Chapter Five: The Key-Note

In this short chapter, Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind proceed towards Coketown, a town which is a "triumph of fact." It is mostly made of red brick and it is heavily industrialized. Smoke hangs in the air, the water is polluted with "ill-smelling dye" and pistons and steam-engines cause the windows of the buildings to rattle all day long. The streets are monotonous and the people are hardly different from one another, each performing pretty much the same job in the same factory, and the work that they do is little different from one day to the next.

The only things to be seen in Coketown were "severely workful." There were eighteen chapels in the town, representing eighteen religious persuasions but the workers were not among these congregations. The churches are little different in appearance from the jail, the infirmary and the town-hall. Every building is a testament to "fact." There is an organization in Coketown composed to deal with the irreligious nature of the laboring classes and they often petition Parliament for acts that would "make these people religious by main force." Besides this truancy, alcoholism and opium were other vices rampant in Coketown. Plenty of specimen testified that had it not been for the drink they "would have been a tip-top moral specimen."

As they pass through Coketown, Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind consider the town residents to be a "bad lot" who are ungrateful, demanding, excessive in tastes and diet, languid in work ethic. The actual picture is not so simple as a town full of vice. Dickens suggests that the residents of Coketown were simply in need of good humor and some sort of diversion after the endless misery of their occupations. Bounderby and Gradgrind are looking for an address called Pod's End and as they continue along their path, they run into Girl number twenty, who is being chased by Bitzer. Bitzer accuses the girl of being a horse-rider and a liar as well. Bounderby sees this as evidence of her contagious spread.

Sissy Jupe leads the two gentleman to the decrepit place where she lives. They see here carrying a bottle and question if it is gin, but she replies that it is "the nine oils" that her father has requested as an ointment because he is sore from his performances. Sissy tries to be as polite as possible and just before entering the "public house" she warns the two gentlemen not to fear barking that they may hear as it is only the small dog, called Merrylegs.

Analysis:

This chapter is a narrative interlude that spaces out the dramatic action at hand. In striking the "key-note," Dickens takes note of the physical setting and spends time describing Coketown more than he had previously done. The overriding archetype is hell: Hell is seen in the darkened canal that is an allusion to the River Styx. The coiled serpents are another symbol of sin and immorality. The images of the savage painted faces parallel the image of the dyed water. And the elephant is an odd juxtaposition of mechanics and nature: little surprise that he represents a "melancholy madness."

One of Dickens' primary rhetorical devices here is his exhortation to the reader, that they might reject the hasty condemnations made by the likes of Messrs. Gradgrind and Bounderby. From Dickens' legal background we might suggest that he is presenting the case for the people of Coketown, left without adequate legal or popular counsel. Here, a Latin term "amicus curiae" ("friend of the court") would be the most precise way to describe Dickens' moralizing tone in this short chapter. Dickens was not alone in arguing that the conditions of workers in cities like Coketown (or rather, Manchester) were inhumane and ought to be regulated more closely. This opening chapter foreshadows many of the class-oriented issues that the characters will have to grapple with.