Hard Times by Charles Dickens Questions and Answers 10/15
1.Q. Discuss the major themes presented in the novel Hard Times.[Hard Times by Charles Dickens ]
Or, Q. Hard Times is built around a few simple, contrasting thematic ideas. What are some of them, and how do they function in the book? How does Louisa fit among these ideas?
Dickens wished to educate readers about the working conditions of some of the industrial towns of factories in the Manchester, and Preston, to “strike the heaviest blow in my power”, and as well to confront the assumption that prosperity runs parallel to morality. This notion he systematically deconstructed in through his portrayal of the moral monsters, Mr. Bounderby and James Harthouse. Dickens also believed in the importance of imagination, and that people’s lives should not be reduced to a collection of material facts and statistics. The description of the circus, which he describes as caring so “little for Plain Fact”, is an example of this.
Utilitarianism
The Utilitarians were one of the targets of Dickens’ satire. Utilitarianism was a prevalent school of thought during this period, its founders being Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, father to political theorist John Stuart Mill. Bentham’s former secretary, Edwin Chadwick, helped design the Poor Law of 1834, which deliberately made workhouse life as uncomfortable as possible. In the novel, this attitude is conveyed in Bitzer’s response to Gradgrind’s appeal for compassion.
Dickens was appalled by what he saw as a selfish philosophy, which was combined with materialist laissez-faire capitalism in the education of some children at the time, as well as in industrial practices. In Dickens’s interpretation, the prevalence of utilitarian values in educational institutions promoted contempt between mill owners and workers, creating young adults whose imaginations had been neglected, due to an overemphasis on facts at the expense of more imaginative pursuits.
Dickens wished to satirise radical Utilitarians whom he described in a letter to Charles Knight as “see[ing] figures and averages, and nothing else.” He also wished to campaign for reform of working conditions. Dickens had visited factories in Manchester as early as 1839, and was appalled by the environment in which workers toiled. Drawing upon his own childhood experiences, Dickens resolved to “strike the heaviest blow in my power” for those who laboured in horrific conditions.
John Stuart Mill had a similar, rigorous education to that of Louisa Gradgrind, consisting of analytical, logical, mathematical, and statistical exercises. In his twenties, Mill had a nervous breakdown, believing his capacity for emotion had been enervated by his father’s stringent emphasis on analysis and mathematics in his education. In the book, Louisa herself follows a parallel course, being unable to express herself and falling into a temporary depression as a result of her dry education.
Fact vs. Fancy
The bastion of fact is the eminently practical Mr. Gradgrind, and his model school, which teaches nothing but “Facts”. Any imaginative or aesthetic subjects are absent from the curriculum, and analysis, deduction and mathematics are emphasised. Fancy, the opposite of Fact, is epitomised by Sleary’s circus. Sleary is reckoned a fool by Gradgrind and Bounderby, but it is Sleary who understands that people must be amused. Sissy, the circus performer’s daughter, does badly at school, failing to remember the many facts she is taught, but is genuinely virtuous and fulfilled. Gradgrind’s own son Tom revolts against his upbringing, and becomes a gambler and a thief, while Louisa becomes emotionally stunted, virtually soulless both as a young child and as an unhappily married woman. Bitzer, who adheres to Gradgrind’s teachings, becomes an uncompassionate egotist.
Industrialization
Industrialization created difficult economic and environmental conditions during Dickens’s time. The narrator of Hard Timesdescribes Coketowners’ resistance to government regulations, for example, in language that implies factory owners had no problem with child labor or dangerous conditions or chopping people up with their machinery.” Stephen Blackpool loses his job when he confronts Mr. Bounderby about the long hours and lack of incentives in factory work. The narrator also makes multiple references to middle-class and upper-class attitudes about workers’ tendencies toward vice, which may be exaggerated when readers consider how virtuously Stephen Blackpool and Rachael live. Still , other workers do seek escape from daily toil through drink and other entertainments. The worst result of this need to escape is visible in Stephen Blackpool’s wife, a woman driven to such excessive drink that her original personality is lost; her marriage is ruined; and at one point she inflicts serious harm on herself. At the end of the novel she is living on the streets, unable to escape from the temporary escape she pursued as a factory worker.
Industrialization also created an economic class structure that of each individual’s life, with little mobility existing between classes. For example, Josiah Bounderby, one of the wealthiest people in Coketown, spends most of his time loudly prodaiming himself a wholly self-made man-born in a ditch, abandoned by his mother, abused by his grandmother, and left to an aimless and dissolute youth. This story illustrates his belief that anyone can improve their circumstances, and he uses his origins as a sort of cudgel, berating his workers for laziness. However, his story is a lie. Bounderby was raised by a loving middle-class mother who worked hard to help her son get an education and build a better life. He has risen above the humbler circumstances of his birth, but he certainly has not built himself from nothing.
Stephen Blackpool, on the other hand, illustrates the fate of most people born poverty. He works in a factory and has little in his life beyond his work. He is subject to personal misery because he lacks the funds to divorce his alcoholic wife, even though those with sufficient wealth are able to dissolve their marriages. He is subject as well to exploitation and scorn because he refuses to join the union, but in his courageous refusal to sell out his co-workers who do join, he is fired. He dies because the industrial system denies him the financial resources to defend himself against accusations of a crime he did not commit. Stephen has no recourse against any of these injustices because he has no money and no way of earning it to improve his lot. The contrast between Mr. Bounderby and Stephen Blackpool illustrates how industrial society is structured to limit economic opportunities. If a man is born with a little bit of wealth, he may be able to grow that wealth, but if a man has nothing, he is likely to remain with nothing.
Another hazard of industrialization was the pollution that made the environment cities like Coketown both literally and figuratively poisonous. Even Coketown’s name evokes black dust and coal rocks. The name is apt in Hard Times, soot coats every surface of the town, turning buildings black as smoke hangs heavy in the sky. The river that runs through the town is black with coal dust and dyes used in making textiles in the mills. The people of Coketown are oppressed by the factories just as the air and water are tainted by them, the physical pollution of the town reflecting the pollution present in the residents’ minds and spirits. Workers live in filthy conditions that rob them of the possibility to pursue better lives or even entertain their own thoughts. Factory owners are emotionally stunted and deny the humanity of the workers, and of themselves, to maintain their privileged lives and keep their factories running and profits rolling in. Neither the workers nor the factory owners at the time are fully aware of these realities because the physical and psychological pollution generated by industry obscures everything.
Reason and Imagination
The teachers and masters at Mr. Gradgrind’s school present factual knowledge and adherence to pure reason as the keys to a successful and satisfying life. Characters such as Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby, along with the menacingly named Mr. M’Choakumchild, aim not only to teach their students the value of facts but to eliminate any sign of “fancy”_emotional or creative response because in their narrow worldview these ideas have no value. In an early scene, a teacher goes so far as to explain why images of horses and flowers should not be used in wallpaper because, in fact, horses do not live on walls and thus do not make an appropriate wallpaper design, and because flowers do not grow on floors, they do not make an appropriate carpet design. Such narrow-minded thoughts on aesthetics illustrate the extremity of devotion to fact at a level that seems to defy reason and kill off all the beauty in people’s lives.
Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind credit reason and fact as the secrets of their financial success, and for Mr. Bounderby the evidence indicates this belief is accurate. Even though Mr. Bounderby grossly exaggerates in fact lies about) the story of his humble beginnings, the education and apprenticeship his mother provides do allow him to rise from his start as the son of a widowed shopkeeper to become the owner of a bank and factory and, as such, a respected member of Coketown’s ruling class. Even Sissy Jupe reaps some financial rewards for choosing an education in reason. Arguably, she might have been at least equally happy had she remained with the circus and taken an apprenticeship there or happier with a more liberal education, but her father believes in education as the key to his daughter’s long-term prosperity—so much so he abandons her so she can pursue her schooling without interruption where she had already begun. Even though Sissy is an unremarkable student by the standards of her fact-oriented teachers, she maintains her position in the Gradgrind household as a caregiver for Mrs. Gradgrind and the younger children. She does enjoy a safe and stable life as part of a wealthy family, which eventually culminates in marriage and a family of her own, really the most she might hope for then.
