Week 2 Recap

Week 3 is nearly upon us – on Wednesday you can read part 3 here (for those of you reading from a book, that’s just chapter 6 to read – yes, just one chapter. I’m sure that’ll come up in discussion on Wednesday…) – but, for now let’s take a moment to reflect back on what we’ve learned and discussed this week. Thanks once again for all your comments on the blog and Twitter, and a special shout-out to Christian who has now compiled his thoughts as he works through the entirety of the Household Words issues; so if you want a quick intro to the other articles accompanying Hard Times each week, do check out his blog here.

The big news of this week was the arrival of Bounderby, and we did *not* like him. Well, in fairness, we all enjoyed the comedy of his opening dialogue, especially the eggbox comment. I compared it to Monty Python, Joy compared it to CJ from Reggie Perrin, while over on Twitter Lydia recognised the American trope of the self-made man in him, wondering if his true tragedy was being in Britain where he might be less appreciated. Adam also saw an American counterpart there, but his selection of Donald Trump as modern day Bounderby suggests he might not be so popular after all…

However, while we all agreed the opening was comic, it wasn’t long before we moved on to the villainy of Bounderby – especially that creeeeeepy kiss he gives Louisa. Katie found it uncomfortable in the #metoo era – Art wondered if it would still be as sinister in the Victorian age where it was more common for older men would marry much younger wives (given Louisa’s reaction, I would say the answer is still yes); and Jo found the moment a stark and effective contrast after the humourous scenes before. Many of you felt that Gradgrind seemed much more human this week, partly thanks to the horror-show of Bounderby.

Mrs Gradgrind got a lot of discussion in the comments – Kate found her ‘ground down’ character quite irritating, while others felt she had potential. Lydia noticed how the character moved towards discussion of childcare in her conversation with Bounderby, and so steering the discussion to her limited sphere of expertise; Christian found her to be an interesting contradiction, talking philosophically about science with a general ambiguity of where her allegiances lay.

Coketown also stoked our interest (pun intended). Yevheniia and Vlad both admired the description of this town; Kelsey reiterated comments from last week about how the underlying craving for facts strikes true in present times, and Adam thought the whole place reminded him of Coventry. Well, that’s perhaps a literary allusion not to put in their tourist brochure.

An unexpected conversation, raised by Mira and Christian, was that of pronunciation. Bounder-bee or Bounder-bye? Grad-grinned or Grad-grined? While general consensus favours the latter in both cases, the fact that the question was asked reminds us of the precarity of character names when the book is being read across the country (world in our case), without the authority of Dickens to confirm exact pronunciation upon us. Like the thousands of Harry Potter fans who had to be corrected in book 4 on how to pronounce Hermione, the way we respond to names is just one small, but concrete example of the way a reader can manipulate the text without even realising it. We might all be reading the same book, but we are not experiencing the same story.

So, on to the next instalment. Let’s see whether Gradgrind turns out to be more human, or if this was just a relapse. Or will Bounderby outshine him? And how will the narrative evolve when they are on Sissy’s home-turf, instead of her being stuck on theirs? And will we ever see Merrylegs the dog?