Sunday, November 10, 2013

What is the behavior of Louisa towards her father in the novel Hard Times?

An excellent chapter to think about and study in depth
with regard to this question in Chapter 15, entitled "Father and Daughter," when
Gradgrind relates the proposal he has received to his daughter from Mr. Bounderby,
asking Louise to be his wife. During this conversation between Louisa and her father,
Louisa, not without certain irony, makes it precisely clear how her behavior has been
affected by Mr. Gradgrind's educational philosophy that has brought her up and
instructed her in the way of Facts:


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The baby-preference that even I have heard of as
common among children, has never had its innocent resting-place in my breast. You have
been so careful of me, that i never had a child's heart. You have trained me so well,
that i never dreamed a child's dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, father, from my
cradle to this hour, that I never had a child's belief or a child's
fear.



Gradgrind, we are told,
is "quite moved" by his "success," even though hopefully the astute reader will be
appalled at the way he has robbed his daughter of her childhood. In spite of this
rigidity and distanced view of life and her own future, in the same chapter, we are told
that Louisa could have broken down and admitted to him how she really
feels:



As he
now leaned back in his chair, and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn, perhaps
he might have seen one wavering moment in her, when she was impelled to throw herself
upon his breast, and give him the pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he
must have overleaped at a bound the artificial barriers he had for many years been
erecting, between himself and those subtle essences of humanity which will elude the
utmost cunning of algebra until the last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even
algebra to wreck. The barriers were too many and too high for such a leap. With his
unbending, utilitarian, matter-of-fact face, he hardened her again, and the moment shot
away into the plumbless depths of the past, to mingle with all the lost opportunities
that are drowned
there.



Louisa's behavior
towards her father is therefore characterised by a whole host of "lost opportunities"
that sink into the "plumbless depths of the past." Louisa, like any normal daughter,
would love to confide in her father, but the barriers that he has erected make such a
confidence impossible, sealing Louisa's fate to become Mrs.
Bounderby.

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