15
The infection here, the moral infection, is one of world-weariness and in
difference. But even more important for Dickens, one feels, is the loss of a
sense of wonder. Wonder will clearly go with Innocence. As Harthouse later
says to Louisa when she asks him if he has no opinions of his own:
I have not so much as the slightestpredilection left. I assure
you I attach not the least importance to any opinions. The
result of the varieties of boredom I have undergone is a con
viction (unless conviction is too industrious a word for the
lazy sentiment I entertain on the subject), that any set of
ideas will do just as much good as any other set." (p.129).
This is cynicism. No faith in anything or anybody; nor trust either. And it is
this that makes him "have a go" at Louisa. It is in is assault upon Louisa
that the Gradgrind system is put to the test. Louisa, you might ask,-am I to
make of her an innocent or an experienced figure?
Now obviously I am not trying to suggest that as fine and complex a novel
as Hard Times has some sort of simple moral pattern, where those who are not
black must be white; those that are not innocent must be experienced. Rather,
these are the poles of the novel: Innocence and Experience. The struggle is, one
might say, partly fought out in Louisa, who has been given no defenses (little
of the emotional and imaginative integrity of innocence) to defend herself
against the calculators. In that wonderful interview with Gradgrind where he
tells her she has been asked in marriage by Bounderbyshe has no idea what she
should feel, what her father expects of her, or what she should expect of marriage.
She does not know what love is. And Gradgrind in all his rational simplicity, is
surprised that she doesn't, is quite taken aback at the absurd success of his
system, whose aim was to eradicate Fancy - the emotions, the imagination, the
sense of wonder. But it has worked, and Louisa is the dupe of it.
Louisa, though, is of course in part saved - saved by Sissy Jupe, who drives
Harthouse away. It is really a bit long for me to read it all. But you will
remember that Sissy turns up and confronts Harthouse with the fact of Louisa's
having run from her husband and returned to her father - that Harthouse must
now leave Coketown immediately. To save Louisa both from further misery and from
possible dishonour.
One must take into account that Harthouse is, at least by upbringing, a
gentleman; as one might say - no better than a gentleman; furthermore he is at
this particular moment very te.ise about the question where Louisa is; and Sissy
comes with news, he thinks, and, what is more, she comes with complete innocent
confidence in him as a gentlemaneven to the extent of risking a visit like this
to an unknown man, alone. He is thrown right off balance.
