The Decit of a Fact Based "Love"

Before her mother’s death, Louisa was always distant and indifferent; she knew that she was unhappy but she never knew why or how to fix it. The repetition of the symbol of fire emphasizes that she has the potential of vitality inside of her has not died out yet, but she cannot figure out how to access it because she has been “programmed” by her father to be rational and unfeeling. When Harthouse comes along, Louisa begins to feel something; this is not necessarily love, but flattery. This important distinction goes over Louisa’s head because her feelings have been manipulated by her father’s fact-based education and in reality Louisa is just flattered by the attention she is getting because she doesn’t receive that from Bounderby and never saw that in her mother and father. When Mrs. Gradgrind is dying she says “… your father has missed, or forgotten [something], Louisa. I don’t know what it is. I have often sat with Sissy near me and thought about it” (194). Mrs. Gradgrind’s death is a turning point for Louisa because she sees her future self and she knows she needs a change. The use of Sissy serves as a contrast to the other Gradgrind women: Sissy is full of vitality and imagination, while they are passive and apathetic. The recognition that she doesn’t want to be on her death bed like her mother and regret that her life had been missing something completely changes her. This confusion sparks anger and passion and pushes her to confront her father, “But if you ask me whether I have loved him or do love him, I tell you plainly father that may be so. I don’t know!...All that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me…Save me by some other means!” (211). The introduction of Harthouse questions Louisa’s feelings on love and life, and coupled with her mother’s anguish over the missing piece of her life Louisa finds that she cannot stay the person that she is. Harthouse’s deception of Louisa starts off as merely a game, but as it continues it has unintended consequences on the Gradgrind household-the divorce of Louisa and Bounderby, Louisa’s change in dynamics, and finally the relationship between Louisa and her father.