Mr. Bounderby — Hard Times

Mr. Bounderby arrives at Stone Lodge on his birthday like a balloon in a waistcoat: loud, staring, permanently inflated, and proud to be a self-made man. He tells Mrs. Gradgrind he was born in a ditch, raised in an egg-box, starved by a wicked grandmother, and dragged himself up through vagabond, clerk, and manager to Josiah Bounderby of Coketown. Dickens calls him the Bully of humility: a man who uses past suffering as a club against anyone who still suffers.

Gradgrind enters with Louisa and Tom and confesses a crisis. His children looked at a circus, which means something has entered their minds outside reason. Bounderby names the infection at once: idle imagination. Worse, there is a stroller's child in the school, Cecilia Jupe. Louisa saw her apply for admission. Bounderby orders Gradgrind to turn the girl out and do it at once. Gradgrind agrees and prepares to walk to town with the father's address.

Before leaving, Bounderby looks in on the children. He tells Louisa the trouble is over and asks for a birthday kiss. She offers her cheek coldly, face averted. After he goes, she rubs the spot with her handkerchief until it burns red. Tom tells her she will rub a hole in her face. She answers that he may cut the piece out with his penknife; she would not cry. Bounderby has entered the house as future husband and present judge. Louisa has learned what reward the system offers a girl who obeyed every fact.