HT: Analysis

"The Sunday was a bright Sunday in autumn, clear and cool, when early in the morning Sissy and Rachel met, to walk in the country...They had seen no one, near or distant, for a long time; and the solitude remained unbroken.” (Dickens 256-7)
   
Analysis: At this point in book three, Stephen Blackpool hasn’t shown up in Coketown to clear his name because he was accused in the bank robbery. Rachel, Stephen’s good friend in Coketown, is overly concerned for Stephen because he was the most honest man that she knew. This brought Sissy and Rachel together. This passage of narration is extremely important to the third book because it is the only time when the dreariness of Coketown is not being exaggerated and repeated.

This is the only passage in the book where a scene is described as “bright”, “clear”, “fresh”, and “beautiful”. Of course this is also related to the characters of Sissy and Rachel because they are the only characters who seem to be pure in thought and intention throughout the whole book. The landscape was described with a positive bias because nothing about the description of the land was upsetting or dreary. The narration describes it: “hedgerows were luxuriant; everything was at peace”.

This type of description alone holds true to the bias that the narrator has continuously throughout the whole plot. However, it takes a different approach by describing a place outside of Coketown as “bright” instead of describing the darkness of Coketown. The effect of this positive outlook at places that are different from Coketown is important at this point in the book. It has more effect towards the end of the book when the world of Coketown and the society that Mr. Gradgrind supports is falling apart rather than from the beginning of the book when the society is only being presented.

However, the effects of Coketown are still present even though most of the passage is positive. The land was still “blotted here and there with heaps of coal” which are representative of the bleariness of Coketown as well as its industrial nature. It was important for the narrator to compare Coketown to this “beautiful” place because it leads to the fall of Mr. Gradgrinds views when Stephen Blackpool is found.