According to Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind, the lower classes, in contrast, remain poor because they distract their minds with entertainment, such as the displays of the circus or books of fairy stories, instead of focusing entirely on facts or the hard work that might better their station. However, Louisa Gradgrind’s emotional collapse and the dissolution of her marriage illustrate the flaws in such an unbalanced approach to living. She is unable to cope with her emotions because she has never been exposed to the art, literature, or creative thought that might have helped her develop and live with feelings. Sissy Jupe’s experience illustrates the importance of imagination as well. Her education in reason does provide her with economic opportunities that give her a stable and happy life, but her early years in the circus, steeped in her father’s love and the imaginative performances of his colleagues, give her an emotional grounding that prepares her for adulthood. She has gained strength and balance because her education in facts has been tampered with roots in fancy. Pure reason cannot provide sufficient guidance in the complex world of human behavior and emotions.
Childhood
Childhood figures most prominently in Book 1, as this section focuses on the formativeyears of Louisa and Tom Gradgrind and Sissy Jupe. The lessons and experiences of childhood shape these characters later in life.
For Louisa the emphasis on reason and the rejection of imagination and emotion in her childhood led her to an unbalanced adulthood. Her over-reliance on reason and alienation from her own feelings make her passive and indifferent, leading her into a loveless marriage and to the edge of scandal with an extra-marital affair , which does not come to pass. When faced with emotions, she has no idea how to handle them. Her life comes apart as a result, requiring her to reassess her understanding of herself and her place in the world, and rebuild accordingly.
For Tom the emphasis on reason in his childhood deprives him of the pleasures of childhood, defined by fun and play, and leads him to resent his family deeply. His attempts to capture the youth he feels he missed lead to irresponsibility, entitlement, excessive gambling, and other disreputable activities. He feels entitled to his sister’s continued assistance and later needs his father to help him avoid the consequences of stealing from the bank. Throughout the book the narrator refers to Tom as “the whelp,” a term for an unweaned puppy or dissolute young man. In short, Tom’s lack of a balanced childhood prevents him from growing into a balanced, responsible adult.
On the other hand, Sissy Jupe experiences a more balanced childhood and grows up accordingly. She spends her first seven years in the warm and whimsical environment of the circus, well loved by her father and the other performers. She reads fairy tales and plays with her dog. She spends the second half of her childhood studying facts and reason in school. Although she considers herself a failure as a student, her early experiences temper the strict education she receives and give her emotional and imaginative grounding that make her a useful resource when the Gradgrind family needs her.
The theme of fidelity touches upon the conflicts of personal interest, honesty and loyalty that occur throughout the novel. Certainly, characters like Josiah Bounderby and James Harthouse seem to be regularly dishonest while Louisa Gradgrind and Sissy Jupe hold fast to their obligations and beliefs. In Louisa’s case, her fidelity is exemplified in her refusal to violate her marital vows despite her displeasure with her husband. Sissy’s exemplifies fidelity in her devotion to the Gradgrind family and perhaps even more remarkably, in her steadfast belief that her father is going to return for her seeking “the nine oils” that she has preserved for him.
The theme of escape really underscores the difference between the lives of the and the lives of the poor. In Stephen Blackpool, we find a decent man who seeks to escape from his failed marriage but he cannot even escape into his dreams for peace. On the other hand, we find Tom Gradgrind who indulges in gambling, alcohol and smoking as “escapes” from his humdrum existence. And after he commits a crime, his father helps him to escape through Liverpool. Again, Louisa Gradgrind desires a similar escape from the grind of the Gradgrind system, though she resorts to imagined pictures in the fire rather than a life of petty crime. Finally, “Jem” Harthouse rounds out the options available to the nobility. With all of his life dedicated to leisure, even his work assignment is a sort of pastfrom which he easily escapes when the situation has lost its luster.
Escape
The bonds of family love transcend the forces of fact and the fancies of imagination. Family bonds are as real as any fact presented, even as those bonds defy logic. Louisa Gradgrind considers herself emotionally numb, but she is devoted to her brother Tom beyond the bounds of reason. She gives him money to pay his gambling debts, even though pure logic would tell her such financial support is only a useless fool’s errand. Mr. Gradgrind’s devotion to Louisa moves him to radically change his life’s driving philosophy when she comes to him in crisis, and this change later costs him his seat in Parliament. He also risks his reputation when he ignores the law and saves Tom from prison.
Such familial devotion is not limited to the Gradgrinds. Sissy Jupe never abandons hope her father will one day return for her, although he cannot. Mrs. Pegler remains loyal to her son, Mr. Bounderby, observing him from afar and asking strangers about his well being, defending and loving him even though he has forbidden her to contact him. Nor are family bonds determined solely by blood. Mr. Gradgrind comes to care deeply for Sissy and treats her as a member of his family, as is evident when he and Mr. Sleary choose to spare her the painful knowledge her father is dead. In return Sissy looks out for Tom’s and Louisa’s best interests as if they were her own siblings. Such feelings may likely have come from her time with the circus in which troupe members care for one another as a family of their own making. When Sissy returns to them after years away, the troupe rushes to help her and the Gradgrinds because Sissy is eternally part of the family bond they share.
Romantic love is presented as an emotion that may create sorrow but also makes life worthwhile. Stephen Blackpool and Rachael love each other and are pained by the knowledge they cannot marry or even openly express their love. At the same time, they find comfort and respite from the bleakness of factory work and poverty by sharing each other’s company. Rachael’s belief in Stephen’s innocence, when he is accused of theft at the bank, comes from her love and respect for him. She never wavers and ultimately helps him clear his name. Even though Stephen dies from injuries sustained after falling into a coal pit, his love for Rachael keeps him alive long enough to say goodbye and Louisa’s experience illustrates the value of love by showing the emptiness of a life that lacks such affection. She marries Mr. Bounderby out of a practical need to help her brother and satisfy her father’s wishes. The marriage is loveless from the start, and it only declines with time. Louisa is vulnerable to James Harthouse’s attention because she is starved for an emotional connection. Even though she does not love him-and to him the seduction is just a game—the encounter shows how greatly love is missing from her life. Officiousness and spying proclaim his innocence.
Bounderby spends his whole time fabricating stories about his childhood, covering up the real nature of his upbringing, which is revealed at the end of the novel. While not a snooper himself, he is undone by Sparsit unwittingly revealing the mysterious old woman to be his own mother, and she unravels Josiah’s secrets about his upbringing and fictitious stories. Mr. Bounderby himself superintends through calculating tabular statements and statistics, and is always secretly rebuking the people of Coketown for indulging in conceitful activities. This gives Bounderby a sense of superiority, as it does with Mrs. Sparsit, who prides herself on her salacious knowledge gained from spying on others. Bounderby’s grasp for superiority is seen in Blackpool’s talks to Bounderby regarding divorce proceedings and a union movement at his factory, accusing him that he is on a
Morality
Dickens portrays the wealthy in this novel as being morally corrupt. Bounderby moral scruples, and, for example, fires Blackpool “for a novelty”. He also conducts himself without any shred of decency, frequently losing his temper. He is cynically false about his childhood. Harthouse, a leisurely gent, is compared to an iceberg” who will cause a wreck unwittingly, due to him being “not a moral sort of fellow”, as he states himself. Stephen Blackpool, a destitute worker, is equipped with perfect morals, always abiding by his promises, and always thoughtful and considerate of others, as is Sissy Jupe.
