Josiah Bounderby: Self-Made Tyrant of Industry

We spoke last week about the ways in which Hard Times is a Carlylean novel. I’d like to examine Josiah Bounderby in terms of Carlyle’s Captain of Industry but at the same time contrast that to a reading of Bounderby in terms of “the self-made man.” Bounderby is clearly the opposite of Carlyle’s ideal industrial leader; however, viewing his character using such a black and white schema leaves him completely two dimensional. As American readers, there is a distinct irony for us found in Bounderby’s character that offsets a strictly Carlylean reading of it. He is seen as a villain in the context of the novel; however, I find it difficult, as an American reader, not to draw parallels between Bounderby and Benjamin Franklin, America’s first “self-made man,” thus creating some level of sympathy for Josiah Bounderby.

Carlyle’s “Captain” is based on a model, which he refers to as “The Feudal Baron” (165). Carlyle tells us that the Baron’s “fruitful enlarged existence included it as a necessity to have men round him who in heart loved him; whose life he watched over with rigour yet with love, who were prepared to give their life for him, if need came” (165). Bounderby embodies the exact opposite of this description. His interactions with Stephen Blackpool serve as the best examples. When Stephen comes to Bounderby’s home seeking personal advice, the narrator notes that, “Stephen made a bow,” and then comments on the bow: “Not a servile one—these Hands will never do that! Lord bless you, Sir [referring to Bounderby], you’ll never catch them at that, if they have been with you for twenty years!” (72). This indicates fully the type of employer Bounderby is. He is not the Captain of Industry or Feudal Baron to whom the workers bow graciously. This one short section of commentary from the narrator alerts us that Bounderby is a contrast to Carlyle’s Captain of Industry.

However, Bounderby’s verbal exchanges with Stephen reveal more dimension in his character than just a simple black and white contrast. Following Stephen’s bow, Bounderby says, “ ‘Now, you know [. . .] we have never had any difficulty with you, and you have never been one of the unreasonable ones. You don’t expect to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, as a good many of ‘em do!’ ” (72). Bounderby is not interested in the comfort of his workers. He is not interested in hearing complaints of any kind. But this exchange serves mostly to set up the next exchange between Bounderby and Blackpool in which Bounderby demands that Stephen tell him what the worker’s union has been plotting. Near the end of the exchange, Bounderby tells Stephen,

‘Now it is clear to me [. . .] that you are one of those chaps who have always got a grievance. And you go about sowing it and raising crops. That’s the business of your life, my friend. [. . .] You are such a waspish, raspish, ill-conditioned chap, you see [. . .] that even your own Union [. . .] will have nothing to do with you. [. . .] I so far go with them for a novelty, that I’ll have nothing to do with you either. [. . .] You can finish off what you’re at, [. . .] and then go elsewhere.’ (150)

Bounderby really does not know Stephen at all as he claims to the first time they speak in the course of the plot. Or Bounderby’s opinion of his workers is simply subject to his mood at the given time. During the first exchange, Bounderby is having lunch, most likely awaiting a response from Gradgrind regarding his marriage proposal to Louisa; whereas, the second time, Bounderby requests to speak to Stephen about a possible plot against him. Whatever the reason, his relationship with Stephen Blackpool demonstrates that, in contrast to the Carlylean “Captain, Bounderby is a terrible employer who not only does not know his workers at all, but doesn’t care to know.

I would like to attempt to examine Bounderby’s motives strictly from his point of view, barring the Carlylean model and looking at the model of Benjamin Franklin. Although Dickens was clearly influenced by Carlyle and there is no indication in the novel that there is a connection between Bounderby’s story and Franklin’s Autobiography, I think as American readers it may be helpful to draw those connections and contrast them with the ways in which Bounderby fits into the Carlylean model. When Bounderby is first introduced, the narrator tells us that he is “A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty” (20). Bounderby continually gives Grandgrind and others reminders of where he came from: “ ‘I hadn’t a shoe to my foot. As to a stocking, I didn’t know such a thing by name. I passed the day in a ditch, and the night in a pigsty. That’s the way I spent my tenth birthday. Not that a ditch was new to me, for I was born in a ditch’ ” (21). Bounderby is, of course, an unsympathetic character not just because he is egotistical, but because he is somewhat ostentatious—he is a blowhard. Benjamin Franklin certainly had to have some level of egotism in writing The Autobiography. Part of being a self-made man is being willing to tell others how it was accomplished, which requires an ego. Bounderby should be, in someways, a more sympathetic character than young Ben Franklin wandering the streets of Philadelphia with nothing but loaves of bread. Franklin wasn’t orphaned like Bounderby. Franklin chose to risk a lifetime of poverty so he could pursue the things he wanted. Bounderby too pursued and achieved what he wanted, but he didn’t have a choice whether or not to risk a lifetime of poverty.

So when Bounderby continually speaks of those workers who expect “the gold spoon,” it should make sense that he resents those who want luxury handed to them. Sure, Bounderby is completely tactless. But whether or not those workers actually have an unjustified sense of entitlement is beside the point. The Carlylean model seems to look down on “the self-made man,” at least in Dickens’ representation of it. If read as the type of self-made man Benjamin Franklin was, someone who felt he had nothing handed to him, one could conclude that Bounderby’s motive for firing Blackpool was not born out of cruel malice. Was the act a mistake? Most certainly. But perhaps Bounderby felt that since he was able to pull himself from the ditch, so could anyone. In firing Stephen, Bounderby thinks he is “trimming the fat” from his workforce (cutting someone the other workers had shunned) but probably feels deep down that a young man like Stephen could find work again, despite Stephen’s protest that he couldn’t. But any such conclusion is far from the reader’s mind because the reader is lead to feel absolutely no sympathy for Bounderby despite having come from the ditch. Even before Bounderby makes himself completely detestable as an employer by firing Blackpool, he is already unlikable because of his ostentation. But should a bad personality become one of the primary ways in which Bounderby contrasts with the Carlylean model of the ideal “Captain of Industry”? Yes, Bounderby is cruel to Stephen, and the other workers are clearly fed up with him, but Dickens forms him as an unlikable and unsympathetic character from the outset of the novel based solely on his personality. Disliking him later comes naturally.

Works Cited

Carlyle, Thomas. Past and Present. 1843. Prose of the Victorian Period. Ed. William E. Buckler. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958.

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. 1854. Ed. George Stade. New York: Barnes & Noble Classics, 2004.