By John O’Hagan
~ This essay—which O’Hagan wrote for ENGL 4913: Senior Thesis—deals with mature themes that are raised by the psychoanalytical theories proposed by Sigmund Freud. As a result, viewing discretion is advised for potential readers. ~
Since its publication, Charles Dickens’s story of a young, broken woman confined to a world of facts and figures, only to be redeemed from her brokenness, has confused its readers. The confusion comes from the ambiguity of the novel’s genre, which has resulted in lengthy debates ranging from the alternate uses of the word fancy, as discussed by Nele Pollatschek, to the paradoxical support of and opposition to a utilitarian outlook on life found within the novel. In the debate over the categorization of Hard Times, the majority of scholars place the novel in the genre of social-problems. The placement of Hard Times as a social-problems novel has heavily subjected it to the Marxist lens. Jessi Snider uses such a lens when he argues that Sissy Jupe is not the champion of the lower classes as is widely believed. This view of Hard Times has reached beyond the field of literary criticism and has become entrenched in popular opinion and politics, as can be seen when Theodore Dalrymple, while writing for The American Conservative, stated, “Political economy is one of [Hard Times’s] most important themes.” Though social-problems is the most popular genre placement, some critics resist such placement. For example, Elizabeth Starr argues that the difficulty in labeling is a result of Dickens’s writing Hard Times as an experimentation to view the “anxieties surrounding the uses of literature” (319) with the character of Louisa as a filter.
The favoring of the Marxist lens has resulted in a gap in how this book has been analyzed. Like much of Dickens’s work, scholars have not subjected Hard Times to the lens of psychoanalysis. Nor has it been scrutinized regarding its themes of sexuality, as these are “still underrepresented topics… in the works of Charles Dickens” (Furneaux and Schwan 1). Although scholars have largely neglected the topics of sexuality, their attention has increased in recent years concerning these issues, while the two most popular theories used by scholars are Gender theory and Queer theory (Waters xii). With the increased attention concerning these topics, some scholars have chosen to look at the work of Dickens through a psychoanalytic lens. Among those scholars is William A. Cohen, who uses a psychoanalytic lens when he examines the sexual undertones in Dickens’s work as well as how the author portrays sexual interactions and desires, which are present in the majority of his work. Cohen also assesses possible allusions to masturbation in Great Expectations and the parallel stigmatization of both masturbation and the novel form in the Victorian period (“Manual” 53). McKnight takes up this torch as she explores Dickens’s prolific use of sexual slang. Critics are not mistaken in using a Marxist lens in the reading of Hard Times, yet the text would be most effectively examined if read in conjunction with a psychoanalytical reading. This additional perspective of the text will reveal that the characters of Hard Times find themselves psychologically repressed through the political and economic conditions found in the novel.
Freudian psychoanalysis has long recognized the natural connection between psychology and literature. Freud himself, in Creative Writers and Daydreaming, argues that authors mask their illicit desires within their work. The core of the psychoanalytic theory of criticism is the belief that there are instances of repressed desires—sexual, violent, and others—that are present in novels, in order to be fulfilled in a socially acceptable manner, and that “we never give anything up; we only exchange one thing for another” (Freud 313). The later theorist, Jacques Lacan, adds to psychoanalytic criticism with his theory of the mirror stage and the symbolic order. He also developed the theory that desires form after a person realizes s/he is an individual and separate from the one who nurtures him/her. In this theory, awakened desires are not only a response to the realization that one is an individual, but a response to the realization that, as an individual, there are things one lacks—specifically, a realization that one lacks coherence or wholeness. Thus, one’s desires are the manifestation of the need for coherence.
In what follows, I combine the Marxist and the psychoanalytical theories to argue that the economic and political conditions, found within the novel, created the extreme psychological repression found so prevalently in Dickens’s characters. This psychological repression is revealed in the form of illicit desires, delusions of grandeur bolstered by deceit, and a manic desire for control for the characters of Louisa, Gradgrind, and those around them, with Harthouse’s representing the unconscious Id and Sissy’s representing the Ego. This repression stems from the Industrial Age’s inherent demand of long work hours that left little time for recreation or the fulfillment of desires and the prioritization of work over pleasure. In the novel, this prioritization is seen in the tension between the contrasting worlds of Fact and Fancy. Those from the world of Fact disregard and disdain pleasure. It is the view that “what you [cannot] state in figures, or show to be purchasable in the cheapest market and saleable in the dearest, was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen” (Dickens 28). Those from the world of Fancy, on the other hand, are immersed in pleasure and imagination, while ultimately seeing oneself as an autonomous being outside of one’s economic conditions. This economically induced tension between Fact and Fancy is instrumental in precipitating the psychological repression found in Hard Times.
