Hard Times - Charles Dickens

Tightly plotted, with an economy of words, incidents, and characters that is not typical of Dickens, Hard Times is partly a critique of a political and economic movement that was taking England by storm in the 1850s, and partly a demonstration of Dickens’s belief that children need wonder in their lives — fairy tales, make-believe, fancy — and that the hard-working people need recreational pursuits to beguile their time off and relieve the tedium and stress of their workaday lives. This pitted Dickens against temperance ( anti-alcohol) activists and Sabbatarians ( who demanded that nothing should be allowed to go on, on Sundays, except church services) . He also bashes both sides in the corruption-contest between organized labor and their industrialist employers, and lambastes the unjust system that made divorce legal only for the very rich.

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Ideas of 1854 were influenced by the ideas of the previous fifty years. In Hard Times Dickens attacks utilitarianism. He makes Gradgrind force his daughter Louisa to marry Bounderby. Gardgrind measures the situation by reason because he is a discipline of Bentham.(Jeremy Bentham is a thinker who influenced the thinkers of early 19th century. He taught that the test of an action(by a man, or a nation) was the extent to which it promoted 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. If you put self-interest first, you could usually justify your actions on these terms.

Further, from Bentham people inherited the idea that the different self-interests of a number of individuals will somehow harmonize and benefit all. So the voice of the reason seems to support every employer who looks after himself and seems to oppose every reformer who cares for the people.) People could see products of mills, mines and factories sent to the ends of earth and rejoice at the evidence of national prosperity. Bounderby is Dickens' s contribution to the slowly growing criticism of the self made man, publicly venerated as a shining example.

All the terms which had provided the vocabulary of those with a moral approach were said to be a superfluous. To put it crudely, conscience has no place in the system of Gradgrind. The Gradgrinds assert that the one thing needful is the application of reason. Dickens seeks to show that they leave out the one thing needful-the old- fashioned belief in right and wrong, the old fashioned place of imagination. Such grave omissions make times hard.

Hard Times is a counter attack that seeks to restore conscience and sentiments. In tracing the story of Grandgrinds he shows what happens when reason is elevated over feeling, when reason is applied as the test of action. He shows the price paid by those who leave out of the life essentials like love and conscience. At the end bot Gradgrind and children looks back in sorrow on unhappiness that could have been avoided; they look in dismay on lost opportunities. If they had not banished love and affection from their lives, they would not have met the ruin: Louisa rejecting the marriage bonds and Tom escaping out of the country with a blame. Few people realize that Dickens that the utilitarians attitude in this story is proved bad by their own utilitarian test. If you measure the pain(widespread and deep) against the pleasure, then the life ruled by reason to the exclusion of sentiments is a failure.

The utilitarian principle finds its exponents and champions in the two leading character of Hard Times, Gradgrind and Bounderby. Gradgrind's theory of education is an offshoot of his utilitarian attitude of life. He emphasizes the importance of facts, and fails to attach any importance to feelings and emotions. He proceeds on the calculations that two and two makes four and nothing over. He addresses Sissy as'girl number twenty: no other identification is fits in Grandgrind's system. Like Grandgrind, Bounderby is another embodiment of Utilitarianism. He is a man devoid of sentiments. His action was promoted by self interest.

Gradgrind is hoisted with his own petard, when Bitzer confronts him with harsh arguments that reflects his education and training imparted to him by Gradgrind himself. In this scene Gradgrind realizes finally the value of conscience and sentiments, but it is too late. His theories and hard facts have already ruined the life of Louisa and Tom. The tables are turned . Sleary, whom Gradgrind rejected in the beginning, ultimately becomes his teacher and makes him him understand the value of love. Sleary is and embodiment of sympathy, fellow- feelings and love as against Bitzer's belief in self-interest.

In this way Hard Times is a novel that pricks the bubble of Utilitarianism and Laissez-faire.

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I had read a few of Charles Dickens’ works as a child, some of them as abridgments and can barely draw relevant comparisons between those and ‘Hard Times’ the simple reason being a failing memory, which refuses to trace the nuances and key aspects that capture the average child’s understanding. Having read ‘Bleak House’ over ten years ago what I find compelling between the two texts is the attack on systemic evils that pervaded the time.