The role of status on morality
Dickens is also concerned, throughout Hard Times, with the effects of social the morality of individuals. Some contrasting characters relating to this theme are Stephen and Rachel, and Tom and Mr. Bounderby. Stephen’s honesty and Rachel’s caring actions are qualities not shown in people from higher classes, but among hard working individuals who are browbeaten by the uncaring factory owners such as Bounderby. These qualities appear repeatedly, as Stephen works hard every day, until he decides to leave town to save the names of his fellow workers, and Rachel supports Stephen through this, while struggling to provide for herself as well. In contrast to these behaviours, Mr. Bounderby refuses to recognise the difficulties faced by those in lower classes, as seen by him completely casting aside Stephen’s request for help. Other aristocratic characters simply carry out blatantly immoral actions, such as Tom throwing away his sister’s money, falling into debt, then robbing a bank, and even framing someone else for his actions. Tom is also seen to be deceitful as he is able to keep his guilt hidden until the evidence points only toward him. On the contrary, when the news comes out that Stephen had robbed the bank, Stephen begins to head back to Coketown to face his problems and clear his name. Overall, the stark difference in morality between characters dissimilar social status suggests Dickens’ idea that there is a form of innate natural law that may remain unhampered in those leading less titled lives. Stephen’s concept of right and wrong is untainted by the manufactured values of utilitarianism, instilled into Tom and Bounderby.
2. Q. Does Dickens’s serious novel Hard Times justify its title significance.?
Hard Times, a social protest novel of nineteenth-century England, is only does the working class, known as the “Hands,” have a “hard time” in this novel; so do the other classes as well. Dickens divided the novel into three separate books, two of which, “Sowing” and “Reaping,” exemplify the biblical concept of “whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap”. The third book, entitled “Garnering,” Dickens paraphrased from the book of Ruth, in which Ruth garnered grain the fields of Boaz. Each of his reaps, and each garners what is left.
The nineteenth century was an age of continual change and unparalleled expansion in almost every field of activity. Not only was it an era of reform, industrialization, achievement in science, government, literature, and world expansion but also a time when people struggled to assert their independence. Man, represented en masse as the laboring class, rose in power and prosperity and gave his voice to government.
There were great intellectual and spiritual disturbances both in society and within the individual. The literature of the period reflects the conflict between the advocates of the triumphant material prosperity of the country and those who felt it had been achieved by the exploitation of human beings at the expense of spiritual and esthetic values. In theory, people of the period committed themselves on the whole to a hard-headed utilitarianism, yet most of the literature is idealistic and romantic.
The prophets of the time deplored the inroads of science upon religious faith, but the Church of England was revivified by the Oxford Movement; evangelical Protestantism was never stronger and more active; and the Roman Catholic Church was becoming an increasingly powerful religious force in England. Not even in politics were the issues clearcut. The Whigs prepared the way for the great economic reform of the age, the repeal of the Corn Laws; but it was a Tory leader, Sir Robert Peel, who finally brought that repeal through Parliament.
This century, marked by the Industrial Revolution, was also a century of political and economic unrest in the world: America was torn by the strife of the Civil War; France was faced with the problem of recovery from the wars of Napoleon; and Germany was emerging as a great power.
The Industrial Revolution, though productive of much good, created deplorable living conditions in England. Overcrowding in the cities as a consequence of the population shift from rural to urban areas and the increase in the numbers of immigrants from povertystricken Ireland resulted in disease and hunger for thousands of the laboring class. But with the fall of Napoleon, the returning soldiers added not only to the growing numbers of workers but also to the hunger and misery. With the advent of the power loom came unemployment. A surplus labor supply caused wages to drop. Whole families, from the youngest to the oldest, had to enter the factories, woolen mills, the coal mines, or the cotton mills in order to survive. Children were exploited by the employers; for a pittance a day a nine-year-old worked twelve and fourteen hours in the mills, tied to the machines, or in the coal mines pulling carts to take the coal from the shafts. Their fingers were smaller and quicker than those of adults; thus, for picking out the briars and burrs from both cotton and wool, employers preferred to hire children.
Studies of the working and living conditions in England between 1800 and 1834 showed that 82 percent of the workers in the mills were between the ages of eleven and eighteen. Many of these studies proved that 62 percent of the workers in the fabric mills had tuberculosis. The factories were open, barn like structures, not equipped with any system of heat and ventilation.
The first great “Victorian” reform antedated Queen Victoria by five years. Until 1832 the old Tudor list of boroughs was still in use. As a result, large towns of recent growth had no representation in Parliament, while some unpopulated localities retained theirs. In essence, the lords who controlled these boroughs (known as rotten boroughs in history) sold seats to the highest bidders. This political pattern was broken when the Reform Bill of 1832 abolished all boroughs with fewer than two thousand inhabitants and decreased by 50 percent the number of representatives admitted from towns with a population between two thousand and four thousand. Only after rioting and a threat of civil war did the House of Lords approve the Reform Bill. With this bill came a new type of Parliament – one with representatives from the rising middle class and several other important reforms.
In 1833, the Emancipation Bill ended slavery in British colonies, with heavy compensation to the owners. Even though chattel slavery was abolished, industrial slavery continued. Also in 1833 came the first important factory Law, one which prohibited the employment of children under the age of nine. Under this law, children between the ages of nine and thirteen could not work for more than nine hours a day. Night work was prohibited for persons under twenty-one years of age and for all women. By 1849, subsequent legislation provided half day or alternate days of schooling for the factory children, thus cutting down the working hours of children fourteen or under.
The Poor Law of 1834 provided for workhouses; indigent persons, accustomed to living where they pleased, bitterly resented this law, which compelled them to live with their families in workhouses In fact, the living conditions were so bad that these workhouses were named the “Bastilles of the Poor.” Here the poor people, dependent upon the government dole, were subjected to inhuman treatment of cruel supervisors; an example is Mr. Bumble in Dickens’ Oliver Twist. If the people rejected this rule of body and soul, they had two alternatives as the machines took more jobs and wages dropped either steal or starve. Conditions in prisons were even more deplorable than in the workhouses. Debtors’ prison, as revealed in Dickens’ David Copperfield, was a penalty worse than death. 1832, the unpopularity of the Poor
The undemocratic character of the Reform Bill of Law, and the unhappy conditions of the laborers led to the Chartist Movement of the 1840s. The demands of the Chartist Movement were the abolition of property qualifications for members of Parliament, salaries for members of Parliament, annual election of Parliament, equal electoral districts, equal manhood suffrage, and voting by secret ballot. Chartism, the most formidable working-class movement England had ever seen, failed. The Chartists had no way to identify their cause with the interests of any influential class. Ultimately, though, most of the ends they sought were achieved through free discussion and legislative action. the repeal of the Corn Laws of 1815.
In 1846, the prime minister, Sir Robert Peel, led With the repeal of these laws, which were nothing more than protective tariffs in the interest of the landlords and farmers to prevent the importation of cheap foreign grain, came a period of free trade and a rapid increase in manufacture and commerce which gave class an opportunity to exist outside the workhouses. industrial reform the working As the country awoke to the degradation of the working classes, proceeded gradually but inevitably, in spite of the advocates of laissez-faire and industrial political life of the nineteenth century was tied up with its economic theorie.
” In other words, this principle meant that the government should allow the economic situation to adjust itself naturally through the laws of supply and demand. With this system, a person at one extreme becomes a millionaire and at the other, a beggar. Thomas Carlyle called this system of economy “the dismal science.” Dickens, influenced by Carlyle, castigated it again and again. Utilitarians, however, helped bring about the repeal of the Corn Laws and to abolish cruel punishment. When Victoria became queen, there were four hundred and thirty-eight offenses punishable by death. During her reign, the death penalty was limited to two offenses murder and treason. With the softening of the penalties and the stressing of prevention and correction came a decrease in crime.
Even though writers of the period protested human degradation under modern industrialism, the main factor in the improvement of conditions for labor was not outside sympathy but the initiative taken by the workers themselves. They learned that organized trade unions were more constructive to their welfare than riots and the destruction of machines, which had occurred during the Chartist Movement. Gradually the laboring classes won the right to help themselves. Trade unions were legalized in 1864; two workingmen candidates were elected to Parliament in 1874.
Karl Marx founded the first International Workingmen’s Association in London in 1864; three years later he published Das Kapital, a book of modern communism. In 1884, the Fabian Society appeared, headed by Beatrice and Sidney Webb, George Bernard Shaw, and other upper middle-class intellectuals. The Fabians believed that socialism would come about gradually without violence.
