Fic: Five Things that Louisa Gradgrind Never Said

[intrikate88]

Title: Five Things that Louisa Gradgrind Never Said
Author: intrikate88 (Kathryn.Katie)
Disclaimer: Belongs to Charles Dickens, but he's dead, so he won't be awfully bothered.
Spoilers: for Hard Times, to the end of book one.
Rating: G.

I.

Louisa rests her hand on the door, willing her father not to be nearby, willing her mother not to need her to clean something, need help with something, need, need, need…

 

At the garden gate she freezes, as her father comes up the walk and fixes on her what she is sure he presumes is a loving glance. Occasionally Louisa wants to take her nails (the ones whose lengths he carefully moderates) to his face, especially when he asks where she is going.

 

Already she can feel herself turning around. She stops. Her nails may be trimmed but her thoughts are not, not yet. “To a play, Father,” she says boldly. “Some children from school are putting on a play at Cathy Nightingale’s house. She invited me ‘specially, Father, and I am going, no matter how whimsical it may be. Tom is already there.”

 

And before he can respond, she pushes past him and goes to Cathy’s house.

 

When she grows up, she marries Cathy’s brother.

 

II.

She’s been able to keep the book hidden for three weeks before he finds it.

 

“This,” says Mr. Gradgrind, flipping through the pages of Thomas Keightley’s The Fairy Mythology, “is rubbish, complete nonsense. And after I have strived so ardently to keep such books as this out of the house! What would your friends say, Louisa, if they could see you reading this? What would Mr. Bounderby say?”

 

“Doubtless,” replies Louisa, her little face set hard, “he would tell me he would straighten out matters with you, and expect a kiss in return. But I would rather you be angry with me, because you will probably wish to burn my book either way.”

 

III.

Louisa sometimes goes to the market just around the corner to purchase something for dinner that the housekeeper or her mother neglected. There is a young man there, tall and lanky, and not much older than she. He is the son of the butcher.

 

The last few times Louisa has talked to him, he has smiled at her, and she has smiled at him, and he has given her more than she asked for, more than she paid for, and insisted that she accept it, so she does.

 

Several more trips to the market, and he is insisting she accept his proposal of marriage, so she does.

 

IV.

“Father,” she says scornfully, “what proposal could possibly have been made to me? Whom have I seen? Where have I been? What are my heart’s experiences?”

 

“My dear Louisa,” returned Mr. Gradgrind, reassured and satisfied, “you correct me justly. I merely wished to discharge my duty.”

 

She stares at him in incomprehension, gaping at his blindness, his carefully-constructed ignorance of anything inside her. “I have had nothing,” she enunciates. “No life, no experiences, nothing. Nothing has been greater or lesser for my place in it. How then could Mr. Bounderby be bettered by my presence? How could anyone? You have made me of hard facts and spare parts and I am nothing more than one of the machines in the mills.”

 

Mr. Gradgrind cannot reply, because that was his purpose all along, and he does not understand why she is not pleased with his success.

 

“I cannot marry him, Father; I cannot marry anyone.”

 

V.

Sissy’s eyes follow her around the room, at once accusing and sympathetic. “You don’t have to marry Bounderby, you know,” she says in that accent of hers that even years of being out of the circus had not cured.

 

For the first time since declaring her engagement, Louisa looks back at Sissy. “You’re right, I don’t,” she says.

 

And she doesn’t.