This post has been contributed by Brittany Carlson, PhD Candidate in the English Department of the University of California, Riverside. She can be found on Twitter @BrittanyAnneCa2

Writer’s block is all too common an experience. An idea is “on the tip of your tongue” one minute, then when staring at the blank screen or paper, your mind blanks. Likewise, numeracy anxieties often take the form of staring at a math problem and not knowing where to start yet fearing the consequences of never starting. Despite Dickens’s friendships with Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace, Dickens held strong suspicions of mathematics and contempt for math education. In the nineteenth century, math was taught through rote memorization, which inhibited proper learning and is the subject of critique in both Hard Times and David Copperfield. Furthermore, Dickens was wary of Parliament’s use of statistics as a population metric to dehumanize and depersonalize as a result of the Poor Law of 1834. Anxieties about numeracy and literacy are intertwined and stem from the birth of Britain’s education system. There were very few well-trained teachers, yet student performance on the school inspector’s exams, which focused on reading, writing, and arithmetic, determined the schools’ funding. As a result, many students who failed to master these fields were berated and flogged, which made them anxious about the consequences of failure, which is yet another topic of Dickens’s critique in Hard Times.  

While literacy is viewed as a central, plot-driving force in Bleak House, little attention has been allotted to the reading and writing processes Dickens presents in the novel (Nunez 277). As early as book one, chapter three, Dickens introduces us to the first instance of literacy acquisition: Esther Summerson. As soon as she takes over the narration, she informs her reader that she “ha[s] a great deal of difficulty in beginning to write [her] portion of these pages, for [she] knows [she’s] not clever” (Dickens, Bleak House 14). Esther claims that she has never been clever and always knew it, yet literacy was not widespread – especially for girls and especially orphans, which is emphasized later in the novel when Jo is introduced. Esther is, in fact, more intelligent than the vast majority of her peers because she is literate, so her frustrations with her writing, therefore, seem to be an early account of anxiety about her writing or writer’s block. This experience is unsurprising since The Three R’s of the Victorian education trivium (reading, writing, and arithmetic) were heavily emphasized. At the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign, most parents wanted their children to learn how to read; by 1851, two-thirds of children could read and write, but only one-half could do arithmetic (Horn 72). Later, these became the subjects for which school inspectors tested most frequently, and the scoring of these tests allowed for fund allocation. This placed remarkable pressure placed upon the student to master these subjects. Sometimes, that pressure was overwhelming for students; they froze, failed to perform, and developed severe performance anxiety in these subjects, which often hindered literacy acquisition.

Esther avoids that fate by pushing through her apprehension when she begins writing about herself. She writes, “I can remember, when I was a very little girl indeed, I used to say to my doll when we were alone together, ‘Now, Dolly, I am not clever, you know very well, and you must be patient with me, like a dear!’ And she used to sit propped up in a great armchair, with her beautiful complexion and rosy lips . . . while I busily stitched away, and told her every one of my secrets” (Dickens, Bleak House 14). Esther’s inclusion of this history not only explains her personal experiences, which comprise the majority of the novel, but it also mediates her anxieties about her writing by providing her with a starting place to work through her anxieties about her incompetence, which then gives her the agency she needs to narrate the vast majority of the rest of the novel.

Although Jo is illiterate in the traditional sense, he is not illiterate and innumerate in his interpersonal exchanges and barters as Tatiana Nunes notes in her article, “Alternative Literacies and Language in Bleak House and Great Expectations.” Despite his assertions to acknowledge his literacy with his common refrain “I don’t know nothink,” Jo has attained an astute empirically-based literacy of his surroundings (Dickens, Bleak House 193). In his interactions with Lady Deadlock, he immediately realizes that she is an aristocrat instead of the servant she claims she to be. He confirms his suspicion by “silently noticing” how white and small her hand is and her “sparkling rings,” then sarcastically comments about what a “jolly servant she must be to wear [them]” (Dickens, Bleak House 196). Furthermore, when Lady Deadlock gives him a coin, he notices its color, recognizes it as currency bites it at the edge to test its quality, then puts it in his mouth “for safety” (Dickens, Bleak House 196). Jo’s numeracy acquisition process is prototypical for those who did not receive a formal education. In London Labour and London Poor, Henry Mayhew notices this phenomenon and remarks it “curious that costermongers, who can neither read nor write, and who have no knowledge of the multiplication table, are skillful in all the intricacies and calculations of cribbage” (14). Neither Jo’s demonstration of basic numeracy nor Mayhew’s account of the costermongers show a direct calculation of currency to determine whether or not they are engaging in a valid transaction, yet both can determine that the transactions were valid. Both make this determination symbolically by recognizing what constitutes “enough” just by discerning the physical characteristics of the currency.

