FREE ESSAY ON DICKIN HARD TIMES

DICKIN HARD TIMES

Louisa was influenced by her father's educational system, causing her to base all
experiences on facts, without any imagination involved in determinism. She was forced by
her fathers philosophy to learn that" you musn't fancy" (14) causing her to base all
experiences exclusively on fact. This type of guidance restricted all emotions within her
life. As a result of her fathers teachings throughout the novel Louisa slowly comes to a
realization that she was dependent on others ideas, and doesn't have any emotional
experiences to guide her own positions. This is directly evident at two points in the
text; First when she had been presented with a proposal for marriage, and on her voyage
to visit her ill mother. By Louisa being able to distinguish the need for emotional
experiences, Louisa is able to help her father see the negative impact of his philosophy
of facts. 
It becomes evident that Louisa had suffered from her fathers education system when
Mr.Gradgrind had presented Louisa with Mr.Bounderby's proposal of marriage. At this point
her father is proud of her unimaginative attitude, "you are not impulsive, you are not
ironic, you are accustomed to view everything from strong dispassionate ground of reason
and calculation" (99). Upon Louisa's response to the proposal, she goes through a series
of questioning her father for the 'right answer', "does Mr Bounderby ask me to love
him?"(101) "What would you advise me to use in its stead, father?"(100). The latter quote
only shows how her father's authoritarian upbringing has influenced her own judgments. By
not allowing Louisa to posses these "fancies" which in turn leads to development of the
imagination, he actually causes her unhappiness. Her answer is one that involves no
emotion, and this can be seen in the blandness of her remark, "Mr Bounderby asks me to
marry him. The question I have to ask myself is, shall I marry him? That is so, father,
is it not? You have told me so, father. Have you not?".(103)
The second point at which Louisa realizes that her father's philosophy has a suppressing
influence on her emotions was during a voyage home to visit her sick mother. During this
voyage there is a point when Dickens writes "as she approached her home now, did any of
the best influences of old home descend upon her. The dreams of childhood - its airy
fables; its graceful, beautiful humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond" ... "
what had she to do with these?" (198). Louisa become conscious that her father's school
of facts has left her with nothing in place of her childhood. " Her remembrances of home
and childhood were remembrances of the drying up of every spring and fountain in her
young heart as it gushed out. The golden waters were not there." (198). This is
significant because Louisa has now recognized that her father's philosophy of "facts
facts facts" has left her with no emotional experiences, which would have helped to
create her childhood dreams. Louisa is now aware that if she were to live a life of
pleasure she must begin by living her life guided by her emotions, and not by her fathers
philosophy of facts. After feeling some emotions towards James Harthouse, Louisa finally
confronts her father on how corrupt his school of facts is, and how it has left her with
no emotional experiences to guide her, "I curse the hour in which I was born to such a
destiny...How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that
raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are
the sentiments of my heart ? What have you done, O father, what have you done .."(215).
As the scene progresses, Louisa tells her father that the cause of her unhappy marriage
is because she had been forced into it, "You proposed my husband to me. I took him. I
never made a pretense to him or you that I loved him. I knew, and, father you knew, and
he knew that I never did "(217). At this point her father realizes that she has been
unhappy, and makes his first attempt to comfort her as a parent.
Throughout the novel, Louisa realizes that she does not have any emotional experiences to
steer her. Her revolutions of her own feelings help to embellish these emotions. And
without her confrontation of her father, his ideologies, and self-reflection of her
childhood, she may have remained blind to her own feelings. The ironic part is that for
Louisa it took the actual Fancy to come forth in Louisa to determine her Reason.