Chapter 4-7

Question 1

How is Mr. Bounderby described?

Answer 1

as a Bully of Humility

Question 2

Who is Mr Boundary (3)

Answer 2

banker, merchant and manufacturer

Question 3

What does Mr Bounderby brag about?

Answer 3

that he is a “self-made man”

Question 4

Who is described as someone “perfectly devoid of sentiment”?

Answer 4

Mr Bounderby

Question 5

What is significant about the fact that Mr Bounderby is an imposing figure with an entire oversized body?

Answer 5

as he is presented as the typical ‘black cat’ of capitalism

Question 6

Mr Bounderby is a man of social mobility and ever expanding boundaries, but what does Dicken’s social commentary suggest about Boundary?

Answer 6

that he is hypocritical

Question 7

How does Dickens’ social commentary suggest that Mr Bounderby is hypocritical?

Answer 7

as while he complained of having to crawl out of poverty and excusing himself for not having a “refined growing up,” he is the firmest advocate of Sissy Jupe’s removal from the school

Question 8

What can be said about the way “Mr Bounderby sescribes that he was “born in a ditch As wet as a sop?”

Answer 8

despite his lack of proper eduction his lines are a paraphrase of a very famous line from Shakespears Macbeth Act 1

Question 9

What kind of laugh is Mr Bounderby described with?

Answer 9

a “metallic laugh”

Question 10

How is the smoke in Coketown described?

Answer 10

as a town blackened by “serpent-like” smoke

Question 11

What can be said about the fact that even the water is polluted by “ill-smelling dye”?

Answer 11

even the water which is essential for human sustenance is contaminated by the industrialisation of Coketown. The “Hands” are thus reduced to drinking manufactured water and stripped of their freedom to the natural elements of water and air.

Question 12

How doe Mr Bounderby and gargling consider the town residents?

Answer 12

to be a “bad lot” who are ungratful, demanding and excessive in taste and diet

Question 13

What can be said about how Dickens desrcibes the town as blackened by “serpent like” smoke?

Answer 13

they are another symbol of sin and immorality which contributes to the overriding archetype of hell.

Question 14

With Dickens’ legal background we might suggest hat he is presenting the case for the people of Coketown, left without adequate legal or popular counsel. Here, a Latin term would be the most precise way to describe Dickens’ moralising tone in this short chapter (6)?

Answer 14

amicus curiae

Question 15

What is Sleary’s performing group called?

Answer 15

Pegasus’ Arms

Question 16

How is Mr.Sleary one of Dicken’s caricatures?

Answer 16

his loose eye and his lisp make him appear as ridiculous as circus performer might be expected to be.

Question 17

Why does Mr.Bounderby relish in the arrangement he has with his housekeeper Mrs.Sparsit?

Answer 17

as she was once a “highly connected” lady who has fallen on “hard times”

Question 18

Mr Gradgrinds name evokes the monotonous grind of his children lives as well as the grinding of what?

Answer 18

the factory machines

Question 19

How in chapter 5 does Dickens compare the children to factory workers?

Answer 19

he explains that both the children and workers “have Fancy in them demanding to be brought into healthy existence”

Question 20

How does the narrator in chapter 5 draw our attention to the need for wonder and imagination?

Answer 20

when he compares the Gradgrind children to factory worker; explaining that both “have Fancy in them demanding to be brought into healthy existence”

Question 21

What is the name of Chapter 5?

Answer 21

“The Key-note”

Question 22

What is the meaning of Chpater 5 being named “the Key-note”?

Answer 22

we can conclude that the conflict between fact and fancy is the key note, or theme, that the narrator will continue to bring up throughout the novel

Question 23

What are the circus entertainers able to do?

Answer 23

to transform the colourless world into a place of magic and excitement

Question 24

Just like Mr.Gradgrind, Mr Bounderby is a man who is what?

Answer 24

“perfectly devoid of sentiment”

Question 25

Why is Bounderby a very wealthy man?

Answer 25

from his trade as a banker, a merchant and a manufacturer

Question 26

What does Mr.Bounderby call himself?

Answer 26

“a self-made man”

Question 27

How does Mr.Bounderby claim he spent his first 10 years as a child?

Answer 27

as a vagabond

Question 28

Dicken’s social commentary suggests that Bounderby is hypocritical, how is this clear in regards to the case of Sissy?

Answer 28

as though he complains that he had to crawl out of poverty without aid, he is the firmest advociate of Sissy Jupes dismissal from the school so that she does not infect the other children with her Fancy

Question 29

How may Mrs.Gradgrind be described?

Answer 29

as a hypochondriac

Question 30

How is it clear that Bounderby is plainly just hypocritical in his own backstory?

Answer 30

as his overbearing stories sound, and turn out to be very much like ‘art’ and ‘fancy’ to which he is nominally opposed. AS in a fairy tale he has a wicked grandmother who mistreats him.

Question 31

When Bounderby explains his birth what famous play does the words he chooses mirror which contradicts his allegedly uneducated upbringing?

Answer 31

Macbeth, it alludes to the scene where the witches boil a stew regarding ditch-born babies

Question 32

What type of laugh does Mr.Bounderby have?

Answer 32

a “metallic laugh”

Question 33

How is Coketown described in chapter 5 “the Key Note”?

Answer 33

as a town which is ‘triumph of fact”

Question 34

What are the churches little different to in appearance?

Answer 34

from the jail, the infirmary and the town-hall

Question 35

What were rampant vices in Coketown displayed in Chapter 5 ?

Answer 35

truancy, alcoholism and opium

Question 36

How do Gradgrind and Bounderby consider the town residents in Chpater 5?

Answer 36

as a “bad lot” who are demanding and ungrateful, and languid in work ethic

Question 37

What number is Sissy Jupe referred to as?

Answer 37

Girl Number 20

Question 38

What are the coiled serpants described in Chapter 5 a symbol of?

Answer 38

of sin and immorality (serpant and Garden of Eden)

Question 39

From Dickens’ legal background, what might we suggest from the way he defends Coketown?

Answer 39

that he is presenting the case for the people of Coketown, left without adequate legal or popular counsel.

Question 40

What is the public house in which Sissy stayed in Chpater 6?

Answer 40

Pegasus’s Arms

Question 41

Why does Sissy choose to leave the circus and live with the Gradgrinds?

Answer 41

to obey her father in his absentia

Question 42

Mr.Sleary is one of Dickens’ caricatures. What makes his appear as a stereotypical circus performer?

Answer 42

his loose eye and lisp

Question 43

Which chapter is dedicated to Sparsit?

Answer 43

chapter 7

Question 44

Why does Mr.Bounderby relish in his arrangement with Mrs.Sparsit who keeps his house in order?

Answer 44

as she was once a “highly connected” lady

Question 45

When Mrs.Sparsit looks to participate in the idea of his to give Tom a job at the bank, how does Bounderby respond?

Answer 45

he reminds her that she knows little of these subjects because she had grown in a “devilish high society”

Question 46

Why is it significant that Bouderby has a portrait of himself?

Answer 46

as it is an artistic image, and why should somebody be so interested in an artistic rendering of himself as an element of Fancy