Hard Times · Chapter
Fading Away explained
Stephen Blackpool, preparing to leave Coketown after being shunned by both employers and fellow workers, shares a modest tea with Rachael and an old woman who reveals herself as Mrs.
What happens
Stephen Blackpool, preparing to leave Coketown after being shunned by both employers and fellow workers, shares a modest tea with Rachael and an old woman who reveals herself as Mrs. Pegler. When Louisa Gradgrind unexpectedly visits, she confronts the human reality behind the abstract 'hands' and offers help, but Stephen remains trapped between class prejudices.
Themes in this chapter
Social Class and Inequality
Stephen is trapped between the prejudices of his own class and the employers, with no place for an honest workman, illustrating the deep class divide in Coketown.
Compassion and Human Connection
The shared tea and Rachael's comforting presence contrast with the cold utilitarianism of the town, and Louisa's visit shows a rare moment of human connection across class lines.
Hypocrisy and Self-Deception
The magnates' claim that workers 'live like princes' is contradicted by Stephen's meager tea, exposing the hypocrisy of the ruling class.
Characters to notice
- Stephen Blackpool
Stephen is preparing to leave Coketown, feeling isolated and burdened, but finds a moment of comfort with Rachael and Mrs. Pegler before Louisa's visit.
- Rachael
Rachael provides emotional support to Stephen, making tea and offering comfort, and serves as a bridge between Stephen and Louisa.
- Mrs. Pegler
Mrs. Pegler, an old woman who joins Stephen and Rachael for tea, becomes extremely agitated upon hearing the name 'Bounderby' and hides when Louisa arrives.
- Louisa Gradgrind
Louisa visits Stephen's home for the first time, confronting the individuality of the workers and offering to help him, though she is awkward and uncertain.
- Tom Gradgrind Junior
Tom accompanies Louisa to Stephen's lodging, though he remains in the background.
- Josiah Bounderby
Bounderby is mentioned as the employer who rejected Stephen, and his name causes Mrs. Pegler to panic.
Key passages
“Utilitarian economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog's-eared creeds, the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you.”
The narrator warns that if society strips the poor of imagination and affection, leaving them only bare survival, reality will turn violent and destroy the oppressors.
This passage is a direct critique of utilitarian philosophy and a call to preserve human warmth and fancy among the working class.
“She knew of their existence by hundreds and by thousands. She knew what results in work a given number of them would produce in a given space of time. She knew them in crowds passing to and from their nests, like ants or beetles. But she knew from her reading infinitely more of the ways of toiling insects than of these toiling men and women.”
Louisa understands workers only as abstract statistics or masses, not as individuals, revealing her education's failure to teach her about real human lives.
This highlights the dehumanizing effect of Gradgrind's fact-based education on Louisa's perception of the poor.