Once the rights of the workers were recognized, education became of interest to Parliament. In 1870, the Elementary Education Bill provided education for all; in 1891, free common education for all became compulsory. Poet George Meredith and economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill worked for “female emancipation.” From this period of change came such women as Florence Nightingale and Frances Powers.
Politics and economics do not make up the whole of a nation’s life. In the nineteenth century, both religion and science affected the thought and literature of the period. In 1833, after the Reform Bill of 1832, a group of Oxford men, dissatisfied with the conditions of the Church of England, began the Oxford Movement with the purpose of bringing about in the Church a reformation which would increase spiritual power and emphasize and restore the Catholic doctrine and ritual.
The second half of Queen Victoria’s reign was one of prosperity and advancement in science. Inventions such as the steam engine, the telephone, telegraph, and the wireless made communication easier and simpler. Man became curious about and interested in the unknown. New scientific and philosophic research in the fields of geology and biology influenced the religious mind of England.
Darwin’s Origin of Species gave the world the theory of evolution. The Origin of Species maintained that all living creatures had developed through infinite differentiations from a single source, This one work had the most profound influence of all secular writings on the thinking of the period. Following its publication, there were three schools of thought concerning Man’s origin: first, Darwin’s evidence did not justify his conclusions; therefore, nothing had changed in religious beliefs regarding the origin and creation. Second, Darwin’s evidence had left no room for God in the universe; therefore, everything had changed and thinking must change. Third, Darwin’s theories simply reaffirmed the Biblical concepts; therefore, “evolution is just God’s way of doing things.”
The conflict between the theologians and the scientists raged not only throughout the remainder of the century but was inevitably reflected in the literature of the period. Poets of the era can be classified through their attitudes toward religion and science. Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning stand as poets of faith, whereas Matthew Arnold and Arthur Hugh Clough represent the skeptics and doubters. Later Victorian verse showed less of the conflict than the earlier.
Historians have called Charles Dickens the greatest of the Victorian novelists. creative genius was surpassed only by that of Shakespeare. Many later novelists were to feel the influence of this writer, whose voice became the trumpet of protest against economic conditions of the age. George Bernard Shaw once said that Little Dorrit was as seditious a book as Das Kapital. Thus, according to critics, Dickens’ Hard Times is a relentless indictment of the callous greed of the Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy.
Dickens’ Hard Times (1854) admittedly pointed to the utilitarian apotheosis of figures and averages unbeatable nature of fancy and imagination. But these titles too were left out in favour of the present one – Hard Times. Understandably Dickens intention is not, to figure at the irrational reverence for fact in Victorian society but to outline the dystopia to which this leads. The present title implies that the novel’s principal thematic preoccupation is the hard times which Dickens argues are the logical backlash of fact’ – worship to the total neglect of tender human impulses. Dickens powerfully demonstrates the crisis that the educational institutions of this time had faced owing to madding fact – orientation. He has satirized the theories of political economists through exaggerated characters such as Mr. Bounderby, the self-made man motivated by greed, and Mr. Gradgrind, the schoolmaster who emphasizes facts and figures over all else.
Encouraged by the Benthamite fact craze, the educationists took pains to reduce everything to statistical and measurable data. In an important chapter Tom and Louisa are admonished for peeping into circus show which amounts to inculcation of fancy. Mrs. Gradgrind takes them to task for their misdemeanour and instructs them to be something logical. Promotion of this fact stuff, fancy – starved curriculum is sowing a poison seed. It is difficult to overlook the ironic evocation of different ‘metaphors of growth and cultivation, plant nothing else and root out everything else’, Out Fact for it alone is susceptible to proof and demonstration “.
He has indeed a very hard time when he finds Louisa utterly ruined. Tom changed into a ‘ bored whelp ‘ and Bitzer, the pride of his school, disowning gratitude simply because his schooling was paid for ‘, it was a – bargain“.
The title is apt and significant in so far as it hints at the industrial crisis too. Dickens thesis is that the hard times are man – made. In an industrialized town like Coketown , it is the inhumanity of industrialists like Bounderby who is culpable for the sorry scheme of things . In this trying time of civilization every worker is just a ‘ hand’, a soulless subhuman creature to whom even smoke is healthy. Bounderby has not the slightest regard for ‘humbugging sentiments of his workers whom he equates with machines: “SO many Hundred Hands in this mill, so Many horse – o steam power:” Dickens’ points is that the 19th century business ethos laissez faire proposed and practiced by the utilitarian economies spawned a nightmarish time of the civilization. So hard was the time that in the ‘impassable world of Bounderby everything was fact between the lying in hospital and the cemetery ‘: No wonder that Bounder by makes love to Louisa in the form of bracelets and the hours of his cold, superannuated romance are perfectly punctual.” The deadly statistical recorder in the Gradgrind observatory knocked every second on the head as it was a boon and buried it with his accustomed regularity.” Gradgrind by the imperfect utility calculus man ceases to be a man. This accounts for the ‘rugged individualism of Boundary – The Bully of Humanity who has pensioned off his mother Mrs. Peglar on 30 pounds a year on condition that she should never tell others how affectionately she reared up her dear Jorish and let him aggressively make a virtue of low parentage.
The title has a bearing of many. The details indicate that humanity is jawing through a very edificial face. Sissy’s father has somehow fallen on hard times for his performance is no longer flawless. He has lately seen missing tips, falling short in his tips and found bad in his tumbling. Stephen Blackpool has also his hard times. He is a persecuted husband who cannot divorce his wife given to drink and vile life style. The word and time look inimical to all his innocent wages. The muddled situation he is bogged down in is one of unrelieved gloom. There is the cruel and blind criminal law to punish him if he hurts his wife or flees from her – or marriages his ‘good angel · Rachael or simply lives with her without marriage in case the divorce is not granted. Stephen can only burst out in anger: “Tis a muddle. It is just a muddle a’ together an’ the sooner I am dead the better ‘. Thus the present title of the novel is highly appropriate, for the novel not merely diagnosis the causes of educational and socio-economic crisis, but somberly draws the dismally bleak hard times which are but the outcome of them.
The title of Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times is an apt description of his early life and youth. Born February 7, 1812, the boy was one of eight children. His formal education was scanty, but as a child Charles spent much of his time reading and listening to the stories told by his grandmother. His reading included works by Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, Oliver Goldsmith, and Tobias Smollett all outstanding English novelists. Too, young Dickens frequently as ided and enjoyed the theater with his uncle.
3. Q. Briefly comment on the importance of the structure and setting of Dickensonian novel Hard Times.
Or,
Q.What is the significance of the book’s structure? What does each of its three parts represent? Why are the different titles when the book is about industrial England?
Settings can be classified as scenic, essential, and symbolic. Scenic is self- It is there, but it does not influence the story. Essential means that the story could not have happened any other place or at any other time. A symbolic setting is one which plays an important role in the philosophy of the book. Such a setting is Coketown, England, Coketown, with all its brick buildings and its conformity and sterility and the Educational System, is conspicuous as part of the setting. Dickens uses many symbols to convey the horror of the setting: Coketown is the brick jungle; the factories are the mad elephants; the death-bringing smoke is the serpent; the machinery is the monster. The sameness, the conformity, creates an atmosphere of horror . An ironic note in the setting is the paradoxical reference to the blazing furnaces as Fairy Palaces.
The beliefs and thoughts expressed by the characters in the novel integrated with their notion of time which in turn is partially due to the environmental qualities that will be discussed here, namely the setting. The settings may intimate how time and characters should be perceived in different scenes and in various settings. There are several different settings described in the novel and they all contribute to our understanding of time in one way or another. The town of Coketown is where the main part of the story is set and bears a name that implies the many factories therein driven by coke. Because of this large-scale industry the intense pollution turns the town into a very filthy place: “It was a town of red brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it […].” (HT, 28). And “[i]n the hardest part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, […] Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and 12 gases were bricked in […]” (HT, 68).
