So glad you stopped by to read this... This is a character study on Louisa Gradgrind-Bounderby that I was asked to do for school... Enjoy and review, please!
Louisa Gradgrind-Bounderby
Louisa Gradgrind is a very influential and quite possibly the biggest character in all of Hard Times. She represents the book's whole theme and goes through some of the biggest problems of all of the characters. She is the embodiment of problems too, I would say. She goes through so much with her father, mother, brother, Sissy and Bounderby.
First among Louisa's problems are her parents, who rule over her with an iron rod of Fact. Her father is tight and harsh about his children's education, and Mrs. Gradgrind is a whining fool who never says anything substantial, nor acts sensible. And when she dies, later on in the novel, it's fairly obvious that no one much cares and that with her gone, it's just one less problem on everyone's plates. Thomas Gradgrind—Louisa's father—is described as: "A man of realities. A man of calculations and facts." and he tries to make his children such a way, including Louisa. This is where things first go wrong for Louisa. She is deprived of a childhood and is forced to a point where she's allowed to think about nothing but cold facts. This makes her into a hardened woman who cares next to nothing about her life and which way it turns.
From this broken state of life emerges so much turmoil for Louisa, especially after she carelessly says that she will marry Mr. Bounderby, a man she despises. She says: "What does it matter?" and so becomes married to Bounderby. Bounderby is someone that as I said, Louisa despises. He is always flaunting his own accomplishments and is rightfully described as "the Bully of Humility." He's completely inflated and proud, very boring and quite irritating. Not to mention that he's a complete fraud. She cares nothing for the pompous man who is almost double her age, but as she says nothing matters, she still becomes wed to him.
Another of Louisa's problems is her brother. Tom Gradgrind is part of the reason she married pompous old Bounderby, I suppose. Tom is a selfish idiot, who is very frequently referred to by Dickens as "the whelp." And that's what Tom is: a selfish dog of a man. He is a gambler, and is always losing money he doesn't have. So he takes money from Louisa. And even when Louisa can't afford to, she gives her brother money. This also creates anguish and problems for her.
I think that all of these problems compounded are what caused Louisa's emotional breakdown. She has so many problems eating away at her, and no real way to deal with them. So eventually, she just breaks and falls all apart. She pours out to her father what her childhood has done to her: caused her pain and ruined her as a person. I think that that's what went wrong with Louisa. She was denied life in her childhood, and never really had a youth because it was snatched away by the cold heartlessness of Fact.
So she has all of these problems that eventually crush her, and her childhood causes her grief, along with the coldness of everyone around her. They all want something from her: her father wants greatness, her brother wants money, her husband wants an exceptional wife and love, a Mr. James Harthouse who appears also wants her love… So this could break any person, and it certainly did break Louisa Gradgrind-Bounderby, putting her through Hard Times.