Gradgrind, Louisa’s father, is the first character to demonstrate psychological repression. He represses movements—both emotionally and sexually. Dickens describes Gradgrind as square and lacking movement with a “hard voice,” “square forehead,” and “square forefinger” (9). His physicality, as well as his clothing, lacks movement. Gradgrind has a “square coat” with “square shoulders” and pants with “square legs” (9). All of the descriptions about him as well as his movements are stiff and rigid. The description of Gradgrind’s desires provides further evidence of his repressing his emotional and sexual movement. He desires always to be “ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature” (10). This mentality extends toward sex as well. He views sex not as a desire or emotion, but rather a simple fact of life—on par with a business transaction. He views Louisa’s marriage with Bounderby from this point of view. The way Gradgrind perceives sex and human nature stems from his manic desire for control. This desire for control stems from the utilitarian outlook that characterizes the Industrial Age. Gradgrind wants to control his desires, so he can continue to live in the world of Facts, in which he is accustomed and comfortable.
This need to control his desires is the very thing that causes Gradgrind ultimately to lose control. Dickens describes Gradgrind as he stands in front of his students: “[H]e eagerly sparkled at them… [and] he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow… at one discharge” (10). Evidence for his having lost control of his desire for control is found in the description of how “he eagerly sparkled.” Gradgrind finds pleasure in the potential “discharge” of facts and is waiting expectantly for it. More evidence can be found in the statement, “prepared to blow.” His discipline and self-control are all but gone and he can no longer contain himself as he asserts, “Now what I want is, Facts” and, “In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts” (Dickens 9). Gradgrind extends this outlook to his own children, saying, “This is the principle on which I bring up my own children” (Dickens 9). Louisa herself first encounters repression through Gradgrind’s repression of his own movement and warped perspective of sex.
Through her marriage to Bounderby, Louisa further experiences this psychological phenomenon when she encounters Bounderby’s repression of his mother, Mrs. Pegler. Mrs. Pegler says that she has had to live in hiding away from her son (Dickens 252), due to Bounderby fabricating an elaborate fantasy of his entire origin, claiming to have been abandoned by his parents and having risen to his current position by his own ability—the ideal “self-made man.” Any desire Bounderby has to be with his mother is repressed to maintain his façade of being a self-made man. He therefore pays her a pension of 30 pounds per year insisting that she stay out of his life. Merely having her present would destroy his fantasy as a self-made man, and the façade would fall apart. The idea of the self-made man is paramount to the utilitarian outlook of the Industrial Age. Bounderby views failure to attain the status of being a self-made man as a scandal. Mrs. Pegler admits that she should keep her distance because she has “no doubts” that she would do “a many unbefitting things” if she were around him (Dickens 253). These “unbefitting things” carry a threat—a threat of humiliation or scandal. The threat of scandal forces Bounderby to repress her, while also maintaining a connection with her through the pension he pays her. Bounderby is only able to continue paying his mother off due to the financial success he enjoys because of the very fantasy he is paying her to be able to maintain. Without these specific economic conditions, Mrs. Pegler would not be repressed. It is into this densely woven delusion of grandeur and deception that Louisa arrives through her marriage to Bounderby.
Bounderby’s fantasy of being a self-made man represses Louisa, while at the same time making it possible for her repressed desires to make their appearance in the form of the character Harthouse. Dickens writes, “She [Louisa] was… so ashamed of her husband’s braggart humility—from which she shrunk as if every example of it were a cut or a blow” (127). The word “shrunk” carries with it the ideas of restriction or repression—in this case, a repression of sexual desire. This outcome can be inferred from her husband’s bragging feeling like “a cut or a blow” to her (Dickens 127). This is not the first time that Louisa has “shrunk” from or been sexually repressed by Bounderby. At the age of sixteen, an age where Louisa would have been becoming sexually aware, Bounderby would kiss her cheek and say, “Always my pet; an’t you, Louisa.” (Dickens 27). She would then rub her cheek raw in an attempt to remove all traces of his kiss (27). The imagery of cuts, blows, and the act of rubbing her cheek raw connects violence and sex. This connection has appeared in Dickens before, as Curt Hargot argues that “repressed sexual desire underlies the violence” of Great Expectations (248). Since the time she was young, Louisa has associated sex with violence. This association helps to facilitate her repression and repulsion by Bounderby, her now husband, which leads to further frustration and repression of her sexual desires.
