Hard Times Sissy Jupe
Uploaded by Hockey Nat on Nov 26, 2005
Sissy Jupe: More Than Just A Number
In Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times, he uses the characters to present the reader with many messages. One of these messages presented is that the Gradgrind system of education is faulty. Dickens is critical of an education system that only regards things that can be weighed or measured as being worthy. Thus, intangibles like imagination, emotion, and compassion are not considered worthy. The Gradgrind system of education can be seen as flawed through the examples of Sissy Jupe. The lack of individuality and creativity can be proven to be detrimental to those who ascribe to the Gradgrind system, which denies anything that isn’t factual. Sissy’s caring; thoughts of fancy, and individualism have kept her from long-term sorrow, pity and loneliness. The Gradgrind system is also proven as flawed through Sissy in that her caring and ingenuity helps the other characters potentially realize how they have let the system flaw them. Also, Sissy’s ability to ward of the system’s teachings will prove useful and helping others escape the system, be it short term.
In the schoolroom scene, Sissy starts to show how the Gradgrind system only relies on fact. As Dickens describes the schoolroom, we see the following contrast: “But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to received a deeper and more lustrous color from the sun when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little color he ever possessed” (Dickens 7). Sissy is full of color and vitality because she lives a life that is full of imagination and compassion. This is in opposition to the other children who have been “bleached” of all imaginative thoughts and life because of the Gradgrind educational system. The factual basis of Gradgrind is further emphasized when is Sissy is addressed only as “ ‘Girl number twenty’” (6) by Gradgrind. A name shows individuality and is an expression of creativity. However, this is ultimately shunned in Gradgrind’s system. In addition, a name leaves room for interpretation and can be shortened and changed. F.R. Leavis explains how being addressed as a number gives preciseness and fact to a person:
“Sissy’s incapacity to acquire this kind of ‘fact’ of formula, her unaptness for education, is manifested to us, on the other hand, as part and parcel of her sovereign and indefeasible...