The town is seemingly the worst place to live; it is ugly, unhealthy nature cannot enter. The environment is thus heavily industrialized and is moreover described in the novel as a place where “Time went on like its own machinery” (HT, 93). The monotony is clearly ruling its everyday life and we are repeatedly reminded that smoke pillars constantly rise from the high chimneys of the factories. The air is dense with pollution as well as the river, which is purple with ill-stinking dye. The pollution and onesidedness of life and work portrayed in Coketown together convey gloomy monotony: It [Coketown) contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next assumption (When presenting Coketown in this manner the author makes any that healthy creativity and variation exist in this place completely impossible; the town already runs like clockwork. The environment is in other words mechanised, almost as if in passing, and expresses something close to sadness and hopelessness. Throughout the novel similar descriptions are attributed to Coketown, and various houses and locations as well. Cione Lodge for instance, where the family Gradgrind resides, is given the portrayal: “[…] life at Stone Lodge went monotonously round like a piece of machinery which discouraged human interference […)” (HT, 61). Even the very name Stone Lodge denotes to be much different from a stone-cave or stone-hut with damp mortar and the place not a cold and sombre ambience. Everything about the Gradgrind home is highly functional and ordered, and around the house there is a “Lawn and garden and an infant avenue, all ruled straight like a botanical account-book” (HT, 17).
When considering the novel Hard Times and its setting it mainly presents a mood through the description of Coketown. However, when Cecilia and a character called Rachael (who is one of the many factory workers often referred to as ‘the Hands) go outside the aty, the novel offers the first view of an environment very different from the filthy and noisy setting which has been dominating the novel up to that point. When they leave the town behind with its many smoke pillars and monotonous and lifeless work it is almost as if another world has opened its doors to them. Louisa and Rachel have wandered straight into a country of fresh green grass, with birds singing in the air, and at the horizon the glittering light of a far away sea is visible.
The atmosphere has completely changed and the mechanical features in the novel seem not to be present anymore. However, the almost blissful and idyllic green landscape Rachael and Louisa have entered into is still underscored by the presence of contrasting mechanical features in the shape of old coal-pits and abandoned mining equipment scattered all over: “Engines and pits’ mouths, and lean old horses that had worn the circle of their daily labour into the ground, were alike quiet; wheels had ceased for a short space to turn; and the great wheel of earth seemed to revolve without the shocks and noises of another time” (HT, 266).
For a brief moment the novel shows how different life in Coketown is from the rest of the world outside its boundaries. Here, time is not collared with any mechanical tools or surrounded and driven by unreflecting repetitiveness (at least to a lesser degree) but has changed into something free and natural. The words “without the shocks and noises of another time” emphasizes the presence of nature and the existence of its own system for measuring time, or rather, that outside Coketown’s noisy atmosphere time in a sense is smoother and is experienced the way time should be according to the message of the novel. Here time is more alive than in the poisonous town where monotony rules and independent diversities of any kind are disliked.
The mechanical atmosphere of the Coketown setting is also embodied in the clocks among the identical sooty red-bricked buildings and monotonous work of the ‘Hands’ at the factories. Clocks symbolise the mechanical understanding of time most clearly in the novel by measuring it with complete dull monotony and without any reflection or life other than what they are given by the manufacturers. In the novel we find such a clock in the possession of Mr Gradgrind and situated in his apartment where he does his work: “[…] a stern room, with a deadly-statistical clock in it, which measured every second with a beat like a rap upon a coffin-lid […]” (HT, 99). The clock seems to count the time that will never come again and the time that remains with equal effort, as if it was counting down to zero, until there is no more. Mr Gradgrinds’ clock stresses the fact that we have only a certain amount of time before passing away and gives emphasis to the thought that this timelength is already measured, and now simply needs to be deducted. Apart from the walking-tour Louisa and Rachael do when going outside Coketown, the travelling-circus called Sleary’s horsemanship also provide a somewhat clear contrast to the rest of the city’s mechanical and lifeless outline. Sleary’s circus has a different atmosphere both because of the more natural aspects of the workers’ profession and the social exchange 14 between them compared to the Coketowners. The circus-entertainers perform by riding horses, juggling and doing acrobatic tricks which means that they are dependant on one another to a higher degree to carry out their work, than a ‘Hand’ who does his work all by himself. The atmosphere among the circus-people is more humane and described in the following way; there was a remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for any kind of sharp practise, and an untiring readiness to help and pity one another , deserving, often as much respect, and always of as much generous construction, as the everyday virtues of any class of people in the world. (HT, 41) The circus entertainers are depicted to be more inclined to human emotions and the feelings of their fellow workers.
The setting of Slearys’ horsemanship in a way also constitutes missing in the rest of the city; there is music and colourful flags, and entertainment without any practical goals other than to entertain the interest and excitement of the onlookers. Although the circus is an organisation as any other company with its economy depending on the costumers or in this case the visitors, Sleary’s Horsemanship seem to have other interests than a solely economical one when performing. Instead the performers seem to radiate a passion for their work:
When these shifting settings are compared to one another it is possible how it affects the mood in which the novel is read. Everything from the clocks mentioned now and then in the novel to the contrasts in the places the characters live and work affect the time perception in the text. It becomes clear that Coketown represents the mechanical perspective, whereas the outskirts along with the travelling circus represent the natural perspective. Within these different settings we also find different characters that are connected to the mechanical and/or natural environments they are in.
4. Q. Critically comment on how Dickens can be called a master novelist in regards to his Hard Times.
Dickens started a periodical publication he called Household Words urged by its printers to begin writing a new weekly serial when the sales had been falling for some time. One reason among many for writing the story that would be known as Hard Times for These Times (which is the full title) was therefore an attempt to increase the sales of Household Words, an endeavour that succeeded very well (Hobsbaum, 127,173). The novel “[…] has been recognized as Dickens’ distinctive attempt to come to grips with the phenomenon of the industrial city” (Johnson, 128) which represents what he feels is terribly wrong; the self-interest among people taking over, that the gap between rich and poor widens and the employed labourer’s lose their individualization in the eyes of factory at the expense of profit. Hard Times has also been described as a novel which “[…] asks most not as a mere fictional world but as a commentary on a contemporary crisis. It is, after all, Hard Times for These Times, and it is dedicated to Thomas Carlyle, the social thinker whose vision of a society of human connections […] influenced Dickens so profoundly in the 1840s and 1850s”. The novel is therefore not only supposed to be a pleasant and is a work of fiction which contains a serious depth and has an exploited clearly entertaining read. Its underlying gravity which is important to be aware of. It is both criticism of industrialism and an attempt to raise awareness among people about how they actually think. Hard Times has the effect of tempting the reader to reflect upon his or her own situation and how they believe they live their lives, as well as how they imagine their relationships with others are.
Charles Dickens required to write Hard Times in twenty sections to be published over a period of five months, filled the novel with his own philosophy and symbolism. Dickens expounds his philosophy in two ways: through straight third-person exposition and through the voices of his characters. His approach to reality is allegorical in nature; his plot traces the effect of rational education on Gradgrind’s two children. He presents two problems in the text of his novel; the most important one is that of the educational system and what divides the school of Facts and the circus school of Fancy. The conflicts of the two worlds of the schoolroom and the circus represent the adult attitudes toward life. While the schoolroom dehumanizes the little scholars, the circus, all fancy and love, restores humanity. The second problem deals with the economic relationships of labor and management. Here one sees that Dickens lets the educational system be dominated by, rather than serve, the economic system. His philosophy, expounded through his characters, is best summarized by Sleary, who says that people should make the best of life, not the worst of it.
Dickens’ symbolism takes such forms as Coketown being a brick jungle, strangled in sameness and smoke, the belching factories as elephants in this jungle, the smoke as treacherous snakes, and the children as little “vessels” which must be filled. His symbolism also becomes allegorical as he utilizes biblical connotation in presenting the moral structure of the town and the people.
