‘Call Yourself Cecilia’: Interpellation, Resistance, and the (Re)naming of Sissy Jupe in Hard Times

Abstract

In Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times (1854), the educational system functions as an overt Ideological State Apparatus, as evidenced in one particular scene between Sissy Jupe and Mr. Gradgrind. This scene reveals Sissy's initial moment of active resistance to the ideological imperatives surrounding her. Yet, contrary to critical consensus, her resistance is only moderately successful, as instead she is forever bound to two irreducible identities. Further, because the novel was initially serialised, the structure necessitates name repetition. Thus, Sissy/Cecelia cannot be, as critics have claimed, the novel's great figure of resistance; instead, she is conditioned by power structures both within the diegesis of the novel, and by the means of production of writing in the mid-nineteenth century.