Dickens As an Educator. James L. Hughes

so tired of his life, as poor Joe Willet.

      The end came at last. One evening Mr. Cobb was more aggravating than usual, and Joe’s patience could hold out no longer. He knocked the offending Cobb into a corner among the spittoons, and ran away from the unbearable tyranny of home.

      What a moral catastrophe occurs when a young man leaves home with a feeling of relief! Dickens develops this thought in the case of Tom Gradgrind. With the best of intentions, with a single desire of training his son in the best possible way, Mr. Gradgrind had repressed his natural tendencies and robbed him of the joys of childhood and youth to such an extent that when he was about to go to live with Mr. Bounderby, and his sister, Louisa, asked him “if he was pleased with his prospect?” he replied, “Well, it will be getting away from home.” The boy is never to blame for such a catastrophe.

      Dickens attacked another phase of the flogging mania in Barnaby Rudge, in a brief but suggestive scene. Barnaby and his mother were travelling, and were resting at the gate of a gentleman’s grounds, when the proprietor himself came along and demanded to know who they were.

      “Vagrants,” said the gentleman, “vagrants and vagabonds. Thee wish to be made acquainted with the cage, dost thee—the cage, the stocks, and the whipping post? Where dost come from?”

      Learning that Barnaby was weak-minded, he asked how long he had been idiotic.

      “From his birth,” said the widow.

      “I don’t believe it,” cried the gentleman, “not a bit of it. It’s an excuse not to work. There’s nothing like flogging to cure that disorder. I’d make a difference in him in ten minutes, I’ll be bound.”

      “Heaven has made none in more than twice ten years, sir,” said the widow mildly.

      “Then why don’t you shut him up? We pay enough for county institutions, damn ’em. But thou’d rather drag him about to excite charity—of course. Ay, I know thee.”

      Now, this gentleman had various endearing appellations among his intimate friends. By some he was called “a country gentleman of the true school,” by some “a fine old country gentleman,” by some “a sporting gentleman,” by some “a thoroughbred Englishman,” by some “a genuine John Bull”; but they all agreed in one respect, and that was, that it was a pity that there were not more like him, and that because there were not, the country was going to rack and ruin every day.

      Dickens always enjoyed ridiculing the people who long for the good old times and approve of the good old customs. There are some who even yet deplore the fact that children are not repressed and coerced as they used to be, and who prophesy untold evils unless the good old customs are re-established. They long for the recurrence of the days when “lickin’ and larnin’ went hand in hand,” when “Wallop the boy, develop the man” was the popular motto, expressive of the general faith. Dickens pictured them in John Willet and this “country gentleman of the true school.” He also criticised them severely in the Chimes.

      The depressing influence of another form of coercion is shown in Our Mutual Friend by the effect of Mr. Podsnap’s character on his daughter Georgiana. Mr. Podsnap was one of the absolutely positive people who know everything about everything, who never allow other people to express opinions without contradicting them, and who take every possible opportunity of expressing their own opinions in a loud, emphatic, dogmatic manner. Of course, no woman should hold opinions, according to Mr. Podsnap’s way of thinking, although Mrs. Podsnap, in her own way, did credit to her more Podsnappery master. It was therefore not to be dreamt of for a moment that a “young person” like their daughter Georgiana could have any views of her own regarding life or any of its conditions, past, present, or future. She was a “young person” to be protected, and kept in the background, and guarded from evil, and sheltered, so that she should not even hear of anything improper, and shielded from temptation to do wrong, or to do anything, indeed, right or wrong. Her father was rich; why should she wish to do anything but listen to him, and go away when he told her to do so, if he wished to speak of subjects that he deemed it unwise to let a “young person” hear discussed?

      There was a Miss Podsnap. And this young rocking-horse was being trained in her mother’s art of prancing in a stately manner without ever getting on. But the high parental action was not yet imparted to her, and in truth she was but an undersized damsel, with high shoulders, low spirits, chilled elbows, and a rasped surface of nose, who seemed to take occasional frosty peeps out of childhood into womanhood, and to shrink back again, overcome by her mother’s headdress and her father from head to foot—crushed by the mere dead weight of Podsnappery.

      Georgiana explained the reason of her shyness to Mrs. Lammle, for, strange as it may seem, considering her heredity, Georgiana was shy. Podsnappery as environment is always much stronger than Podsnappery as heredity.

      “What I mean is,” pursued Georgiana, “that ma being so endowed with awfulness, and pa being so endowed with awfulness, and there being so much awfulness everywhere—I mean, at least, everywhere where I am—perhaps it makes me who am so deficient in awfulness, and frightened at it—I say it very badly—I don’t know whether you can understand what I mean?”

      Thoughtful people need no explanation regarding the influence of Podsnappery on children.

      The time will come when in normal schools character analysis will be the supreme qualification of those who are to decide who may and who may not teach. When that time comes, as come it must, no Podsnaps will be allowed to teach.

      It was no wonder that—