The Wisdom of Using Your Head Alongside Your Heart: Louisa Gradgrind-Bounderby v. Elizabeth Bennet

Pride and Prejudice was written by Jane Austin around 40 years before Dickens published Hard Times, but both books share a common thread; their heroine faces the frightening prospect of a loveless marriage.  While Elizabeth Bennet has been raised in an emotionally expressive household with an openly loving father, Louisa grew up in a world devoid of emotion dominated by a fact-driven patriarch.

            These girls, despite being separated by forty years, have very similar stories up until the pivotal moment in both of their lives, their proposals.  Both are young women who come from families of means who are between sixteen and twenty when they are proposed to. Their prospective husbands are wealthy men themselves, albeit a bit older than their two potential brides and they both consult their fathers about their decisions.  This is where the similarities end.  Elizabeth Bennet, led by both her Head and her Heart, rejected Mr. Collins’ proposal.  It would have made sense for her to marry Mr. Collins as he was a man of means, but as she did not love him she would not, much to the chagrin of her mother and the delight of her father, eliciting his famous line: “Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr. Collins, and I will never see you again if you do”. Louisa Gradgrind, on the other hand, is led strictly by her Head.  She knows from the start that she does not love Mr. Bounderby, but because it makes sense for her to marry him because he too is a man of means, she does, and her father is delighted by this show of good sense. 

 This show of good sense ends up being both Louisa's downfall and the beginning of the end of her father's prized system.  Elizabeth's decision to let down her mother leads her to a happy, love filled marriage that is a financially lucrative one as well.  The saddest part of Hard Times, at least to me, is that Louisa could have had just as happy and fulfilling a life as Elizabeth did had she not been missing one crucial thing: "wisdom of the Heart".

Laura Bingham