What Dickens most strikingly draws into focus in ‘Hard Times’ is the total negligence of the Victorian society towards the sustenance of childhood innocence, a subsequent offshoot of attaching too much of significance on propriety and accuracy, which very clearly robs innocence and places an impasse on the natural proclivity to spontaneity, the character of Sissy Jupe being the primary focus. Derided for her lack of sophistication and her attachment to the peculiarities that associate her with her particular station in the social strata, she is forced into a lifestyle, which precludes her from the enjoyment of the ordinary pleasures of life that her hitherto lifestyle had accorded.

The noxious omnipresence of Coketown is a significant character, which looms over and provides as a symbol for the dismal life and existence of the myriad human characters regardless of their station in life. “Even the coming sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad sea.”

Starting out with a minor character, Mrs Sparsit cuts a rather sorry figure. The house she occupies emanates with eeriness, which is palpable to even a visitor (James Harthouse) who qualifies the place as “black” and furthermore tacitly brings to the fore everything that was wrong with the Victorian society. “ In a word, he was so horribly bored by existing circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the manner prescribed by the authorities.”

Bounderby personifies all the malaise that had depleted the very fabric of the Victorian world. As a character he is quite appaling being devoid of the natural human sympathies of sensitivity and closeness that forge human ties to immeasurable depths. This is rather evident in his discussions with Thomas Gradgrind particularly in relation to the latter’s daughter, Louisa. Gradgrind’s concern for his daughter is scorned by Bounderby as “sentimental humbug.” The latter’s wife, Louisa, the very antithesis to him is detached in almost every possible way. She harbours tacit scorn towards her husband, which triggers off her lack of interest in her surroundings. The apathy and the fact that there’s nothing in her house that marks her presence shadows an appalling loom, which is even more so magnified by the very fact that here’s a woman who is intellectually well-equipped and all her worth is sucked into nothingness by the all-pervasive debilitating influence of the Victorian malaise. Harthouse’s references to Thomas Gradgrind as a “machine”, Tom as a “whelp” and Bounderby as a “bear” only magnify this sense. The only person in whose presence she enlivens is her brother Tom.

Stephen Blackpool emerges as the only glimmer of hope who strives for a better life and an enlightening means to abseil the Victorian scale and set foot on a newer terrain. In spite of having lost his job Blackpool’s love for Rachael and his zest for life keeps him on his toes. “Fortnet or misfortnet, a man can but try; there’s nowt to be done wi’out tryin’ – ’cept laying down and dying.” His love for his lady is the only signifier of remote optimism. As he left Coketown, he could hear whisperings from afar, which seemed to dawn on him the realization “that he left a true and loving heart behind.”

Stephen Blackpool succumbs to his death thus meeting the readers’ worst fears leaving behind a lonesome Rachael solitary. Bounderby on the other hand is castigated by the author to the abyss of repugnance, which is made very obvious in the choice of words “…swelling like an immense soap-bubble, without its beauty.”

Circumstances play key factors, which introduce the element of irony. Gradgrind a foremost proponent of reason in the novel appeals not to it but sentiment when it’s his son’s neck hanging in the balance. His heartfelt appeals to Bitzer in order to exhibit leniency towards Tom when the latter is apprehended in the case of fraud is stark, to say the least.

In summation, “Bleak House” ends on a romantic note but this novel refuses to adopt that delusive path. A flawed society is so right to its very core and there’s no salvation but there’s hope at the horizon, which we all know is nothing beyond mere illusion.

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Charles Dickens is one of the most well known of all Victorian writers. His work strikes fear in the hearts of students because of his reputation for writing slow-paced novels in archaic language. However, if students are given a choice of Dickens novels, Hard Times(1854) would be a great choice for writing a review on. Because it was written for serial publication, the chapters are short and the pace is fairly rapid. This is one of the most uplifting of Dickens’s novels. This book is certainly different from all the other books by Charles Dickens as it has no particular central character. Well all the other novels by Dickens have a strong connection with London but this story depicts Coketown and Coketown only, a typical red-brick industrial city of the north.

