The definition of a horse

It is an extract from “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens.

Once another, Dickens intelligently complaints social problems by the narrative strategy through the Victorian novel.

In “The definition of a horse”, Dickens uses the third person narrator, giving the opportunity to the readership to be free to make up different ideas. The text is about Thomas Gradgrind, a very strict and rigorous man who founded a school in the industrial city of Coketown, a place dominated by grim factories and oppressed by coils of black smoke.

Right from the first lines, Dickens is able to point out a careful psychological analysis of the character. Indeed, he uses the grotesque to deform the character trough the hyperbolic use of language, exaggerations and irony, useful to entertain the readership (that predominantly belongs to the lower middle class, the evil, material world of darkness, by the Manichean vision) and to provide them an alibi for their actions (for the reason that from the reading of the exaggerated description they feel not so bad like that).

By that, Mr. Gradgrind is presented as a highly rational man, one who only deals in facts, and calculations; a man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over (“With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket”). "Ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature": from the sentence the intelligent reader can understand that he is ready to take in his logical and material consideration also what cannot be considered in a scientific and material way; his mentality is so strict and closed that he can't see anything else then numbers and objects.

Dickens proceeds on the description trough short sentences, adopting widely the punctuation. It is worth quoted the choice because it gives him the opportunity to provide to the reader a detailed description of the character, repeating sentences and using more adjectives as possible. Such choice is a stylistic device to make clear in the readership that Mr. Gradgrind is a material and pratical man, with a very strict mentality focused on material things. Once more, such personality is allied to a bad and a rigid man.

The repetition of his name also makes him look like self-centred (“Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind”, “Always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaitance, or to the public in general”).

Furthermore, the teacher substituited the words “boys and girls” to “sir”; this implies that the reader feels addressed as a “sir”, so it means that Gradgrind’s words are not addressed to everyone, but only to people with a certain social status.

Dickens uses the grotesque describing the teacher like an explosion of facts and data, in contrast with the poor children that had to obey to a such bad teacher. For this reason, Dickens uses also pathos: the children by the Manichean vision were depicted like innocents and the readers can feel their fear (they can prove empathy).

The novelist uses an excellent metaphor to describe the pupils: he describes them like “pitchers” (recipienti), ready to be filled of facts. It seems that the children are not people, but objects, and more than a teacher Mr. Gradgrind seems a dictator.

“He seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge”. By the grotesque, Dickens describes the teacher like a cannon, defining perfectly all his features: “galvanizing apparatus”, “mechanical substitute”, etc. All terms that usually refer to something’s mechanical. This express the dark and cold personality of Mr. Gradgrind.

The rude and strict man does not calls his pupils with their proper name, but he calls them with disdain with the number they refer to (“Girl number twenty!”). Here again, it seems that people have not identities, because identities are not important, the poor children are just numbers, they don’t have value.

When “number twenty” replies that her name is Sissy, Mr. Gradgrind tells her that Sissy is not a name, and she should call herself Cecilia. The intelligent reader can notice the presumption and the arrogance of the teacher inflated by the grotesque. Dickens indirectly teases and makes fun of that rich people who use to behave with such insolence. Dickens also describes Sissy like a poor innocent creature, frightened by the bad teacher. This creates pathos into the readership.

It is interesting to notice the teacher’s reaction, indeed he immediately scolds her for using the name “Sissy”. When asked to introduce herself, Cecilia showed the teacher her identity. She replied that she is Sissy Jupe. The name Sissy Jupe differently between Mr. Gradgrind evockes feeling, affections.

When Cecilia mentioned her father, the conversation moves and Mr. Gradgrind asks her about him. Among his observations, Mr. Gradgrind cuts off all of the useless information and tells Cecilia to be objective and specific. He identifies her father as a “veterinary surgeon, a ferrier and horsebreaker” and therefore asks her to provide the definition of a horse. Being unable to answer the question makes Mr. Gradgrinds upset and, to make her understand, he asks another child named Bitzer to answer the question.

Once again, the narrator mentions his “square finger”. Bitzer’s answer is anticipated by a paragraph in which the narrator describes and compares him to Cecilia. While the girl is “dark-haired”, “dark-eyed”, seems to “receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun when it shone upon her” and is blushing (which recalls the colour red), the boy seems to have lost all of his colours.

The sun does not emphasize his colours, but his pale skin, his icy eyes and his light hair. Bitzer appears to be one of the many children who have been influeced Mr. Gradgrind: he lost his colours, which means that he is not a child anymore. His life is not characterized by fantasy, imagination, or such things, but only by cold objectivity and rationality, just like his answer demonstrates.