Jo’s financial numeracy acquisition process is not traditional but still evident and more favorable to Dickens than more formal numeracy acquisition found in both Hard Times. In Hard Times, Mr. Gradgrind is known for teaching the facts – nothing but the facts – which were to be poured into children’s brains (Dickens, Hard Times 2). Students, most notably, Sissy Jupe, is known by Gradgrind and M’Choakumchild as the statistically-sounding title, “Girl #20”. Dickens refers to algebra as head-breaking, describes the blackboard with “a dry ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it,” which of course, are disconnected from anything else the students’ might already know (Dickens, Hard Times 7). It is no surprise, then, when Sissy Jupe is left to solve a problem that connects to the physical world that she feels she has a “dense head for figures” (Dickens, Hard Times 41). Mr. Choakumchild asks, “in a given time a hundred thousand persons went to sea on long voyages, and only five hundred of them were drowned or burnt to death.  What is the percentage?” (Dickens, Hard Times 43). This problem ties together a narrative of the physical world, the basic numeracy Sissy has failed to master (due to Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Choakumchild’s poor mathematical pedagogy), and the creativity to figure out how they are intertwined to produce an answer. Sissy has been trained in the Gradgridian sense, so she is ill-prepared for a question of this magnitude, does not know how to proceed, cries, and asserts, “I shall never learn” (Dickens, Hard Times 43). This refrain is eerily similar to Esther’s early assertion in Bleak House that she is not clever. Esther can work through her anxiety and prove her ability to write because she uses her life story as a starting point then calms herself. However, Sissy Jupe fails to calm down, and despite her intelligence and ability to learn to read with her father, develops an anxiety-induced mental block (i.e. math anxiety), then never learns. Louisa has mastered this process and tries to teach Sissy but fails. Ultimately, however, everything works out for Sissy in the end. By the end of the novel, Sissy is happily married with children, and Louisa tags along – not knowing the meaning of love, or the finer things that “nothing but the facts” cannot teach (Dickens, Hard Times 2).

Dickens’s frustration with formal numeracy also extended into the political sphere. In his “Administrative Reform” speech in 1855, he critiques the old tally stick method for bookkeeping:

Ages ago, a savage mode of keeping accounts on notched sticks was introduced into the court of Exchequer, and the accounts were made much as Robinson Crusoe kept his calendar on the desert island . . . red tape in this country grew redder moment of this bold and original conception, and it took until 1826 to get those sticks abolished (Dickens “Administrative Reform” qtd. in Hotten 133).

Dickens viewed the tallies as a form of red tape because they were primitive and inaccurate. Dickens suggested that instead of burning them, Parliament should give them to the poor for heating. Eventually, these foils were moved into a storage shed then burned to keep these records to keep them out of public view. On 16 October 1834, the tallies were burned in the House of Lords. The fire spread from the paneling then spread to the House of Commons, and the repairs were quite costly (Shenton 133). This justifies Dickens’s frustration with formal numeracy – especially statistical and financial numeracy.

As evidenced in Bleak House and Hard Times, Dickens strongly preferred numeracy and literacy acquisition outside the classroom. As soon as Esther started writing alone about her past, she stopped mentioning her lack of cleverness, gained confidence in her writing, and provided a personal account of the events in the novel. As a street sweeper, Jo survives not because he performs mental arithmetic when he encounters money but because he recognizes it symbolically based on its physical features. Although this more primitive form of numeracy is preferable for the working-class and the process of numeracy acquisition, Dickens exposes the barring consequences of keeping them in a more formal setting. Thus, for Dickens, primitive tools for numeracy and literacy acquisition belong outside institutionalized settings and help the working-class avoid them.

Works Cited

Betts. Ethel Franklin. “Sara Crewe in Francis Hodgson Burnett’s A Little Princess.” The Victorian Web.  http://www.victorianweb.org/genre/reviews/nelson.html. Accessed 7 October, 2020.

Bowcher, Frank. “Queen Victoria Diamond Jubilee Badge.” The Victorian Web. http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/bowcher/20.html. Accessed 7 October 2020.

Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. 1853. Wordsworth Classics, 2001.

–, Hard Times. 1854. Dover, 2001.

Horn, Pamela. “Rescue and Reform.” The Victorian Town Child, Ney York University Press, 1997, pp. 180-210.

Hotten, John Camden. Charles Dickens: The Story of His Life. Woodfall & Kinder, 1871, pp. 130-140.

Mayhew, Henry. London Labour and London Poor. 1851. Oxford Classics. 2017.

Nunez, Tatiana, “Alternative Literacies and Language in Bleak House and Great Expectations.” Dickens Studies Annual, vol. 50, no. 2, 2019, 277-294.

Shenton, Caroline. The Day Parliament Burned Down. Oxford University Press, 2012, pp. 120-140.

The National Archives, London “Tally Sticks.” The British Library. https://www.bl.uk/collection-items/tally-sticks#:~:text=Made%20of%20hazel%20wood%2C%20the,being%20retained%20by%20the%20Exchequer. Date Accessed 7 October, 2020.

Tenniel, John, “The Schoolmaster of the Future.” Punch Magazine. https://punch.photoshelter.com/image?&_bqG=1&_bqH=eJxNjsEOgjAMht.GmwmYaCLJDnOboSqbbiOG04JKECRghAs8vRsh6qHt9x36t5EeFvegGf0xjc5x_FybDbwubT9kEC7DwPdd2Q6GKoLaui3KvPMmM5hT1FsmoFNkp9JYMwdEJFzL1IASTkEZyY4MK0ZnPf27kMC4XQXBpxQhNZKYHywnikkDFCXuh2pflSt5bWooPEO2BmyMvT9j8kW5.2HsEBONujx73x4ecWkfJc5Jnw–&GI_ID= . Accessed 7 October, 2020.

Tintoretto, Jacopo. “The Annunciation.” The Victorian Web. http://www.victorianweb.org/painting/whh/Reading.html. Accessed 7 October, 2020.