Differences Of Charles Dickens Louisa Gradgrind And Sissy Jupe

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Recommended: Society and class in Dickens novel

Jason Foster
Mr. Sparling
English 4
May 5, 2014
Sissy and Louisa
Charles Dickens' Hard Times is a story which covers many different themes. Dickens uses different characters to express different themes, and two of these characters are Louisa Gradgrind and Sissy Jupe. They are polar opposites of each other and Dickens creates them in this way for the purpose of expressing the effects that different ways of interpreting and living life will have on a person. Sissy and Louisa are similar only in a few simple ways, but their differences are what change the characters completely. The way they were both raised affects their views of the world drastically.
Louisa is Gradgrind's daughter and both her and her brother have both been used by their father as test subjects. The ideology they are raised on is total utilitarianism; there is nothing important besides facts and statistics. There is no room for emotions or imagination because they are useless and pollute the mind. “It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.” (255) This mindset is responsible for her getting into a marriage that has no love in it whatsoever, and she nearly has an affair. “I have done no worse, I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, father, that it may be that it may b...

... middle of paper ...

...rby and Harthouse. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17)
Sissy gets her children and husband in the end while Louisa is only able to be a bit of a nanny to Sissy's children, never actually having any children herself. Dickens' point is that it's better to be connected with humans and experience emotions as well as let your imagination be large. We're humans, not robots. Emotion and imagination are a gift from God, and through them we can also help and bless others. However, if you're concerned with only the facts and statistics of the world, your life in no better than a Microsoft excel spreadsheet. Luckily, as we saw with Louisa and Sissy, opposites often attract and balance each other out.

Works Cited
The Holy Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005. Print.
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. S.I.: S.n., 2009. Print.

Works Cited

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