Bounderby represses not only Louisa and Mrs. Pegler but his housekeeper, Mrs. Sparsit, through economic means as well. Mrs. Sparsit is part of the old aristocracy that is dying out in the Industrial Age, though “here she was now… making Mr. Bounderby’s tea as he took his breakfast” (Dickens 47). The Industrial Age made the ascension of the middle-class far easier than it had been in the past, allowing the likes of Bounderby to overtake the aristocracy. Bounderby takes great pleasure in having surpassed Mrs. Sparsit, to the point where “he could not have made a greater flourish with her than he habitually did” (Dickens 47). Bounderby boasts about having Mrs. Sparsit in his service as a way to strengthen further his façade of being a self-made man. Bounderby’s lording of his power over Mrs. Sparsit creates a duality in her. Dickens writes, “Mrs. Sparsit was a pattern of consistency; continuing to take such pity on Mr. Bounderby to his face, as is rarely taken on man, and to call his portrait a Noodle to its face, with the greatest acrimony and contempt” (195). Here Freud’s theory of the aesthetic, working as a surrogate for illicit desires, can be seen when Mrs. Sparsit allows her contempt for Bounderby to manifest toward his portrait. She keeps that contempt hidden in the dark, away from society. She represses it in public, but still acts on it in private by projecting her contempt onto a portrait—an aesthetic work much like the novel. Through this duality, Mrs. Sparsit allows herself the pleasure of indulging her own fantasies through the use of the aesthetic form. This duality is caused by her love for Bounderby and jealousy of Louisa as Bounderby’s wife.
Mrs. Sparsit, out of both love and jealousy, waits in anticipation for Louisa to fall from grace, to give into lust and commit adultery with Harthouse. Dickens says, “She erected in her mind a mighty Staircase, with a dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom; and down those stairs, from day to day and hour to hour, she saw Louisa coming. It became the business of Mrs. Sparsit’s life” (195). The pleasure she feels in fantasizing about Louisa’s fall removes her even further from Bounderby and the world of Facts. One is not supposed to wonder or to have fantasies in that world, yet she is reveling in her desires and even delving into the unconscious. Mrs. Sparsit’s “staircase” leads into the unconscious—a “dark pit of shame and ruin.” Louisa has illicit desires that are shameful. Louisa is going downward toward the unconscious, but Mrs. Sparsit is already there. She is in love with Bounderby and wants to be his wife. Bounderby, however, is already married, thus she is having adulterous thoughts—something that would be looked down upon in the Victorian era. Dickens describes how Mrs. Sparsit would “look up at her staircase… to watch Louisa coming down” (Dickens 195-96). Mrs. Sparsit must “look up,” which implies that she is already at the bottom in the “dark pit of shame and ruin” that represents the unconscious. She has already fallen. Her duality extends beyond simple emotion and into a violation of her social position and the expectations therein. As the housekeeper, Mrs. Sparsit is the Angel of the House, revered in Victorian society for their upright purity. Simultaneously, though, her adulterous thoughts make her the Fallen Woman as well. Both sides of this duality try to repress the other. Mrs. Sparsit exists in a state of perpetual repression by the economic conditions of the Industrial Age, Bounderby’s fantasy, and the moral code of the Victorian period—as she waits for Louisa to fall.
In the latter part of the novel, Louisa does literally collapse in front of her father, who first instigated the repression of her desires. Louisa tells her father that he kept her garden from blooming and turned it into a wilderness (Dickens 208). What she means is that he never allowed her to explore her imagination and desires—or in other words, he never permitted her to grow sexually healthy. This association can be inferred from her use of the words “garden” and “bloomed.” McKnight points out that the term rosebud, in the Victorian age, was “a longstanding term and image for female genitalia” (55). Therefore, it would not be wrong to assume that there is a connection between a “garden” and sexuality. Not only does Louisa blame her father for turning her “garden” into a “wilderness,” but she also says that he “doomed” her and “hardened” her (Dickens 208-09). This idea comes from her not understanding nor having a healthy sexuality. Louisa focuses her unhealthy sexual drives on Harthouse, who acts as a surrogate for her sexual drives toward Tom.