Hard Times is a very tragic and wonderfully described story of human oppression. Perhaps one of the main reasons Hard Times by Charles Dickens is so good is that it sticks to one central plot with a few well-chosen subplots rather than multiple complicated sub-plots. The main plot is the story of Thomas Gradgrind and his family. All the secondary plots in Hard Times feed into this main story, and either support Facts and the business of Mr. Bounderby or undermine Facts and lead to the redemption of the Gradgrind family. The end of the novel finds the Gradgrind family living a life that includes simplicity and Fancy. The problem of the education of the poor, and of children particularly, engaged his attention.

Along with its focus on the evils of the industrial system, education is a major theme of Hard Times. Hard Times sold well, significantly boosting the circulation of the weekly magazine (founded and edited by Dickens himself), in which it first appeared. The critical reception was mixed. Dickens’ accounts of industrial life and his satirical treatment of political economists were attacked by critics with a stake in the debate; the popular journalist and adherent of laissez-faire economics Harriet Martineau. The city 'Coketown' is so prevalent an image in the novel that it almost becomes a character. It draws on the experience that Dickens had on visits to Manchester and Preston (Northern English Industrial centres) where he was moved by what he saw. His description of Coketow is a mixture of the reality of life in an industrial city in Northern England. The novel centers around the Gradgrind family and some of their friends (and not-so-friends).

The children are raised adhering to facts while living in a society that worships the machines their town runs on. Their father dismisses anything fanciful and imaginative. As the novel progresses, relationships are made and broken, and the characters come to the realization that there is much more to life than just the facts. MY VIEWS The book Hard Times starts with the description of the fictitious industrial town, Coketown, as a place strewn with machines, puffing chimneys fixed everywhere as far as your eyes can see, buildings seemed to be alike, rivers polluted with chemicals and waste released by the industries which was set up all over the place due to the coming up of industrial revolution. Though they were paid low wages they worked longer hours for the entrepreneurs as job vacancy was less. Workers working in these industries were succumbed to the working sector only. The workers seem to be the hand tools of the machines. In other words the machines had dominated the town. These workers had no identity other than TOOLS of the machines. Dickens aimed the arrow of criticism not just on the greed of capitalists but also the ideas that reduced human beings into simpler instruments of production. Well this is a wonderfully described plot. The ending is neither happy nor very sad. It points out the social backdrops of the then times, where harsh regimes were enforced by the likes of Josiah Bounderby, the pompous self-made man and Mr.Gradgrind, the censorious disciplinarian. Well the tragic lives of Stephen, Rachael, Louisa and even Sissy are described very well. This book is a must-read for all according to me.

I have heard that in some debating clubs there is a rule that the members may discuss anything except religion and politics. I cannot imagine what they do discuss; but it is quite evident that they have ruled out the only two subjects which are either important or amusing. The thing is a part of a certain modern tendency to avoid things because they lead to warmth; whereas, obviously, we ought, even in a social sense, to seek those things specially. The warmth of the discussion is as much a part of hospitality as the warmth of the fire. And it is singularly suggestive that in English literature the two things have died together. The very people who would blame Dickens for his sentimental hospitality are the very people who would also blame him for his narrow political conviction. The very people who would mock him for his narrow radicalism are those who would mock him for his broad fireside. Real conviction and real charity are much nearer than people suppose. Dickens was capable of loving all men; but he refused to love all opinions.

The modern humanitarian can love all opinions, but he cannot love all men; he seems, sometimes, in the ecstasy of his humanitarianism, even to hate them all. He can love all opinions, including the opinion that men are unlovable.

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One cannot express the real value of anything without being irrelevant.

Hard Times novel is written by Charles Dickens published in 1854 in Great Britain. It is significant for being the shortest of his full novels. The book is one of a number of state of the nation novels published around the same time.

This book is not so popular like Charles' other work. When I was in school I read Oliver Twist, A Tale of two cities, and Great Expectations, while reading Great Expectation believe me I felt my self as Pip and started to love Estela, the main character of Great Expecation.

