The Thumbnail Book Reviews
by John Q McDonald --- 11 July 2000
by Charles Dickens
In the harsh world of Industrial Revolution England, only the doctrine of Fact will hold. Or so says Thomas Gradgrind, minor lord of Coketown (modeled on Preston, UK), who raises his children in an environment of cold fact, devoid of any of the "sentimentality" of Faith, Hope, or Charity. Cold fact is all one needs to get by in the world, and all that is needed in an industrial city geared toward the most profit for the cold few at the top. This book is bitingly satirical, dark, and fast-moving. Louisa, Tom's daughter, looks out into a world where nothing much matters. She looks forward to a life of pursuing only what is practical. When her father proposes she marry a man thirty years her senior, the blustery, proud, and hypocritical Josiah Bounderby, the thought of love never enters the question. Louisa, for a moment, fights the urge to rebel against her fierce upbringing, but only gives in to her father and Bounderby. In her mind, she does it to help her cynical brother to get along in Bounderby's bank, and to support his gambling habits. Well, such a philosophy isn't likely to be left alone in a Dickens novel. When Louisa falls prey to a merciless seduction, things seem to fall apart all over. The workers in Coketown are unionizing. And noble working-class outcast from the union is accused of robbing Bounderby's bank. Most of all, Louisa seeks refuge at home, finally attempting to bring out any surviving shred of humanity in her father. The book is darkly witty, beautifully assembled, and a vivid evocation of the sooty darkness of a Northern England industrial town in the middle of the 19th century.