Louisa’s illicit desires toward Tom appear after the young Louisa explores the circus. By exploring the circus—a world outside of the one Gradgrind controls—she enters Lacan’s mirror stage of development. In Lacanian theory, the mirror stage is the moment when a child learns that s/he is a separate being from the mother—the one who nurtures him/her. This stage is also when the child learns that s/he is an individual with individuated desires. Gradgrind’s disapproving chastisement of Louisa and Tom for exploring the circus becomes Louisa’s mirror stage. Dickens writes, “There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, particularly the girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light… a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination” (19). Louisa’s “starved imagination” causes her to realize she has desires outside the world of Facts that Gradgrind designed for her. Profound lack, which is the motivation for one’s desires Lacanian theory, can be easily observed in the character of Louisa. Some of the words used to describe her (e.g. “dissatisfaction,” “nothing,” and “starved”) are all synonymous with lack. Her desires are driven by the need to satisfy her deep deficiencies.
Louisa’s mirror stage awakens her to sexual desires—her sexual desires being the “fire with nothing to burn” (Dickens 19). This motif of fire’s symbolizing sexual desire is seen again when Louisa first experiences desire for Tom a few days after an incident at the circus. The scene occurs in their classroom at home. The classroom is, as Daniel Deneau argues, symbolic of an “educational system which is capable of subverting normal human relationship” (177). The classroom is both where Tom and Louisa are inundated with extreme utilitarianism and where emotional intimacy is twisted by Louisa’s need for sexual intimacy. After Tom asks what she is doing, she answers with, “I am looking at the fire” (Dickens 56). Tom asks her what she sees, and she says, “I don't see anything in it, Tom, particularly. But since I have been looking at it, I have been wondering about you and me, grown up” (Dickens 57). At first, it may appear as if she is merely thinking about their growing older, but there is more to it than that. In a sense, Louisa is still a child, and, from a psychoanalytic perspective, “[a] child’s play is determined by wishes: in point of fact by a single wish… the wish to be big and grown up… he imitates what he knows about the lives of his elders” (Freud 313). For Louisa, who has lived her whole life in the world of Facts, the factual information she has about grown-ups is that they get married. This information is on her mind as she stares into the fire—the symbol of sexual desire—and thinks about Tom and herself in the classroom where the norms are subverted.
To a certain extent, Louisa knows that these lustful desires are not acceptable. Whether that is because she knows that they are immoral or because she associates them with pleasure, which is looked down upon in a world of Facts, is unclear. She does say, “I have such unmanageable thoughts” (Dickens 57). Her thoughts follow neither the morals of Victorian England nor the rules of the world of Facts that she has been taught. As she has only been approached in a sexual manner by the repressed Bounderby, up to this point, who repulses and represses her, she, in turn, represses her own drives and desires. So much so, when Gradgrind approaches her about marriage to Bounderby, she accepts by stating, “What does it matter?” (Dickens 100). Repressed both by Bounderby and herself, this is the state she is in when she is introduced to Harthouse.
The character of Harthouse acts as both a surrogate and a chain for Louisa. Harthouse is the epitome of the unconscious Id. In psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious Id is the source of all desires and demands immediate satisfaction. The Id is easily bored as well. Dickens uses the words “bore” or “bored” four times in the short description he gives of Harthouse’s life and the multiple endeavors of fancy he has undertaken (124-25). His excursions range from being in the military to sailing around the world. In each of these endeavors, he became “bored,” much like the unconscious desires, which act on impulse only to become bored when those desires are fulfilled. Louisa meets this man when she is unhappiest in her marriage—when her desires are most frustrated—and projects her desires onto him.
Louisa starts to care for Harthouse only because he fools her into thinking that he actually cares for Tom. Tom is the only person in the novel who can claim Louisa’s love, and Harthouse knows this. Harthouse makes the observation that “[t]his whelp [Tom] is the only creature she [Louisa] cares for” (Dickens 130). Louisa, a person who does not really know what love is, loves her brother over any other “creature.” Knowing this, Harthouse makes an attempt to gain her confidence. He does this by admitting to her that he knows about Tom’s gambling problem and will devote himself to helping Tom break his addiction. Louisa sees this as Harthouse’s caring for Tom. Dickens writes, “After this, there was a smile upon Louisa’s face that day, for someone else” (174). The “someone else” is Harthouse. Louisa is drawn to Harthouse because he seems to mirror her love for Tom.