In addition to dialogue, straight narration, and description, Dickens employs understatement to convey through satire the social, economic, and educational problems and to propose solutions for these problems. His often tongue-in-cheek statements balance the horror of the scenery by the absurdity of humor, based on both character and theme. Hard Times is a novel written in the Victorian Age by Charles Dickens. This fiction shows tyranny and oppression of manufacturers and owners of factories during the 19th century. Dickens explores how drastically the Industrial Revolution changed the lives of people, particularly farmers. This literary work does not merely inspire readers and students but it also proves that Dickens is interested in politics and social affairs of people especially England. The novel covers the lives of both lower and middle class who suffered oppression and poverty. One of the most important purposes of Dickens in writing his novel Hard Times is to comment on the faults and mistakes of inventing machines; in addition to that it brought pollution and malformation for nature. It also discusses violating and exploitation by the manufacturers.
This narrative point of view also contrasts with the characters who, for the most part, are detached from their feelings, thoughts, and emotions and unable to communicate is told effectively.
5. Q. Discuss the plotline and the story of Hard Times in brief.
The novel takes place somewhere in England during the mid many different and sometimes profoundly distinct characters – especially concerning their conduct towards others, and in particular, those of a different class or disposition. To begin with we are introduced to the Gradgrind family and the two oldest children (Cecilia and Thomas Jr. a.k.a. Tom). Their father, Mr Gradgrind, also happens to be the founder of the school they attend; an arena in which he greatly enjoys sharing his philosophy about rationality and facts. He believes strongly in practical and logical notions and does not approve of imaginative and illogical thinking and reasoning – neither by his own children nor by Cecilia Jupe. Jupe is the daughter of a circus entertainer who disappeared and left her to be taken in by Mr Gradgrind. Mr Gradgrind, despite his friend Mr Bounderby’s objection for doing so, believes he may have a chance of putting her straight. Jupe is specifically very different from the Gradgrind children, that is to say, their complete opposite, and that is something Mr Gradgrind wishes to amend.
Time passes and the Gradgrind children become older, they according to their father’s efforts and wishes and all the while their experience of their own lives seem to them as if there is something missing, something vital. Tom shows an increasingly self-interested side: he inconsiderately gambles too much and starts to owe people a lot of money – his everyday goal is mainly to enjoy himself as much as possible. Louisa, on the other hand, is married to the factory owner Mr Bounderby who is much older than her. She finds herself trapped in this marriage at the same time as her brother becomes an apprentice at her husband’s bank. During all of this Cecilia Jupe stays at the Gradgrind home and takes care of the younger children and the household.
One day Mr Bounderby’s bank is robbed and no witnesses can be claiming that a ‘Hand’ (the low-status workers that do the dirtiest work in the city’s factories) had been observing the building many nights in a row before the robbery happened. While the robbery remains a mystery, Louisa suffers from distress and feels miserable in her marriage with Mr Bounderby, who she does not love. She meets a certain Mr Hearthouse and experiences emotions her upbringing has quenched and now take her by surprise. Uncertain and confused she leaves her husband and lives at Stone Lodge once more, her childhood home. This makes Mr Bounderby furious. Mr Gradgrind and Louisa ultimately understand that Tom is the bank robber and, with a little help from Sleary and his circus performers with whom Cecilia Jupe spent her early childhood, they manage to help Tom leave the country and be spared his penalty.
The snooty character of Mrs Sparsit, who is employed as Mr Bounderby’s wishes to be the one her employer will marry. In her attempt to help Mr Bounderby find the bank robber and win his favour she presents a certain Mrs Pegler who she believes has something to do with the bank robbery. Old Mrs Pegler is then revealed to be Mr Bounderby’s mother and a woman who loves her son. She would never abandon him as he had always proclaimed she did. Mr Bounderby’s rise from rags to riches has all been a lie and he loses face. He had forbidden his mother to visit him and fires Mrs Sparsit for him in this embarrassing position. Bounderby dies alone in and involves mature into putting The story ends with a glimpse into the future where Mr Coketown and Mr Gradgrind abandons his fact-oriented and rational philosophy to help poor people instead. Cecilia Jupe, on the other hand, marries and lives a happy life with her own family while Louisa never will have one of her own. Still, their relationship is strong and Jupe teaches Louisa the importance of feeling sympathy for her fellow men and women. Her brother Tom also at last understands his faults but unfortunately dies without ever seeing his family again.
6. Q. Briefly discuss the major symbols present in Hard Times.
Loom
Stephen Blackpool makes multiple references to his loom, a steam-powered machine used widely in textile factories after industrialization. For Stephen, the loom defines his life and gives it purpose. Thus, it symbolizes the dominance of work in the lives of the workers and the narrow definition of the workers’ sense of self and place in the world. Stephen views his work as a comfort, which it is in a sense, but the loom also symbolizes the overwhelming power of work that keeps Stephen tethered to a bleak, monotonous, and unchangeable existence.
He is, in a sense, both defined and imprisoned by his loom. The position in which he must remain to operate the machine-hunched-defines his posture: stooped and hunched. Old beyond his years, he knows no way of life other than the loom, to which he returns day after day, year after year. Although he longs for better conditions, he has no desire to leave the security his loom provides him within these conditions, as a person imprisoned for many years might have little desire for freedom.
Bottle of Nine Oils
One of the last things Mr. Jupe does before leaving is send Sissy to get him a bottle of nine oils, a primitive remedy for the aches and pains he suffers from executing the acrobatics of his performances. Sissy keeps the bottle throughout her childhood, and Mr. Gradgrind tells Mr. Sleary she still has it as an adult when Mr. Sleary reveals his belief that Mr. Jupe has died. To Mr. Gradgrind, the bottle symbolizes Sissy’s childlike feelings about her father: her unwillingness to accept facts and accept her father is not coming back. Such sentimentality is the primary obstacle to her formal education.
For Sissy, however, the bottle represents unfailing hope and love for her father. Her belief he might return helps her cope with the pain of his absence and reminds her of his love for her. Her sentimentality provides her with emotional stability in the face of his abandonment, and by keeping the legendary bottle into adulthood, she symbolically carries her father’s love with her into adulthood. Her belief in his love allows her to grow into a productive and balanced adult.
City and Country
. In Hard Times, the city itself does appear as a forbidding environment. Coketown is oppressive, dirty and at best nondescript. The factory buildings are indistinguishable from one another, as are the Hands that work inside them. Everything is obscured by soot and smoke. The non-factory buildings are likewise uniform. Coketown is described as a place of extreme utility-nothing in the city is not useful, and little beautiful.
However, the countryside serves only as a place where the physical and emotional pollution of the city spills over and spreads its corruption too. The landscape is dotted with coal pits, both working and disused. The railway slashes through the hills and trees. One of the coal pits consumes Stephen Blackpool, an innocent and well-meaning factory worker , when he falls in by accident and dies of his injuries; the country is no safer than the city . In a similar fashion, Louisa Gradgrind’s life crashes on the grounds of her husband’s country estate when James Harthouse comes there to lure her into an affair . The concerns of the city-and James originates from the much larger city of London-intruding on Louisa’s country life show how the dangers of urbanization and industry continually encroach and destroy
Turtle Soup, Venison, and a Gold Spoon
Mr. Bounderby repeatedly refers to a specific string of three luxury items to represent his understanding of the workers’ aspirations. He says, “When a man tells me anything about imaginative qualities, I always tell that man, whoever he is, that I know what he means. He means turtle-soup and venison, with a gold spoon, and that he wants to be set up with a coach and six.” Turtle soup and venison are expensive and specialized food items, the gold spoon a far better utensil than the steel or wooden spoons workers likely use, and the coach and six horses are private transportation inaccessible to all but the wealthiest members of society. Even Mr. Bounderby, Louisa, and the Gradgrinds are typically seen eating much more common fare and traveling on foot or by train.
