Riassunto - Hard TImes - Dickens - Letteratura e cultura inglese ii PDF

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Riassunto di Hard TImes di Dickens ...

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CAPITOLO 1

The One Thing Needful  In a long speech, Thomas Gradgrind tells the teacher Mr. M'Choakumchild (nice name, right?) to teach only facts and nothing but facts to his students.  Gradgrind is described as a man who is totally square – not in a "hip to be square" way, but actually square-shaped. CAPITOLO 2

Murdering the Innocents  Thomas Gradgrind mentally introduces himself to the schoolchildren, excited to "storm away" their imaginations and replace them with "a grim mechanical substitute."  Gradgrind interrogates Sissy Jupe about her name, what her father does for a living, and the definition of a horse. Sissy is unable to answer these questions sufficiently factually. She's shown up by teacher's pet Bitzer, who has this thing down: "Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth."  Josiah Bounderby tells the class that because real horses don't walk on walls and people don't step on flowers, wallpaper and carpets shouldn't have those things on them either.  Gradgrind and Bounderby's lesson turns out to have been a sort of coaching session for the actual teacher, Mr. M'Choakumchild, who now takes over the class. CAPITOLO 3

A Loophole  Thomas Gradgrind walks home, very stoked about himself.  He thinks about how his five children have been brought up in this no-horses-onwallpaper system. He also thinks about how his house, Stone Lodge, is boring, square, and has no creative touches anywhere in it. He's proud that he is known throughout Coketown as an "eminently practical" man, father, and friend.  At the edge of town, Gradgrind hears music and sees the tents of Sleary's traveling circus. There are posters advertising the horse riding and clowning of Signor Jupe and his dog Merrylegs. The circus is totally against everything Gradgrind stands for (since it's fun and creative and stuff).  He is horrified to see a couple of kids peering into the ring through a few holes in the fence.  Gradgrind is really psyched to discipline these kids that dare to have an imagination.  Then he discovers that they are…his own two children, Louisa and Tom! (Act shocked, no one saw it coming.)

 Louisa tells Gradgrind that she brought Tom to check out the circus, and in response to him yelling at her about it, she tells her father that she is tired "of everything, I think." CAPITOLO 4

Mr. Bounderby  Mr. Bounderby, red and inflated like a balloon, chats with Mrs. Gradgrind in Stone Lodge. Mostly, he drones on and on about how he grew up in the school of hard knocks. He lived in a ditch, abandoned by his mother, raised by a drunken grandmother, sickly, and dirt poor of course. The grand finale of this speech (one he gives frequently) is how he has been able to raise himself up by his bootstraps: "vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown."  Gradgrind, Tom, and Louisa come home.  Gradgrind tells Bounderby and Mrs. Gradgrind that he found the children peeping at the circus – which is about as bad as if they'd been "reading poetry."  Mrs. Gradgrind is sort of very weakly incensed and mostly complains about a headache. Bounderby and Gradgrind, meanwhile, play detective. They figure out that because Sissy Jupe talked about the circus at school, she has clearly been a bad influence on Louisa and Tom. They decide she must be expelled and go at once to tell her father.  Before they leave, Bounderby goes up to the children's room and asks Louisa to let him give her a kiss (all together now – EWWWWW!). He kisses her on the cheek and leaves. She, meanwhile, rubs "the cheek he had kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red" and then tells her brother "You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I wouldn't cry!" CAPITOLO 5

The Key-note  Coketown is described as a boring, hard-working, ugly, dirty place, drowning in "fact, fact, fact." Its factory owners and politicians despise its working people, based mostly on statistical analyses of their immorality, drunkenness, and other vices. It's made clear, though, that all these workers really need is to have their imaginations and emotions "brought into healthy existence instead of struggling on in convulsions."  On their way to the circus lodgings, Bounderby and Gradgrind run into Sissy being chased by Bitzer. Sissy tells them that Bitzer has been teasing and bullying her. Bitzer says that she is lying, just like all the other horse-riders. This only confirms Bounderby and Gradgrind's theory that she is a bad influence.  Bitzer is sent home, and Sissy takes Bounderby and Gradgrind to see her father. CAPITOLO 6