Louisa’s projection of her illicit desires onto Harthouse causes her to feel secure enough to approach Tom in a sexual manner, but whether she does this intentionally or not is unknown. In an attempt to create a safe haven for Tom to confess his crime, she enters his bedroom wearing “a loose robe” in the middle of the night (Dickens 184). The combination of “a loose robe” and the late hour paints a compromising picture of Louisa. The robe that she wears is not secure on her body, but “loose,” making herself sexually vulnerable. This sexual vulnerability is taken further when she says to Tom, “I am here...barefoot, unclothed, undistinguishable in the darkness” (Dickens 184). Louisa uses the word “unclothed,” as if she has completely forgotten about even the “loose robe” that she has donned. She has made herself sexually available to him in the dark. She even attempts to ease his mind about her being his sister by saying that she is “undistinguishable in the darkness.” She says this in order to coax him into confessing, but this phrase carries a sexual undertone. She is also saying that sexually, he would not have to worry about her being his sister. Tom ignores her placating voice and leaves her desires unfulfilled, much the same way as years before when she married Bounderby.
Years previously, Tom approached Louisa to gain a vow of affection from her after she had spent years under Bounderby’s repressive being. Tom’s attempt plays to her sexual desires, but ultimately leaves her even more frustrated and repressed. Dickens writes, “Louisa still stood looking at the fire. Her brother glanced at her face with greater interest than usual, and, encircling her waist with his arm, drew her coaxingly to him” (94). Again, the motif of the fire shows up in this scene, signaling the underlying current of sexual desire. How Louisa responds to Tom’s advances is telling. Dickens continues, “He pressed her in his arms, and kissed her cheek. She returned the kiss, but still looked at the fire” (94). Even when it seems as if they would be placated, Louisa represses her sexual desires. The sentence reads as if she coldly, stiffly “returned the kiss,” as if she were just woodenly going through the motions. However, she was still looking at the fire, as if in the back of her mind the desires were still there, wanting to be fulfilled. This scene is mirrored later in the novel with Harthouse.
Louisa’s feelings for Tom, exacerbated by Harthouse, come to a climax when she nearly has an affair with Harthouse. The tension of the scene builds as Harthouse “detain[s] her with his encircling arm” (Dickens 205). The tension of whether to meet or not is increased by the touch of his arm around her, which gives her the gratification Bounderby never gave her. The “encircling arm” and Harthouse’s intentions mirror Tom’s attempt to obtain a vow of affection from Louisa. Dickens projects the sexual tension of the scene onto the weather in the phrases “rapidly increasing noise of heavy rain” and “a thunder-storm rolling up” (205). The former serves as a correlation to the heavy breathing of two lovers intertwined in the heat of passion, while the latter acts as the build-up to the lovers’ climax.
The climax between lovers pertains to both sexual desires and the unleashing of Louisa’s repressed desires. Dickens shows this unleashing by describing the damage that the storm, or climax, does to the city. Dickens uses the words “burst,” “overflowed,” and “under water” to describe the damage done (207). The word “burst” denotes that a container has failed. In the text, this word is used to describe drainpipes’ failing under the deluge, but it can also be read as Louisa’s conscience failing her. This failing of her conscience would allow her unconscious, repressed desires, to burst out and overcome her—as if she were “under water.” This unleashing of her desires leads to her collapse as her world of Facts—the drainpipes, gutters, and Coketown—buckles under the idea of giving into pleasure. The mirroring of Louisa’s mental state and the natural world has been noticed by Lewis Darcy as well. Darcy argues that the grim, colorless descriptions of both Coketown and Louisa act as a warning of what will happen to the English landscape and population if utilitarianism is followed to its extreme, as is seen in the novel. Louisa, subjected to the extreme of utilitarianism, has no understanding of pleasure as a result of her repression by Bounderby and Gradgrind, who themselves are repressed by the economic and political conditions in the novel.
