Chapter Eight: Never Wonder
This short chapter is another one of Dickens' interludes: "Let us strike the key-note again, before pursuing the tune." About six years previous, Louisa was overheard using the phrase "I wonderإ ." And her father forbade her from wondering. Between Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. M'Choakumchild all of the youthful impulses to wonder have been notably suppressed. The children born in Coketown are "unlucky infants" and all of the social bodies agree on the single point that these children are never to learn how to "wonder." Instead they are to focus on "trust" and "political economy."
The town library was sometimes the source of Gradgrind's dismay‹when readers opted for literature rather than geometry and drama instead of statistics. This sort of existence has become unbearable for the young Gradgrinds. Tom tells his sister: "I am sick of my life, Loo. I hate it altogether." He and Louisa are both sulking in their room and Tom insists that Louisa is the only person in his life who is capable of making him happy. Everyone else has fallen under the sway of dullness but Louisa has managed to keep a spark of the interesting alive.
Louisa looks at the shadows on the wall and she looks into the fire and she is able to almost spin stories out of what she sees. Thomas cannot see what she does, but he does listen to the things that she says while she looks into the fire. Looking into the fire causes Louisa to wonder. And when Thomas notes her admission, Louisa replies that she has always had "unmanageable thoughts." Mrs. Gradgrind has been listening at the door and she re-iterates the warning issued six years previous. Louisa is not to wonder and Thomas is not to encourage his sister to do something he knows will worry her father. Louisa has angered and disturbed Mrs. Gradgrind to the point where she says: "I really do wish that I had never had a family, and then you would have known what it was to do without me!"
Analysis:
Chapter Eight is more important within Dickens' philosophical context than in the actual "story" that is being presented in the novel. Certainly, the characters are affected by the course of events, but when Dickens writes of returning to the "key-note" this is a hint that he is returning to look at the major themes and contrasts that have been presented thus far. In a sense, it is a summary of the major ideas in conflict. An example of this conflict can be seen in the library; ironically, Gradgrind does not approve of the establishment. Dickens develops this point by contrasting "Defoe" versus "Euclid" and "Goldsmith" versus "*****er." These references basically reiterate the fact that Gradgrind does not like literature (Daniel Defoe is the author of such classic fictional works as Robinson Crusoe and [?]Goldsmith is a famous British playwright. Euclid, on the other hand, is an ancient Greek who basically invented geometry and [?]*****er is [?]).
The battle between the literary agents of "fancy" and the hard mathematical analysts can be seen again in Dickens' archetypal use of fire imagery to convey the sense of the storyteller (in this case, Louisa Gradgrind‹but also, in a larger sense, Dickens, no?) as a somewhat magical, more modern version of the ancient oracles. In Greek myth, oracles were ordained priest-like figures who were usually female and known for looking into the fire and "reading the signs." Incidentally, this scene of a sister reading the fire to her younger brother is repeated in another one of Dickens' novels, Our Mutual Friend. The fire can be a symbol of the hearth, of familial warmth and love between siblings but we find here is that this warmth is largely frustrated.
The contrast to Fancy and imagination comes with the lingering cold, despite the fire. In a metaphorical sense, we can describe the Gradgrinds' family life as very cold and lacking in emotion. An important distinction can be made between coldness and hate, indifference and dislike. The parents neither hate nor dislike their children, but they are emotionally cold, indifferent and distant. In opposition to emotion and "wonder," they prefer science. We see mechanical imagery in the way that Louisa and Tom describe their emotions (as a coiled "spring," for example) and in the lack of freedom and repression of emotions. In a way, repressing ones true emotions, feelings and desires is a form of dishonesty and this chapter foreshadows later scenes in the novel, where Louisa's repression becomes a matter of loyalty and fidelity (a key theme of the novel).