Sleary's Horsemanship  Sissy is surprised to see that her father is not in his room at the Pegasus Arms Inn. She leaves Bounderby and Gradgrind there while she goes to search for him.  Gradgrind and Bounderby meet two of the performers, E.W.B. Childers, a horse rider, and Master Kidderminster, "a diminutive boy with an old face." On stage, he usually plays children, but in real life has "a precocious cutaway coat and an extremely gruff voice."  The four men trade insults back and forth, with Gradgrind and Bounderby insisting that performing in the ring is the kind of job lazy slackers do. Childers and Kidderminster call them out on their ignorance about how hard it actually is to be a circus acrobat or horse-rider. In the middle of all the sarcasm and name-calling, we learn that Sissy's dad has been "missing his tip" quite a bit of late, which is circus slang for "Didn't do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and bad in his tumbling."  Childers suggests that Signor Jupe may have run off and left his daughter, despite (or because of) how much he loved her. Childers tells Gradgrind that Signor Jupe's main hope was to get Sissy an education at the Coketown school.  The rest of the performers shuffle into the room. Mr. Sleary, circus owner and operator, introduces himself to Bounderby and Gradgrind. The man speaks with a really pronounced lisp.  Sissy comes back, not having found her father. While she is weeping, floored by his disappearance, Bounderby decides that she needs some facts to snap out of it. He whips out this delightfully empathic morsel: "Your father has absconded – deserted you – and you mustn't expect to see him again as long as you live." He's pretty surprised by two things: one, she is still crying; and two, Sleary threatens to throw him out the window.  Gradgrind is clearly not quite as horrendous as Bounderby. He changes his mind about expelling Sissy. He instead offers to keep her in school and to let her come live at his house.  Sissy agrees, and says a tearful good-bye to each member of the circus troupe.  Sleary then busts out with the anti-fact philosophy that this novel is pushing pretty hard: "People must be amuthed thomehow." CAPITOLO 7

Mrs. Sparsit  Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby's housekeeper, is a widow and the proud descendant of two prominent (in her mind anyway) families: her husband was a Powler while she herself is a Scadgers. Bounderby loves having her as a servant – she has fallen from high society and so makes him look even better for climbing as high from the gutter as he has climbed.

 Bounderby tells Mrs. Sparsit about Gradgrind's plans for Sissy, and his own worries that she will be a bad influence on "Louisa, Louisa, Louisa."  Mrs. Sparsit praises Bounderby for being "quite another father to Louisa," but he says that if he's another father to anyone it's to Tom. In fact, Tom is coming to work for him at the Bank very soon.  The two banter a bit about how rich and upper class Mrs. Sparsit used to be and how low class and poor Bounderby used to be.  Gradgrind, Louisa, and Sissy come to Bounderby's house. Sissy is shy and confused; she bows a greeting to everyone except (by mistake) Mrs. Sparsit and Bounderby yells at her.  Gradgrind formally offers Sissy a place in his house as a sort of companion and servant to the sickly Mrs. Gradgrind. She accepts, but says that as soon as her father returns, she will leave the Gradgrinds. CAPITOLO 8

Never Wonder  This chapter's title is explained by a quick memory – Louisa, about nine years old, one day starts a conversation with Tom, "I wonder –" to which her father quickly answers, "Louisa, never wonder!" This is Gradgrind's hobbyhorse in a nutshell, obviously, and so much so that he is really stressed about the fact that Coketown has a library – and that workers use that library to read novels about made-up strangers. Yes, clearly he's a few fries short of a Happy Meal. Moving on.  Tom complains to Loo (Louisa) that he really hates everything about his life, and thinks their house is a "Jaundiced Jail." (That's got a nice ring to it, doesn't it?) He tells her that as soon as he can get the heck out of there, he is going to go wild to make up for lost time. Basically, he's going to be a college freshman on a bender.  Louisa worries that Bounderby won't really be into that kind of behavior from one of his employees. Tom laughs and tells her that he's got a trick to handle Bounderby. Ready for it? The trick is Louisa. Since Bounderby has the hots for Louisa, and will probably ask her to marry him, Louisa will have the power to make Bounderby be nice to Tom.  Louisa slow and sadly acquiesces to Tom's demands. She sits and stares at the fire in the fireplace, confessing that she has "unmanageable thoughts that will wonder," at which point her mother comes in to repeat her father's earlier phrase forbidding any wondering of any kind. And you thought your parents don't really get you.