Harthouse, the catalyst and surrogate for Louisa’s illicit desires toward Tom, ties her to the world of Facts. Harthouse is a man of pleasure, but he is from the same world of Facts that Bounderby and Gradgrind revere, and thus, also binds Louisa to that world. It is through this very connection that Harthouse enters Louisa’s life in the first place. Harthouse’s brother is part of the House of Commons and has the ear of “the hard Fact fellows” (Dickens 125). Through his brother, Harthouse is brought into association with Gradgrind and Bounderby, and ultimately Louisa. Harthouse works with Gradgrind in statistics, or the collection of facts (Dickens 125). Harthouse, as part of the world of Facts, acts as a chain for Louisa. She cannot divulge or express her desires, due to the economic conditions and elevation of Fact over pleasure, which eventually leads to her collapse and fall from the world of Facts and her rescue by Sissy Jupe.
Sissy Jupe, the girl from the circus, represents the world of Fancy; she takes pleasure in life. Although Sissy comes from the circus, she has spent a large portion of her life in the world of Facts. She attended Gradgrind’s school and lived under his family’s care after her father left. The world of Fancy has been present in Louisa’s life since the mirror stage, which is introduced at the circus in the form of Sissy. Gradgrind’s inability to catalogue Sissy showcases the foreign nature of Fancy in the Industrial Age in Hard Times. Dickens writes of Gradgrind that “he was not quite sure that if he had been required, for example, to tick her off into columns in parliamentary return, he would have known how to divide her” (92). This inability to be catalogued is part of what allows Sissy to save Louisa.
If Harthouse is the epitome of the unconscious Id, then Sissy is the Ego. In psychoanalytic theory, the Ego is the part of the mind that tames the unconscious and represses illicit desires, while fulfilling its desires in a socially acceptable manner. Her inability to be catalogued like a fact, allows her to control Harthouse. After Louisa’s collapse, Sissy approaches Harthouse with a deal: “You may be sure, sir, you will never see her again as long as you live” (Dickens 224). Harthouse is surprised by both this supposed “deal” as well as the one initiating it. Dickens writes that “her modest fearlessness, her truthfulness… presented something in which he was so inexperienced, and against which he knew any of his weapons would fall so powerless; that not a word could he rally to his belief” (224-25). Harthouse, the man who has sailed around the world and fought in the army, has never experienced anything that could have prepared him to deal with Sissy. Harthouse gives into pleasure based upon the facts known to him. Thus, when he decides to seduce Louisa, he bases that decision on the facts at hand, mainly that she is repulsed by her husband. He encounters Louisa through the world of Fact. His whole life is dictated by economic factors and information. Without his money and profit, he is unable to engage in pleasure, and none of that has prepared him for Sissy, the woman who has identity outside of economics.
Harthouse’s ill-preparedness forces him to depart from Fact and to resort to Fancy to try and get his way. The best response he can conjure up is the following: “I cling to the belief that there is yet hope that I am not condemned to perpetual exile from that lady’s [Louisa] presence” (Dickens 225). Sissy, representing Fancy, denies him by saying, “There is not the least hope” (Dickens 225). Sissy takes away any possibility of hope and pleasure, so Louisa will not succumb to her illicit desires. Harthouse resorts back to facts to persuade her. He says, “‘You probably are not aware that I am here on a public kind of business…. You probably are not aware of that, but I assure you it’s the fact’…. It had no effect on Sissy, fact or no fact” (Dickens 227). As the representation of Fancy, Sissy is impervious to facts or being catalogued like one. She has transcended the economic conditions of the Industrial Age. Because of this transcendence, she is able to repress Harthouse.
Sissy is capable of controlling Harthouse without being bound to him or having any other factors affect her. At first, it seems like she has bound herself to him but she has not. Unlike Bounderby’s self-defeating manipulation through the use of his pension and the façade of his life story, Sissy only requires a promise to attain her goal—a simple one at that. She promises that she will tell no one why Harthouse has left Coketown (Dickens 228). Unlike Bounderby and people from the world of Fact, Sissy has no need to tie herself to any sort of repression through economic means; she can simply leave Harthouse behind and forget him. This is the power that Sissy has. Her ability to save Louisa from her illicit desires and self-imposed repression extends beyond controlling Harthouse. Because of Sissy’s connection to the circus, or the world of Fancy, she is able to help repress Tom.
