Book III Garnering

The title is a biblical Reference to Ruth, just as she garnered in the fields of Boaz
picking up the wheat dropped by the reapers, so do the characters garner/pick up
what the grim reapers of experience have left behind.
chapters 1- 6
Gradgrind, shocked to see that his educational methods have ruined his own
daughter, reforms by admitting that emotions are more important in life than
mere facts.
Sissy Jupe, still in the household, loves Louisa as a sister and wats to help her in
any way possible. She goes in Louisa’s place to meet Harthouse, and informs him
that he will never see Louisa again. Defeated Harthouse leaves Coketown forever
to pursue other occupations in an attempt to relieve his bedroom. He writes to his
older brother, Jack Harthouse, that he is “going in for camels”.
Meanwhile Mrs. Sparsit has raced out of town to tell Bounderby about his
“unfaithful wife”. When Bounderby and the elderly woman return to Coketown to
confront Gradgrind with his daughter’s alleged departure with Harthouse,
Gradgrind informs them that Louisa is with him and she intends to stay at home
for a while in order to allow her “better nature” to “develop itself by tenderness
and condisderation”. An angry Bounderby tries to forces Gradgrind to send his
daughter back to him, but to no avail.
Bounderby offers a reward for the apprehension of Blackpool for the bank
robbery, but Blackpool has vanished. Rachael gets Louisa to admit to Bounderby
that she saw Blackpool and Rachael at Blackpool’s house the night of the robbery.
Mrs. Sparsit returns as housekeeper for Bounderby and tries to insinuate her way
back to into his good graces by searching for the mysterious old Mrs Pegler. When
Mrs Sparsit finally locates her, she brings Mrs Pegler to Bounderby’s house, and
everyone learns that Mrs Pegler is none other than Bonderby’s mother. Without
intending to do so, Mrs Pegler publicly humiliates her son by indirectly debunking
his claims of being a self-made man. Meanwhile, Louisa and Sissy accidently find
Blackpool, who has fallen into the Old Hell Shaft (a mine-shaft). Before dying, he
tells Gradgrind that Tom spoke to him on the night of the robbery and should be
able to clear Blackpool’s name.
Chapters 7-9
At the suggestion of Sissy, Tom goes into hiding at Mr Sleary’s circus, and it is not
long before Gradgrind realises that his son is the robber. Devastated, he goes with
Louisa and Sissy to the circus, where they find Tom and disguise him as a black
servant in the circus until they can organise a plan for getting him out of the
country (so that he will avoid being arrested). Bounderby, however, tracks Tom
with the help of his spy, Bitzer, and had Tom arrested.
But Mr Sleary outwits Bitzer by rescuing Tom and placing him on a ship bound for
a foreign country. Mrs. Sparsit is fired for her role in accidently uniting Bounderby
with his mother, and Bounderby dies of a stroke five years later. Tom catches a
fever overseas, and dies in a hospital. Louisa lives alone with no husband or
children, but manages to find comfort in Sissy’s happy marriage and children.
Gradgrind’s System of factual education is shown to be the root and cause of
everyone’s grief.

Conclusive Pointers:
1. Dicken’s rejected the utilitarian theory as “mindless” since it was based
only on “factual” concerns for happiness and ignored the role of
imagination and “fancy”. He criticised societies in which utilitarian pursuits
were considered more important than emotional, spiritual and moral
values.
2. Utilitarianism stressed the idea that machines brought maximum
happiness, since they lessened the work load for “the greater number of
people”. But Dickens worried that intangible matters such as love,
imagination and artistic expression would be banished by the utilitarians,
since one could not factually prove the “use” of these intangibles.
3. The unfeeling, “monstrous” beliefs of Gradgrind and Bounderby are shown
to be the directed result of utilitarianism carried to an extreme: Gradgrind’s
system produces Bitzer (the vicious spy), Tom (selfish, dishonest), and
Louisa (conditioned not to imagine, nor show or feel emotion); even
Gradgrind himself, an essentially honest man, is destroyed by his system.
4. In Contrast, the circus performers are portrayed as people who have
healthy, happy lives. They have no use for cold facts and statistics; instead,
they rely on their hearts to bond themselves together as a family of
imaginative, loving individuals. By placing the circus on the outskirts of
Coketown, Dickens illustrates an idea of his time that the healthy instincts
of love and fancy have been banished to the fringes of society.
5. A Sadder and wiser Gradgrind takes his leave of the circus people with
Sleary’s words ringing in his ears: “[p]eople mutht be amuthed. They can’t
be alwayth a-learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a-working, they an’t
made for it. You mutht have uth, Thquire. Do the whith thing and the kind
thing too, and make the betht of uth, not the wurtht!”
6. It is significant to notice that the novel opens with the children in class and
closes with them at a circus.
7. In “Final”, the future is anticipated by Dickens. He fortells Mrs. Sparsit’s lot
with her complaining relative, Lady Scadgers, Mr Bouderby’s death in the
streets of his smoke-filled town, Bitzer’s rise in position, Sissy’s happy
marriage blessed with children, Gradgrin’s being scorned by his former
associates for his learning: hope, faith and charity, and Tom’s penitence
and death thousands of miles away. Dickens also pictures Louisa (who is
loved by Sissy’s children and the children of others, but none of her own)
seeking to understand and to help others.
8. With the help for a better brighter future for the children and the working
classes of England, Dickens concludes his novel.

9. Dickens was especially interested in education because he believed that the

quality of children’s education was the best measure of a nation’s future
greatness, and he was alarmed that utilitarian education was becoming a
national trend.