Use of Irony and Satire in Dickens's Hard Times.
Mrs. Sparsit - Bounderby’s housekeeper, who goes to live at the bank apartments when Bounderby marries Louisa.Once a member of the aristocratic elite, Mrs. Sparsit fell on hard times after the collapse of her marriage. A selfish, manipulative, dishonest woman, Mrs. Sparsit cherishes secret hopes of ruining Bounderby’s marriage so that she can marry him herself.
Yes, the novel is a satire of industrial society. More importantly, perhaps, it is a satire of the values on which industrial society is based. The sort of values which Dickens is satirizing is.
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Hard Times has been adapted twice for BBC Radio, first in 1998 starring John Woodvine as Gradgrind, Tom Baker as Josiah Bounderby and Anna Massey as Mrs. Sparsit, and again in 2007 starring Kenneth Cranham as Gradgrind, Philip Jackson as Bounderby, Alan Williams as Stephen, Becky Hindley as Rachael, Helen Longworth as Louisa, Richard Firth as Tom and Eleanor Bron as Mrs. Sparsit.
In every bleak novel there is one character who is always there for comedic relief; in Hard Times, that character is Mrs. Sparsit. Mrs. Sparsit is the housekeeper for Mr. Bounderby. Essentially she does all the work that a wife would do except she has a lower status than a wife, but higher than a servant. Here in lies the problem that she cannot deal with. Mrs. Sparsit came from a well-to-do.
With the unspoken aid of Mrs. Sparsit, a former aristocrat who has fallen on hard times and now works for Bounderby, he sets about trying to corrupt Louisa. The Hands, exhorted by a crooked union spokesman named Slackbridge, try to form a union. Only Stephen refuses to join because he feels that a union strike would only increase tensions between employers and employees. He is cast out by the.
Sissy Jupe in Hard Times. Sissy Jupe. Sissy is the daughter of a circus performer, who comes to live with the Gradgrinds as a servant when her father abandons her. She is naturally good and emotionally healthy, so the Gradgrind philosophy doesn't affect her, and she is able to take care of Louisa and to arrange Tom's escape. At the end of the novel, she is the only character who gets a happy.
Anyhow, Mrs. Sparsit is completely immersed in trying to get Louisa to cheat on Bounderby with Harthouse. In her mind, she pictures the process of seduction and, hopefully, illicit sex, as Louisa walking down a long staircase into a giant pit of doom and sin. The staircase imagery is pretty powerful. It contrasts the civilized world (someone had to build that staircase, and architecture tends.
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The narrator’s tone varies drastically, but it is frequently ironic, mocking, and even satirical, especially when he describes Bounderby, Harthouse, and Mrs. Sparsit. When describing Stephen and Rachael, his tone is pathetic, evoking sympathy. ense: The narrative is presented in the past tense; however, at the end, the narrator reveals what the future will bring to each of the main.
It is primarily a satirical novel, using all the weapons of satire as irony, sarcasm, mockery, ridicule etc. The main target of satire is upon Gradgrind, Bounderby, Mrs. Sparsit, Harthouse and Tom. They are attacked for their misleading philosophies, their greed, their vanities and their false values in life. There is also playful and indulgent humor, especially in Mr. Gradgrind, Mr. Sleary.
Lord Verisopht! The Honourable Bob Stables! Mrs. Sparsit (whose husband was a Powler)! The Tite Barnacles! Nupkins! It is practically a case-book in lunacy. But at the same time his remoteness from the landowning-military-bureaucratic class incapacitates him for full-length satire. He only succeeds with this class when he depicts them as mental defectives. The accusation which used to be made.
Joseph Bounderby with his terrible childhood, demure Mrs Sparsit and overlooked Mrs Gradgrind. Dickens' illustrating the social injustices endured by Coketown's workers must have a brave move at the time, especially as I imagine more of his contemporary readers would have been Owners and their families rather than Hands. It's both a look at England of 160 years ago and a glimpse into the far.
Background Information. Charles Dickens is known for writing about life during the Industrial Revolution. Hard Times, published in 1854, falls into this category. It focuses on the fictional town.
Guardians of the bank by night and spies by the day, Mrs. Sparsit and Bitzer were ill-matched companions; nevertheless, they were bound together by Fact. Bitzer, grown from the brilliant student of Fact into a cold young man of self-interest, shared not only tasks in the bank with Mrs. Sparsit but also the desire to undermine the position of young Tom. In this chapter, the reader learns that.
In these few words we find a condemnation of all that Gradgrind, Bounderby, and Mrs. Sparsit symbolize, and an acceptance and approval of what Stephen and Rachel, Sissy, and Mr. Sleary himself, symbolize. There are, thus, strong grounds for calling this novel a Moral fable or a morality play with the characters functioning partly as individuals but chiefly as symbols. Finally, there are.
Mrs. Sparsit and Mr. Gradgrind are both masters of surveillance but Sparsit is more gossipy while Gradgrind is more scientific. Another operator to consider is James Harthouse who devotes himself to the task of understanding and “knowing” Louisa. From all three of these characters we get the idea that knowledge of another person is a form of mastery and power over them. Besides Louisa.