The novel uses parody to introduce Coketown and its inhabitants:
The M’Choakum-Child School was all fact, and the school of design was all fact, and the relations between master and man were all fact, and everything was fact between the lying-in hospital and the cemetery, and what you couldn’t state in figures [...]was not, and never should be, world without end, Amen.
In this introduction, Dickens uses a parody of the Christian Gloria, as it is found in the Book of Common Prayer (“As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.”). This phrase is commonly parodied or used colloquially, now and in Dickens’s time, to reference the assumed permanence of something.
Here, the parody of the Gloria reflects the worldview of Gradgrind and Bounderby, who both uphold the importance and permanence of fact above all else. The power of fact is, in their minds, constant, lasting from birth (“the lying-in hospital”) until death (“the cemetery”). To these men anything that can’t be “stated in figures” (or strictly factual terms) will never be as true as facts are, ever (“world without end”).
In believing this, these men relegate imagination, passion, emotion, and individuality to a place of secondary importance forever. The religious reference in this parody suggests the intensity of their conviction. The dogmatic, absolutist nature of their belief in utilitarianism supplants the position of even religious belief in its intensity. The choice to parody a common Christian prayer here, given that Bounderby and Gradgrind both profess the faith, is also significant. Though the two claim Christianity, they seem uninterested in practicing it (e.g. prioritizing generosity and kindness over profit and self-interest). In this way, this passage could be seen as parodying their claim to a religious conviction, while at the same time they prioritize a utilitarian, self-interested agenda.