Tom’s gambling addiction, a perversion of the fantasy of the self-made man and a condition caused by Gradgrind, leads to his committing robbery and an “emotional” connection between Louisa and Harthouse. The start of Tom’s perversion can be seen in the early part of his life. He says, “I wish I could collect all the Facts...and all the Figures...and blow them all up together! However, when I go to live with old Bounderby, I'll have my revenge” (Dickens 55). Tom’s goal is to indulge in pleasure, so he chooses the world of gambling in which to do so. This choice is curious as he is still tied to economics, and, in a sense, he is in the same line of work as Harthouse—statistics. Tom plays the odds for economic gain. His pleasure revolves around economics, specifically perverting the lessons in figures that his father gave him when he was young.
Tom’s corruption very negatively impacts Louisa, as he plays off her feelings for him, in order to receive money from her to pay off his debts. Tom’s debt puts enormous strain on Louisa. She says, “[H]e has wanted in one sum as much as a hundred pounds. I have not been able to give it to him. I have felt uneasy for the consequences of his being involved” (Dickens 168). Tom’s addiction, his perverted ties to economics, deeply affects Louisa. She cannot confide in Bounderby for fear of harming Tom and she cannot go to her father for the same reasons. Ultimately, she does not want to bring harm to Tom because she loves him. Because she does not want to bring Tom’s addiction to light, she forces herself to live in fear of the consequences of his actions. Her fear and repression are linked to Tom’s own form of repression connected to the economic conditions in Hard Times. Louisa cannot break away from Tom because of the economics involved and needs the help of Sissy Jupe.
Sissy cannot control Tom in the same way that she did Harthouse. Because of a crime Tom commits, the process is more complex and requires the circus—the world of Fancy. The repression of Tom is so severe that at the point of his death many years later, he is described as a “lonely brother, many thousands of miles away” (Dickens 287). The repression of Tom, who represents the symbol of Louisa’s illicit desires, involves the ringmaster of the circus, Mr. Sleary. The undertaking of getting Tom under control is challenging enough that Sissy cannot do it alone, but must enlist the aid of the “leader” of the world of Fancy, Mr. Sleary. In doing do so, Dickens pits the two worlds against each other to see if the world of Facts, in the form of the character Bitzer—Gradgrind’s prized pupil—will have the last word over Tom. Invariably, Bitzer fails in keeping Tom in England, as Sissy and Sleary succeed in outsmarting him.
Despite Sissy’s success in repressing Louisa’s illicit desires, Louisa is still left with the scars from her childhood and years of a terrible marriage. As a result of her scars and stunted sexual and mental growth, Louisa never remarries or has children. At first glance, it may seem that Sissy has failed and has not redeemed Louisa. On the contrary, Louisa is redeemed, vicariously, through Sissy. Sissy does get married and has children—raising them with Louisa’s help. Sissy, in her own act of marriage, fulfills the sexual desire that Louisa has but does so in a socially acceptable way. Sissy, representing the world of Fancy, simultaneously represses the illicit desires of Louisa and fulfills them.
An undeniable connection exists between the psychological repression and the economic conditions found in Hard Times. Each character of the story faces their own form of psychological repression. For Louisa, this is her illicit desire for Tom; therefore, any pleasure she actually wants to experience is bound to her immoral inclinations that would have been condemned in the Victorian era. She only senses those desires, however, because of her father’s warped sense of sexuality—that sexual intercourse is little more than a type of business transaction between a man and woman. Louisa’s sexual growth and understanding, thereby, is subsequently warped and twisted, but in a different way than her father’s. Not only that, but she is repressed by her husband, Bounderby. He is repressive of himself, Louisa, and his mother, all in an attempt to live up to the golden standard of the Industrial Age—the self-made man. Both Tom and Harthouse, though creatures of pleasure, are psychologically subject to the economic conditions of their time. They only pursue pleasures that they have all the Facts about and that their personal economics can handle; Tom, though, is forced to borrow beyond his means. Sissy Jupe is the only one whose pleasure does not hinge upon her economic welfare and is not psychologically repressed. Because of this singularity, she is able to free Louisa from her repression.
These findings corroborate my claim that the psychological conditions of the characters of Hard Times result from England’s economic and political conditions, as portrayed within the novel. These findings also demonstrate how a purely Marxist reading of the text focues on the struggle portrayed between socioeconomic classes, ignores the psychological struggle of the different characters, and “conflate[s] the realistic parts with the whole novel, ignoring its other genres” (Clausson 170). Reading Hard Times through a psychoanalytical lens actually deepens a Marxist reading, while exploring other genres. This type of reading of the text also causes one to wonder about what effect that economics had on the psyche of the English people in the Victorian and Industrial Ages.
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