“The definition of a horse” – Charles Dickens “Hard times”: analysis.

The extract is from the second chapter of the novel named “Hard times” by Charles Dickens. The novel takes place in a little imaginary industrial city. It speaks about the social and economic situation of the writer’s time.

The title posed by the textbook creates some expectations into the reader: the noun definition refers to education. Will the extract speak about a study class that has to understand and remember a definition? Will there be a teacher teaching the students what a horse is in a complete and correct manner? What kind of relationship do all this have with the novel’s theme? And with the time of the writer?

All this questions will find an answer thanks to the text’s analysis. After a first reading, we can divide the extract into four sequences:

-          The first three descriptive paragraphs introduce the first character, the possible protagonist of the extract: the teacher.

-          A dialogical sequence between the teacher and a female student.

-          Another descriptive sequence regarding the female student and another male student.

-          A second dialogue between the teacher and the second student, which contains the conclusion of the extract.

The first section introduces the teacher. He is presented as a methodical and precise person who sets his life only on facts and data. Everything is based on numbers and there is no place for personal relationships. The total division between the teacher and his students is highlighted by his will on being called sir. It was normal at that time but it also underlines the division between the two parts. In the first sequence there is also an initial reference to the education process as regards Dickens’s time: students were seen as little pitchers who were to be filled so full of facts. Students are totally depersonalized and the same thing appends to the teacher, who is compared to a cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts.

The prevision of the teacher’s presence is so confirmed. The first section provides information as regards teaching and learning at the writer’s time; in other words, it introduces education in the nineteen century. It imposes a depersonalized relationship and a teaching directed to the remembering of facts.

Depersonalization of the students and of the teacher continues in the first dialogue. Detached relationships are dictated also outside the schoolroom, into the family. Indeed, the female student is called while an identification number, girl number twenty, that has no relation with the specific person. In a second time, she is deprived of its own nickname Silly, which is replaced with the proper name, Cecilia; she is flattened morally. The sentimental value of the nickname given to her by her father is canceled: he has no business to do it. In nineteenth-century society, the personal relationship is seen only in economic terms.

The definition of a horse appears here for the first time because of the work done by the female student’s father. The teacher pretends it and it is considered a test of basic knowledge. The female student does not answer, she possessed no facts, so the definition is asked to another student, a boy that is no called while an identification number but with his proper name. The demarcation with the previous student allows the reader to notice the different view of men and women at the time.

The hypothesis of the presence of a class and of the specific request of what a horse is, is then verified positively. The second sequence has also permit to understand the different attention given to male and female students, in addition impersonal and passive role of the students.

The different attention is contained also in the third sequence, in which the class is described as divided into two groups: males and females are separated in two compact bodies. The different attention given to the first than to the latter emerges from the totality of the sequence, in which is devoted much space to the description of the boy, revealing the sexist character of the nineteenth-century English society. More space is devoted to what is important, is entitled to be better expressed and be at the first place, and in the case it is the boy. The descriptions are also focusing on the head and on the face of the two young in this way is highlighted on a single part of the body, containing the brain. This is precisely the organ that is affected by learning that wants to see it filled with notions.

The third sequence, therefore, emphasizes the themes of the first and second ones: students are only containers to be filled with information and are treated according to the principles of a capitalist and a sexist society.

The second dialogic sequence emphasizes again the latter, through the humiliation of the girl, and contains the much needed definition of a horse. The definition is very detailed and scientific, the horse is only an object of study and not a living being.

Questions raised initially by the reader are then answer:

- The text is set in a class;

- There is a teacher;

- The specific and full definition of horse is asked and then provided.

The analysis has also led to the delineation of some characteristics of English society in which Dickens lived:

- It was based on impersonal relationships;

- The education was seen as mere learning and remembering of data;

- It was capitalist and only based on the gain;

- It had a sexist component.