Dickens is always generous, he is generally kind-hearted, he is often sentimental, he is sometimes intolerably maudlin; but you never know when you will not come upon one of the convictions of Dickens.

Hard Times which aimed to highlight the social and economic pressures some people were under. the novel is unusual, in that it is not set in London, as is Dickens' usual wont, but the fictitious Victorian industrial town of Coketown. I read a little on a website...also the character's name was difficulty to pronounce for me like Suissy, Bringandy...Mr. Gradgrin's obsession with facts ony, and his punishment of children who wonder about something are worth no more than a short story, so it's not a novel. Novelist prepare script in a circus where youngers stay there, at last they caught in a robbery case, and from there they had to seperated.

Hard Times is the first of Dickens' novel which have been unable to enjoy readers and become a tiresome rant.

And I think this book is a great despite all of the other comments made by other readers. Dickens makes it work every time. He ties the whole story together.

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ABOUT THE BOOK

This is one of the most uplifting of Dickens’s novels. This book is certainly different from all the other books by Charles Dickens as it has no particular central character. Well all the other novels by Dickens have a strong connection with London but this story depicts Coketown and Coketown only, a typical red-brick industrial city of the north. Hard Times is a very tragic and wonderfully described story of human oppression.

THE CHARACTERS

Among the many characters that appear in the novel, some of the most important ones are:

Mr.Gradgrind, who runs a school at Coketown, a parliament member, a stoic who believes in nothing but facts.

Mr.Bounderby, a heartless, boastful, wealthy manufacturer and a great liar as well.

Louisa Gradgrind, eldest daughter of Mr.Gradgrind, who against her will marries the boastful Bounderby for the sake of her selfish brother, Tom.

Stephen Blackpool, a “hand” at Mr. Bounderby’s factory who gets wrongly involved in the robbery of Mr.Bounderby’s bank.

Rachael,a factory hand, and friend of Stephen.

Sissy, or Cecilia Jupe, a deserted daughter of a circus clown, who is adopted by Mr.Gradgrind and Louisa’s greatest friend and advisor.

As there is no central character, the story builds up round all the characters who appear in this book.Everyone has a different story,most of which is only tragic.

Since Louisa's name has been mentioned in the last pages of this novel,lets start with Louisa: From childhood,her mind has been filled with facts by her stoic father,with no place left for any emotions,dreams or fantasies.Yet in secret,she had always nurtured her imaginative nature and Sissy's presence has also affected it much.She married Mr.bounderby,who was almost 30yrs older than she was (and whom she hated very much) only for her brother,Tom's sake.And all her life she suffers inwards.

Then there is Sissy,her father a circus clown left her,so that she could lead a better life without him, and then Mr.Gradgrind adopted her to modify her way of living.He tried to fill her with facts like he had filled his own children with, but Sissy was out-and-out indifferent to his practical facts and continued with her own childish and good beliefs.

Then there is Stephen married to a bad woman and in love with his ever-supporting friend Rachael who is also a worker at Bounderby's factory.Stephen gets charged with a crime he didn't committ(Tom committed it) and comes back from an exile he gave himself(another story!) to clear himself but an accident occured and he lost his life.Before death he left Mr.Gradgrind(who has now, after many years, realised his mistakes)with the charge to clear him.Rachael left alone did not fall apart but continued to live a useful life.

As for Louisa, she was misunderstood by Tom for whom she had done everything she could.She was turned out of house by Bounderby and she lived(lets not say very happily but usefully)with her no-more-stoic father,sisters,brothers(not Tom who didn't live to say sorry to Louisa for the wrongs he did to her) and the ever sweet friend Sissy.

Well this is a woderfully described plot.The ending is neither happy nor very sad.It points out the social backdrops of the then times, where harsh regimes were enforced by the likes of Josiah Bounderby,the pompous self-made man and Mr.Gradgrind,the censorious disciplinarian.Well the tragic lives of Stephen,Rachael,Louisa and even Sissy are decribed very well.This book is a must-read for all according to me.

.......Thanks for reading my review........Feel free to rate it and comment on it........

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