I: Of an Educational Character explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Education and Ambition

  The chapter contrasts the flawed, mechanical education at Charley's old school with his ambition to rise socially, and explores how education (or lack thereof) affects class mobility and personal relationships.

• Social Class and Mobility

  Charley's anxiety about his sister's ignorance reflects the tension between familial loyalty and the desire to climb the social ladder, a central concern in the novel.

Characters to notice

• Charley Hexam

  A sharp boy who rose through the poor school and now attends a better one; he is conflicted about his sister Lizzie's lack of education and its potential impact on his own prospects.

• Bradley Headstone

  A highly certificated, mechanically learned schoolmaster who agrees to visit Lizzie Hexam with Charley; he shows a suspicious and calculating interest in Lizzie.

• Lizzie Hexam

  Charley's sister, not yet settled in her new home; she is described as having much thought and natural intelligence despite little formal teaching.

• Eugene Wrayburn

  Mentioned as a barrister with nothing to do who visited the Hexam home twice, once bringing news of Gaffer Hexam's death.

• Miss Peecher

  A neat schoolmistress mentioned as a possible tutor for Lizzie, though Headstone advises against it.

• Mary Anne

  A student or assistant watching near Miss Peecher's window at the schoolhouse.

Key passages

• “It was a school for all ages, and for both sexes. The latter were kept apart, and the former were partitioned off into square assortments. But, all the place was pervaded by a grimly ludicrous pretence that every pupil was childish and innocent.”

  The school mixed students of all ages and genders, but maintained a ridiculous fiction that all were innocent children, ignoring their real-life experiences.

  Highlights the hypocrisy and inadequacy of the educational system.

• “Even in this temple of good intentions, an exceptionally sharp boy exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and, having learned it, could impart it much better than the teachers; as being more knowing than they, and not at the disadvantage in which they stood towards the shrewder pupils.”

  Despite the school's poor quality, a clever and motivated boy like Charley could still learn and even teach others better than the teachers themselves.

  Shows Charley's exceptional ability and the failure of the formal instruction.

• “His confidence in her, sat more easily upon him than the indecision with which he had twice contended. It was his better nature to be true to her, if it were his worse nature to be wholly selfish. And as yet the better nature had the stronger hold.”

  Charley's pride in his sister Lizzie temporarily overcame his selfish concerns about her lack of education, showing his internal conflict between loyalty and ambition.

  Reveals Charley's moral struggle and his current choice to stand by his sister.

• “From his early childhood up, his mind had been a place of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of his wholesale warehouse, so that it might be always ready to meet the demands of retail dealers—history here, geography there, astronomy to the right, political economy to the left—natural history, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics, and whatnot, all in their several places—this care had imparted to his countenance a look of care; while the habit of questioning and being questioned had given him a suspicious manner, or a manner that would be better described as one of lying in wait.”

  Bradley Headstone's education was purely mechanical, filling his mind with facts like a warehouse, which gave him a careworn and suspicious appearance.

  Critiques the shallow, rote-learning approach to education that Headstone embodies.