In Book 1, Chapter 2, the narration describes M’Choakumchild’s approach to his preparatory lesson. The book uses both personification and allusion to compare more M'Choakumchild to Morgiana, a slave girl in the story of “Ali Baba and The Forty Thieves” (one of the stories from the Arabian Nights).
Say, good M’Choakumchild. When from thy burning store, thou shalt fill each jar brim full by and by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within–or sometimes only maim or distort him!
In the Arabian Nights, the leader of the forty thieves plots to ambush and kill Ali Baba by pretending to be an oil merchant (he conceals the other thirty-some thieves in giant jars, usually used for storing oil). Morgiana kills the thieves by pouring hot oil into these jars, foiling the plot.
In M’Choakumchild’s worldview, the “thief” from which he must defend himself is Fancy itself. The young students in the book are often compared to empty vessels. Imagination is personified as a “robber” lurking in his students’ minds, waiting to “steal" them from M’Choakumchild’s grasp. M’Choakumchild thinks to kill this thief with his lessons, themselves compared to scalding oil (“thy boiling store”).
This passage is meant to draw the reader’s attention to M’Choakumchild’s perspective on imagination, and as such treats “fancy” as its own entity, rather than a natural part of his students’ interior worlds. Imagination is characterized as an external influence, a thief loitering where he does not belong. This depiction follows easily from utilitarianism’s obsessive focus on material success and productivity to the exclusion of all else.
The personification of fancy also implies that imagination is capable of being killed, despite evidence to the contrary within the book itself (consider Louisa’s persistent interest in the world around her, despite her family’s disapproval). In the passage Dickens asks, mockingly, how much damage the schoolteacher really believes he can do to this “thief,” casting the success of M’Choakumchild’s methods into doubt.
In this description, Dickens makes an allusion to Roman history and myth when he describes Ms. Sparsit’s eyebrows as “Coriolanian.”
And here she was now, in her elderly days, with the Coriolanian style of nose and the dense black eyebrows which had captivated Sparsit, making Mr Bounderby’s tea as he took his breakfast.
Gnaeus Marcus Coriolanus (usually shortened to “Coriolanus”), was a legendary Roman general of the fifth and sixth centuries B.C.E. Whether he was a real historical figure or not is debated, but the story associated with him is generally taken to be mythological. According to myth, in the year 491 B.C.E., Rome underwent a significant famine; Coriolanus suggested that the local government use this to its advantage, and withhold grain from Romans who would not agree to a certain political proposal (ending the office of tribune).
The tribunes, officials of the Roman government, were outraged and had Coriolanus exiled. Coriolanus left Rome, and joined the ranks of the military enemy of the Romans, the Volsci. He returned with their troops to Rome; at the last moment, entreaties from his mother and wife prevented him from destroying the city. He was murdered by the Volsci. His story is the subject of one of Shakespeare’s plays (entitled Coriolanus).
Coriolanus was known for his Patrician origins, like Mrs. Sparsit. Her “Coriolanian” nose is likely a “Roman” (strong, aquiline) nose; her connection to Coriolanus, who was exiled from his position of rank, echoes her own fall from society.
In this passage describing the city of Coketown, the book makes an allusion to the biblical Tower of Babel:
The bell again; the glare of light and heat dispelled; the factories, looming heavy in the black wet night—their tall chimneys rising up into the air like competing Towers of Babel.
This is a direct allusion to the biblical Old Testament. The legend of the Tower of Babel is told in the Book of Genesis. According to the myth, the ancient Babylonians tried to build a tower tall enough to reach Heaven. The plan displeased God, and he prevented the execution of the tower by rendering the workers unable to understand one another. The workers were unable to finish, and the tower was never built; this myth is meant to explain the variety of languages on Earth.
It is meaningful that Dickens compares the factories of Coketown, themselves the product of human striving and hubris, with the ill-fated Tower of Babel. The pride and presumption behind the plan for the Tower caused God to divide humanity by language. The descriptions of the grueling factory work Stephen Blackpool and others are made to undertake suggests a similar offense to Christian values, which in Dickens’s view uphold compassion and the dignity of the worker.
Dickens suggests that the factory system in Coketown is an institution which cannot stand the test of time (and must fall, like the Tower of Babel). Not long after the publication of this novel, this prediction would come true. In the 1870s, labor unions would gain new protections and freedoms under U.K. law, and begin to check the power of factory owners and demand better conditions for workers.
In the final chapter of Hard Times, it is revealed that as Gradgrind ages, he will learn to prioritize the values of “Faith, Hope and Charity,” putting facts and utility in second place. This passage contains an allusion to the Bible:
Here was Mr. Gradgrind on the same day, and in the same hour, sitting thoughtful in his own room. [...] Did he see himself, a white-haired decrepit man, bending his hitherto inflexible theories to appointed circumstances; making his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope, and Charity, and no longer trying to grind that Heavenly trio in his dusty little mills?
The virtues of “Faith, Hope and Charity” mentioned in this paragraph are a reference to the New Testament (1 Corinthians 13). In this passage, St. Paul expounds on the virtues and conditions of love (in the King James version, which Dickens is probably referencing, the word “charity” is used in place of “love”). Paul writes that all things fade away, but “faith, hope, charity, these three [abide].”
This allusion is important, because it represents Gradgrind’s ultimate capitulation to Dickens’s interpretation of Christian morality. Gradgrind’s worldview has fundamentally shifted from one rooted in self-interest and strictly material notions of truth, to embrace a form of spirituality and a sense of generosity towards others. Interestingly, Gradgrind and the other elites of Coketown profess Christianity throughout the novel (consider the number of churches in Coketown). Yet by the end of the book, Gradgrind comes to a relationship with Christianity which does not allow him to profess equal belief in utilitarianism. He must “bend his hitherto inflexible theories” and make his “facts and figures subservient” to love and concern for neighbor. This change is what ultimately signals growth and personal development in Gradgrind.
