens pauses over Stephen at his loom. Steam power can be weighed to the pound; the worker's inner life cannot. At noon Stephen leaves the hot mill, haggard and worn, and climbs the white steps to Josiah Bounderby's red house, where Mrs. Sparsit presides over lunch without eating it herself.
Stephen asks for advice, not complaint. He tells nineteen years of marriage gone bad: a young wife who drank, pawned, vanished, and returned again and again. He paid her to stay away five years, rebuilt a decent life, and last night found her on his hearthstone. Now he wants to know how to be rid of her so he can marry Rachael, the woman whose pity kept him sane. He has read that rich people may divorce, live apart in separate rooms, or buy their way free. Poor people with one room cannot.
Bounderby answers with brutal simplicity. Hurt her, there is law. Flee, there is law. Remarry, there is law. Live with Rachael unwed, the law would punish even innocent children. Stephen asks the question the chapter exists to ask: show me the law to help me. Bounderby admits such a law exists, but not for Stephen. It costs a mint of money, perhaps a thousand pounds or twice that, through Doctors' Commons, courts, and Parliament.
Stephen turns white and gives everything to the four winds. It is a muddle, he says, and the sooner he is dead the better. Bounderby tells him to mind his piece-work and stop insulting the nation's institutions. He accuses Stephen of coveting turtle soup and venison like other troublemakers. Stephen wishes him good day and leaves. Bounderby swells at his own portrait. Mrs. Sparsit looks cast down by popular vice.
Coming Up in Chapter 12
Leaving Bounderby's house, Stephen meets a strange old country woman who only wanted a glimpse of the great manufacturer and asks if he is happy at the factory Stephen leaves Bounderby's house still carrying the morning's no way out, and an old country woman touches his arm. She is plainly dressed, muddy from travel, and fluttering in the street noise..
