Summary — Chapter 9: Hearing the Last of It
Mrs. Sparsit continues to lurk around the Bounderby estate,
flattering Bounderby’s pride and worming her way into his good graces. She
also observes shrewdly that Louisa spends a great deal of time with
James Harthouse. It is not long, however, before this new pattern
is interrupted: Louisa receives a letter from Stone Lodge, telling her
that her mother is dying. Louisa rushes to her mother’s side and sees
that her younger sister, Jane, who is being raised primarily by Sissy,
seems happier and more fulfilled than Louisa felt as a child. Before
her death, Mrs. Gradgrind calls Louisa to her, explaining that she
feels like she has missed or forgotten something and that she wants
to write a letter to Mr. Gradgrind asking him to find out what it
is. After a whining farewell, Mrs. Gradgrind dies.
Summary — Chapter 10: Mrs. Sparsit’s Staircase
Even after Mrs. Sparsit leaves the Bounderbys, she continues
to visit very frequently. Thinking about Louisa’s burgeoning relationship with
Mr. Harthouse, Mrs. Sparsit begins to imagine that Louisa is on
a giant staircase leading into a black abyss. She pictures Louisa running
downward and downward, and she takes great pleasure in imagining
what will happen when she reaches the bottom and falls into this
abyss.
Summary — Chapter 11: Lower and Lower
One day, Mrs. Sparsit discovers that Tom has been sent
to the train station in Coketown to wait for Harthouse and that
Louisa is at the country estate, all alone. Suspecting a ruse and
ignoring a driving rain, Mrs. Sparsit hurries to the country, where
she heads into the forest and discovers Louisa and Harthouse in
an intimate conversation. Harthouse professes his love for Louisa
and states his desire to become her lover. Louisa agrees to meet
him in town later that night but urges him to leave immediately.
He does so, and Louisa at once sets out for Coketown. Scrambling
to follow her, Mrs. Sparsit gleefully imagines Louisa tumbling off
the precipice at the bottom of her imaginary staircase. However,
she loses track of Louisa before Louisa reaches her ultimate destination.
Summary — Chapter 12: Down
Contrary to Mrs. Sparsit’s expectations, Louisa does not
go to meet James Harthouse but instead goes to Stone Lodge, where
she rushes into her father’s study, drenched to the bone and extremely
upset. She confesses to her father that she bitterly regrets her
childhood and says that the way he brought her up exclusively on
facts, without ever letting her feel or imagine anything, has ruined
her. She claims that she is married to a man she despises and that
she may be in love with Harthouse. Consequently, she is thoroughly
miserable and does not know how to rectify the situation. Gradgrind
is shocked and consumed with sudden self-reproach. Sobbing, Louisa collapses
to the floor.
Analysis — Book the Second: Reaping: Chapters
9–12
After a great deal of buildup, this section constitutes
the climax of the story, in which the primary conflicts erupt into
the open. Louisa’s collapse gives Dickens a chance to show the damaging
consequences of Gradgrind’s method of raising his children. Deprived
of any connection with her own feelings, Louisa is empty and baffled. When
she suddenly discovers her own emotions, the pain of the discovery
overwhelms her. Gradgrind, formerly the most potent believer in
the philosophy of fact, also sees how his philosophy has warped
his daughter, and he begins to reform.
Significantly, Mrs. Gradgrind also realizes before her
death that something, although she does not know what, has been
missing from her family’s life, something that she can recognize
in Sissy Jupe. Even though Mrs. Gradgrind is unable to communicate
this revelation to her husband, he learns through Louisa’s collapse
that his philosophy has deprived his family of the happiness that
only imagination and love can create.
