Hard Times

Chapter 2 opens with the formal introduction of the man who was nameless in Chapter 1: 'THOMAS GRADGRIND, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations.' He is now in his classroom, a cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, prepared to blow the children clean out of the regions of childhood. The first target is 'Girl number twenty'—Sissy Jupe, daughter of a circus horse-rider. Gradgrind refuses even her name: Sissy is not a name, she must call herself Cecilia. When asked to define a horse, she freezes—not from ignorance, but because she lives with horses and can't reduce them to a formula. Gradgrind pivots to Bitzer, a pale, bloodless boy sitting in the same shaft of sunlight as Sissy, though the light seems to draw colour out of him rather than pour it in. Bitzer delivers without hesitation: 'Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth...' Gradgrind is satisfied. Now girl number twenty knows what a horse is. Then a third gentleman steps forward—a government inspector, a self-described pugilist of ideas, always ready to fight common sense into submission. He poses a new test: would you paper a room with pictures of horses? No—horses don't walk up walls in fact. Would you carpet a room with flowers? Sissy says yes, because she is very fond of flowers. The inspector pounces: 'You mustn't fancy.' Gradgrind solemnly echoes him. Sissy sits down, frightened by the matter-of-fact prospect the world affords. The chapter closes with the introduction of Mr. M'Choakumchild—one of 140 teachers mass-produced in the same factory on the same principles, crammed with every branch of knowledge from orthography to cosmography. Dickens closes with a sardonic question: when M'Choakumchild fills each child to the brim, will he always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim him and distort him?