ACTIVITIES ON MR. BOUNDERBY FROM HARD TIMES

1.       Mr. Bounderby was as near being Mr. Gradgrind's bosom friend, as a man perfectly devoid of sentiment can approach that spiritual relationship towards another man perfectly devoid of sentiment. So near was Mr. Bounderby - or, if the reader should prefer it, so far off. He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. A man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility. A year or two younger than his eminently practical friend, Mr. Bounderby looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or eight added to it again, without surprising anybody. He had not much hair. One might have fancied he had talked it off; and that what was left, all standing up in disorder, was in that condition from being constantly blown about by his windy boastfulness.

'For years, ma'am, I was one of the most miserable little wretches ever seen. I was so sickly, that I was always moaning and groaning. I was so ragged and dirty, that you wouldn't have touched me with a pair of tongs.'

'I was determined, I suppose. I have been a determined character in later life, and I suppose I was then.

2.       A man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him.

A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man.

A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty.

A man who was the Bully of humility.

Coarse: rough. Brassy: insolent.

4.       Bounder: “a dishonourable man”.  This is also stated by his description, which defines him as brassy.

5.       There is no sympathy for the poor conditions of Mr. Bounderby’s past: from a Victorian point of view, misery is a symptom of not being blessed by God.

6.       Mr. Bounderby keeps boasting about his being self-made along all the talk, according to the total absence of humility in his character and confirming the previous description.

9.       He keeps repeating the “I” pronoun. He is proclaiming his rise on the economic scale without any modesty. The proclamation of himself fits in with the description given by the narrator, which conveys the idea of a very immodest man.