CAPITOLO 9

Sissy's Progress

 Sissy is not a model student in Gradgrind's school. She is emotional, highly moral, deeply committed to her father's memory, and doesn't have a very good head for figures – all qualities that make her pretty unfit for the just-the-facts approach the school teaches.  Sissy complains about her stupidity to Louisa, who answers that Sissy's good nature and ability to be a pleasant, helpful, loving person is better than being a super knowledge robot.  Sissy continues to complain, but as she describes the "mistakes" she makes, we can see that they are not mistakes at all. Rather, she is working from the point of view of Judeo-Christian values of compassion and care, while the economically minded school is working from the point of view of every-man-for-himself, dog-eat-dog world.  Changing the subject, Louisa asks Sissy to tell her about her father and mother. Sissy's mother died in childbirth. Her father had loved her very much and wanted to have Sissy become educated because that had been her wish.  Sissy describes how exhausting her father's profession was, especially as he got older and was less able to do the complicated acrobatics that makes for good clowning. When he was very unhappy, Sissy used to cheer him up by reading him "the wrong books – I am never to speak of them here" – fairy tales, myths, and novels. (Hey, you know what's funny? We're reading a novel as we speak! What do you think that means?)  Sissy finishes with a sort of horrifying story about her dad. He was so upset with his bad performance one day that he beat his uber-faithful dog, Merrylegs, until it was bloody. So, you know, emotions can sometimes be a little scary.  Tom comes in to fetch Louisa to come make nice with Bounderby, who has come for a visit.  Sissy completes her story. The last time she saw her father, he was really as depressed as she'd ever seen him. He asked her to go out and buy some massage ointment for his sore back, and when she came back he was gone. CAPITOLO 10

Stephen Blackpool  In the deepest, grimiest, saddest part of Coketown live the factory workers – the slang term for them is "Hands." (It's their bosses' slang, and it's pretty demeaning.)  One of these workers is Stephen Blackpool, whose life has been difficult, and who is "a man of perfect integrity." After his day is done, he stands in the street waiting for Rachael, another factory worker, whom he is clearly deeply in love with. They walk home together, talking quietly. He thanks her for always making him feel better by her kind presence. He drops her off at her house, then walks into his own.  Stephen is shocked and dismayed to find there… his own wife! Who is now a really, really super-mega-awful alcoholic disaster. This explains both why he's always in such a bad mood, and why he and Rachael can't get married.

 She is mildly lucid, and he asks her why she has come back despite the fact that he pays her to stay away. She cackles like a monster and says that she will never really leave him alone, then passes out on the bed. CAPITOLO 11

No Way Out  After work the next day, Stephen goes to Bounderby's house, interrupting his boss's lunch. Bounderby compliments Stephen on not being a "Hand" who has never "been unreasonable," and who does not "expect to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon." Bounderby is just a teensy weensy little bit of an exaggerator.  Stephen asks Bounderby for advice about his wife – namely, how to get rid of her. She's a hopeless alcoholic. They obviously do not have any kind of relationship, and their only contact is when she blows into town to sell his stuff for booze.  Bounderby throws out some lame stuff about marriage being for better or for worse. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sparsit asks whether Stephen and his wife are many years apart from each other (hint, hint, Bounderby – Mrs. Sparsit is really not into your whole Louisa deal).  Bounderby finally acknowledges that although the very rich can get Parliament to pass laws allowing them to divorce (meaning, one law per specific couple), the poor are out of luck. Plus, if Stephen were to harm her or abandon her in any way, or if he and Rachael started to live together without getting married, there are laws that would punish him for it.  Stephen is even more depressed at this news and says he might as well be dead.  At this, Bounderby rips him a new one – kind of out of nowhere – saying that Stephen has clearly been hanging out with the wrong people and needs to straighten up and fly right. CAPITOLO 12

The Old Woman  Stephen leaves Bounderby's house and runs into a little old woman who is clearly visiting Coketown from the countryside.  She is thrilled to see him come out of Bounderby's and latches onto him with a million questions about Bounderby's health and general well-being.  After Stephen reassures her that Bounderby is just fine, the old woman tells him that she comes into the city once a year by a very complicated journey to see Bounderby. But not to see meaning to meet – to actually just get a glimpse of him from the street. This year, though, he hasn't come out of the house, and she has to catch her train back.