The turtle soup, venison, and gold spoon are Mr. Bounderby’s metaphor for his ironically unrealistic beliefs about the sense of entitlement he sees in others. On one level the metaphor describes a physical representation that allows supposedly realistic Mr. Bounderby to explain the sense of entitlement he ascribes to his factory hands. While the workers may wish for better food and living conditions, as seen in the union meetings and in Stephen Blackpool’s description of the “muddle” in which he lives, the workers do not have aspirations to the extent Mr. Bounderby claims. They want roomier, cleaner housing. They want shorter working hours, safer conditions, and better pay. Yet Mr. Bounderby uses this exaggerated metaphor as a means of denying his workers any improvements at all because he thinks they want too much. On a second level, then, the metaphor represents Mr. Bounderby’s (and other factory owners) unrealistic assessment of workers’ needs and desires.
However, Mr. Bounderby makes use of this metaphor when he perceives anyone’s desire for more than he is willing to provide. When he confronts Mr. Gradgrind about Louisa’s emotional breakdown and Mr. Gradgrind says his daughter needs more time to recover, Mr. Bounderby does not hesitate to invoke the image of turtle soup, venison, and the gold spoon in reference to her. Louisa is not one of his factory workers, but she is someone Mr. Bounderby sees as subservient to him. By applying the metaphor to his own wife, Mr. Bounderby reveals how he uses this metaphor not simply to respond to the entitlement he perceives in his workers; he uses this metaphor to respond to entitlement he perceives in the world in a general sense. His perception indicates a hypocritical lack of awareness, as he is unable to see how his expectation for others to do his bidding stems from a highly developed sense of entitlement on his own part.
Circus With clowns, acrobats, and elaborate horse-riding shows based on legendary themes, the circus symbolizes the triumph of imagination and whimsy, or what Mr. Gradgrind would call “fancy.” The circus features such performance pieces as the enticingly named “equestrians Tyrolean flower-act,” which presumably combines flowers and horses in a creative way. Another performance features Master Kidderminster as Cupid, complete with “curls, wreaths, and wings.” These performances provide factory workers an escape from the monotony and squalor of everyday life.
Even though wealthy men such as Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby dismiss circus performers as disreputable slackers, circus performances require great skill and extensive training, showing the variety of expertise and ability that can lead to a productive and satisfying life, one most definitely not based on fact. The circus represents not merely the escape entertainment provides but also a broader understanding of what success and prosperity can mean. The dismissal of the circus, in turn, represents a restrictive worldview that neglects the validity of fanciful human joy.
Staircase
When Mrs. Sparsit notices that Louisa and Harthouse are spending a lot of time together, she imagines that Louisa is running down a long staircase into a “dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom.” This imaginary staircase represents her belief that Louisa is going to elope with Harthouse and consequently ruin her reputation forever. Mrs. Sparsit has long resented Bounderby’s marriage to the young Louisa, as she hoped to marry him herself, so she is very pleased by Louisa’s apparent indiscretion. Through the staircase, Dickens reveals the manipulative and censorious side of Mrs. Sparsit’s character. He also suggests that Mrs. Sparsit’s self-interest causes her to misinterpret the situation. Rather than ending up in a pit of shame by having an affair with Harthouse, Louisa actually returns home to her father.
Pegasus
Mr. Sleary’s circus entertainers stay at an inn called the Pegasus Arms. Inside this inn is a “theatrical” pegasus, a model of a flying horse with “golden stars stuck on all over him.” The pegasus represents a world of fantasy and beauty from which the young Gradgrind children are excluded. While Mr. Gradgrind informs the pupils at his school that wallpaper with horses on it is unrealistic simply because horses do not in fact live on walls, the circus folk live in a world in which horses dance the polka and flying horses can be imagined, even if they do not, in fact, exist. The very name of the inn reveals the contrast between the imaginative and joyful world of the circus and Mr. Gradgrind’s belief in the importance of fact.
Smoke Serpents
However, these smoke serpents also represent the moral blindness of factory owners like Bounderby. Because he is so concerned with making as much profit as he possibly can, Bounderby interprets the serpents of smoke as a positive sign that the factories are producing goods and profit. Thus, he not only fails to see the smoke as a form of unhealthy pollution, but he also fails to recognize his own abuse of the Hands in his factories. The smoke becomes a moral smoke screen that prevents him from noticing his workers’ miserable poverty. Through its associations with evil, the word “serpents” evokes the moral obscurity that the smoke creates.
When Louisa is first introduced, in Chapter 3 of Book the First, the narrator explains that inside her is a “fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow.” This description suggests that although Louisa seems coldly rational , she has not succumbed entirely to her father’s prohibition against wondering and imagining. Her inner fire symbolizes the warmth created by her secret fancies in her otherwise lonely , mechanized existence. Consequently, it is significant that Louisa often gazes into the fireplace when she is alone, as if she sees things in the flames that others—like her rigid father and brother-cannot see. However, there is another kind of inner fire in Hard Times-the fires that keep the factories running, providing heat and power for the machines, Fire is thus both a destructive and a life-giving force. Even Louisa’s inner fire, her imaginative tendencies, eventually becomes destructive: her repressed emotions eventually begin to burn “within her like an unwholesome fire.” Through this symbol, Dickens evokes the importance of imagination as a force that can counteract the mechanization of human nature.
Bank
In complete contrast to the haphazard whimsy of the circus, the bank and organized space, cleaner than the factories but dismal and restrictive in its own way. It is part of “the wholesome monotony of the town,” a red brick building nearly indistinguishable from the other red brick buildings that surround it. The desks in the office space are set up in rows that echo the rows of machines in a factory, and Tom Gradgrind finds his place in the bank as oppressive as Stephen Blackpoolfinds the factory—perhaps more so. It is a privileged but dull existence. As a symbol of wealth, the bank shows how wealth oppresses those who don’t have it. The images of heavy doors and locks emphasize money is kept separate from all human eyes and hands.
The building itself, as well as the institution, is a symbol. A nondescript brick structure, the bank is inaccessible to those who do not have money, and thus serves as a physical reminder of what people living in poverty can never obtain.
7. Q. Discuss the roles of various characters in the novel Hard Times.
In Hard Times, Dickens placed villains, heroes, heroines, and bystanders who are representative of his times. Even though many of these characters have names which indicate their personalities or philosophies, they are not caricatures but people endowed with both good and bad human qualities. Shaped by both internal and external forces, they are like Shakespeare’s characters living, breathing beings who love, hate, sin, and repent. True to the class or caste system of nineteenth-century England, Dickens drew them from four groups: the fading aristocracy, the vulgar rising middle class, the downtrodden but struggling labor class, and the itinerant group, represented by the circus people.
Representative of the fading aristocracy are Mrs. Sparsit and James Harthouse. Mrs. Sparsit, a pathetic, but scheming old lady, eams her living by pouring tea and attending to the other housekeeping duties for Mr. Josiah Bounderby, whom she despises. Sparing with words, she is literally a “sitter,” first in Bounderby’s home and later in his bank. She lends her respectability and culture to his crude, uneducated environment. Resentful of Bounderby and others who do not have the background that she has, she seemingly accepts Bounderby’s philosophy of life. In direct discourse with him, she simpers and hedges; when he is not present, she scorns him and spits on his picture. Throughout the novel, Mrs. Sparsit connives and plans for her own advantage. Her role in the first book is one of waiting and watching; in the second book, she continues this role and enlists the aid of Bitzer, an aspirant to the middle class, to bring revenge upon Bounderby; in the last book, she serves as informer and is rewarded by losing her position with Bounderby and by being compelled to live with a hated relative, Lady Scadgers.
James Harthouse, the second face of the aristocracy, is a young man who comes to Coketown because he is bored with life. He is employed to advance the interests of a political party. When introduced to Louisa, he becomes infatuated with her and seeks to arouse her love. Taking advantage of Bounderby’s absences from home, he goes to see Louisa on various pretexts. When Louisa refuses to elope with him, he leaves Coketown for a foreign country. The only hurt he has received is a blow or vanity. Characters of the middle class take many faces: the wealthy factory owner, the retired merchant who is a champion of facts, the “whelp,” and the beautiful Louisa nurtured in facts.