 The old woman walks Stephen back to his work and continues to be kind of intense and weird, telling him that he must be thrilled to work for Bounderby in the amazing factory. Stephen goes along with it.  She leaves him, and he goes to his loom (the factory is a mill), and thinks about the old woman.  After work, he walks around, and thinks about Rachael and how he can never be with her. He feels himself sinking lower and lower into despair and sadness. CAPITOLO 13

Rachael  Stephen returns to his house and sees a candle shining in the window. Inside, he finds Rachael, taking care of a passed out Mrs. Blackpool.  Rachael tells Stephen that his wife has been injured, and that she could not just be allowed to die without someone caring for her. Oh, and the candle glows around Rachael's head like a halo. Shmoop verdict? Super-saint.  Stephen sees that there are two bottles on the table, one of which freaks him out when he sees the label. He asks Rachael to go home and get some sleep, but she says she'll stay there until three in the morning (see, what did we tell you? Superduper-saint!).  Stephen stays awake for a little while, then dozes off and – symbolic dream alert! – has a crazy dream. In it, he is getting married, in front of a crowd of people who seem to hate him, and then realizes that actually he is there to die.  He wakes up and sees that his wife is awake but clearly completely out of it.  She sees the two bottles and picks up the one that scared him earlier. (We're going to step in and deal with the mystery here – one of the bottles is most likely alcohol of some sort, and the other, scary one is most likely some form of opiate – morphine – probably laudanum. Back in the day, they used that stuff for pain relief, but even then knew it to be addictive and dangerous – it probably creeps Stephen out because he knows how easy a fatal overdose would be.)  Stephen does nothing. His wife is just about to drink the deadly drink when…. Rachael wakes up, wrestles with Mrs. Blackpool, and gets the cup and bottle away from her.  Stephen snaps out of it, thanks Rachael for, you know, stopping him from indirectly killing his wife. He pledges his eternal loyalty and devotion to her, kisses the hem of her shawl, and thinks about how much he loves her as she goes home. CAPITOLO 14

The Great Manufacturer  Gradgrind realizes that Louisa and Tom are growing up; this means that it is time for Tom to go work at Bounderby's Bank.

 Sissy and Gradgrind discuss her scholastic failures. Gradgrind acknowledges that she works as hard as she can to learn the facts, figures, and exact knowledge, but is just not cut out to be taught according to his system. And she has some qualities that are just going to have to be enough: she is "affectionate, earnest, good."  Sometime later, Gradgrind is elected a Member of Parliament.  He notices that Louisa is now finally a woman. He asks her to come to his study to discuss something serious the next day.  That night, Tom stops by the house. He tells Loo that Gradgrind and Bounderby are meeting at the Bank, most likely to discuss Bounderby wanting to marry Louisa.  Her brother then proceeds to lay an extremely selfish and ridiculous guilt trip on her, basically telling her that if she loves him, she will go marry Bounderby. Because that way she can help Tom be even more of a scuzz than he has already become. Sadly, she really has no one else to love, so she agrees to keep Tom in mind when making her decision. CAPITOLO 15

Father and Daughter  Louisa comes to talk to her father like he had asked.  He tells her that Bounderby has proposed marriage to her. She stares at her father without emotion, making him really nervous. Then she asks a totally devastating series of questions: one, "Father, do you think I love Mr. Bounderby?" – two, "Father, do you ask me to love Mr. Bounderby?" – and three, "does Mr. Bounderby ask me to love him?"  Gradgrind is pretty floored by this, but can't quite drop his robotic-I-only-understandlogic M.O. He tells Louisa that love is not really the point, and that the point instead is figuring out what the statistics are for marriages between people of unequal ages in the various parts of the British Empire. If these statistics are favorable, then obviously her marriage will work out just fine.  Louisa comes close to finally giving him "the pent-up confidences of her heart," but he is too far gone into reason to see it. Instead, he just double-checks that she is not into anyone else She makes a super-sarcastic reply, saying that the likes of her would never have gotten any other marriage proposals. Her father misses the point and takes this as proof of how awesome his parenting has been.  Finally, totally blank-faced and unemotional, Louisa agrees to marry Bounderby.  Gradgrind tells Mrs. Gradgrind the happy news, and Louisa catches Sissy looking at her with a sad face. CAPITOLO 16

Husband and Wife

 Bounderby is stressed about how to tell Mrs. Sparsit that he's going to marry Louisa – good call, since she was totally hoping to marry him herself. He is expecting her to faint or to attack him or something when he tells her. Instead Mrs. Sparsit instantly takes on a superior, condescending, sarcastic tone.  Since a married man doesn't need a housekeeper, Bounderby offers ...