Coketown are all alike in shape, so are these people alike. Josiah Bounderby, the wealthy middle-aged factory owner of Coketown, is a self-made man. Fabricating a story of his childhood, he has built himself a legend of the abandoned waif who has risen from the gutter to his present position. To add to his “self-made“ station in life, this blustering, bragging bounder has told the story of his miserable childhood so long and so loud that he believes it himself. The story is simple: he says that after being abandoned by his mother, he was reared by a drunken grandmother, who took his shoes to buy liquor; he relates often and long how he was on his own as a mere child of seven and how he educated himself in the streets. In the final book, when his story is proved false by the appearance of his mother, who had not abandoned him but who had reared and educated him, he is revealed as a fraud who had, in reality, rejected his own mother. With this revelation and other events came downfall and eventual death.
In the first book, as a friend of Thomas Gradgrind, he is intent upon having Louisa, Gradgrind’s older daughter, for his wife. In the conclusion of book one he succeeds – bý taking Gradgrind’s son into the bank – in marrying Louisa, who does not love him, for shé has never been taught to love or dream, only to learn facts . True to braggart nature, Bounderby expands the story of his miserable rise to wealth by letting everyone know that he has married the daughter of a wealthy, respectable man.
Book two reveals him more fully as the bounder; however, he is a blind does not know that his young wife has found a younger man to whom she is attracted. In the final book, when she leaves him and returns home, his ego cannot stand the blow.
Gradgrind is the father of five children whom he has only in statistics. His wife, a semi-invalid, is simple-minded; although she does not understand his philosophy, she tries to do his bidding. As the book progresses, however, he begins to doubt his own teachings. Mr. Thomas Gradgrind represents the Utilitarian philosophy of the nineteenth century.
In the first book, he takes into his home a young girl whose father, abandoned her. He undertakes her education but fails since she is the product of another environment. In this book, he presents Bounderby’s suit for marriage to Louisa and is pleased when she recognizes that wealth is important. In the second book, Gradgrind emerges as a father for the first time. He takes Louisa back into his home after she leaves Bounderby. Having lived with the foundling in his home, he has come to recognize that there are emotions such as love and compassion. When his daughter comes to him as a daughter looking for help and sanction, he reacts as a father. In the last book, Gradgrind abandons his philosophy of facts again to help Tom, his wayward son, to flee from England so that he will not be imprisoned for theft. Gradgrind also vows to clear the name of an accused worker. Here he learns much to his regret that Bitzer, one of his former students, has learned his lesson well; Bitzer refuses to help young Tom escape. middle class. Having been reared never
Tom Gradgrind, the son, is also a face of the to wonder, never to doubt facts, and never to entertain any vice or fancy, he rebels as a young man when he leaves his father’s home, Stone Lodge, to work in Bounderby’s bank, He uses Bounderby’s affection for Louisa to gain money for gambling and drink. He urges Bounderby since it will be to his own benefit if she does.
Louisa to marry Freed from the stringent rule of his father, Tom (whom Dickens has “the whelp’) becomes a “man about town.” He begins to smoke, to drink, and to gamble. When he becomes involved in gambling debts, he looks to Louisa for help. Finally she becomes weary of helping him and denies him further financial aid. Desperate for money to replace what he has taken from the bank funds, Tom stages a robbery and frames Stephen Blackpool. Just as he uses others, so is he used by James Harthouse, who has on Louisa. At last, Tom shows his complete degeneration of character exposure is imminent, he runs away. The only redeeming feature of his character is that he truly loves his sister and ultimately regrets that he has brought her heartache. Escaping from England, he lives and dies a lonely life as an exile. In his last illness, he writes to asking her forgiveness and love.
Louisa Gradgrind Bounderby, a beautiful girl nurtured in the school of facts, reacts and performs in a manner in keeping with her training until she faces a situation for which her education has left her unprepared. A dutiful daughter, she obeys her father in all things – even to contracting a loveless marriage with Bounderby, a man twice her age. The only emotion that fills her barren life is her love for Tom, her younger brother. Still young when she realizes that her father’s system of education has failed her, she begins to discover the warmth and compassion of life. Only after her emotional conflict with Harthouse does she start her complete re-education.
Dickens employs biblical parallels to portray the characters of the struggling working class. Stephen Blackpool, an honest, hard-working power-loom weaver in Bounderby’s factory and the first victim to the labor cause, is likened unto the biblical Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Just as the biblical Stephen was stoned by his own people, so is Stephen Blackpool shunned and despised by his own class. Even though he realizes that Bounderby and the other factory owners are abusing the workers and that something must be done to help them, he refuses to join the union. He is perceptive enough to know that Slackbridge, the trade-union agitator, is a false prophet to the people.
Married to a woman who had left him years before the story opens, Stephen finds himself hopelessly in love with Rachael, also a worker in the factory. Rachael is likened unto the long-suffering woman of the same name in biblical history. Stephen cannot marry his beloved because the laws of England are for the rich, not the penniless workman. When he goes to Bounderby for help to obtain a divorce from his drunken, degenerate wife, he is scorned and bullied until he speaks up, denying Bounderby’s taunts. On another occasion he defends the workers against Bounderby’s scathing remarks; consequently, he is fired and has to seek a job in another town. When Stephen learns that he is accused of theft, he starts back to Coketown to clear his name; however, he does not arrive there. He falls into an abandoned mine pit and is found and rescued minutes before his death. Although he is just one of the “Hands” to Bounderby and others of the middle class, Stephen Blackpool is a very sensitive, religious man who bears no enmity toward those who have hurt him.
The last social group that Dickens pictures is best represented by Cecilia “Sissy” Jupe, who is the antithesis of the scholars of Gradgrind’s school. This group, the circus people whose endeavor is to make people happy, is scorned by the Gradgrinds and the Bounderbys of the world. Sissy, forsaken by her father, who believed that she would have a better life away from the circus, is a warm, loving individual who brings warmth and understanding to the Gradgrind home. Because of her influence, the younger girl, Jane Gradgrind, grows up to know love, to dream, and to wonder. In the conclusion of the book, Sissy can look forward to a life blessed by a husband and children. The handwriting on the wall foretells her happiness and Louisa’s unhappiness.
Minor Characters
Dickens used the minor characters for comic relief, for transition of plot, and for comparison and contrast.
Bitzer is a well-crammed student in Gradgrind’s model school of Fact. He is the living contrast to the humble, loving, compassionate Sissy. Bitzer can best be characterized as the symbolic embodiment of the practical Gradgrindian philosophy: he is colorless, servile, mean; and he lives by self-interest. Mc. M’Choakumchild, a teacher in Gradgrind’s model school, is an Gradgrind system. Dickens says that he might have been a better teacher had he known trade-unlon advocate of the
Slackbridge, symbolized as the false prophet to the laboring class, agitator in Mr. Bounderby.
Mrs. Pegler is the mysterious woman who shows great interest meets her, usually, standing outside the Bounderby house, watching quietly. Adam Smith Gradgrind and Malthus Gradgrind are Thomas Gradgrind’s two youngest concern of the book.
Their names are Members of the Sleary Circus, in addition to Mr. Sleary, are Emma Gordon, Kidderminster, who plays the role of cupid; Mr. E. W. B. Childers, and Josephine Sleary.
Unnamed characters are members of the “Hands” and The characters presented above are central to the study. Throughout the novel we come to know their names, dispositions and situations and understand them to be vital for the novel and for the aspects of ‘natural’ and ‘mechanical time-perceptions. For that reason they are briefly described here.
Thomas Gradgrind is the first character we meet in Hard Times, and figures through whom Dickens weaves a web of intricately connected plotlines and characters. Dickens introduces us to this character with a description of his most central feature: his mechanized, monotone attitude and appearance. The opening scene in the novel describes Mr. Gradgrind’s speech to a group of young students, and it is appropriate that Gradgrind physically embodies the dry, hard facts that he crams into his students’ heads. The narrator calls attention to Gradgrind’s “square coat, square legs, square shoulders,” all of which Gradgrind’s unrelenting rigidity.
Mr. Gradgrind expounds his calculating, rational self-interest. He believes that human nature can be governed by completely rational rules, and he is “ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you what it comes to.” This philosophy has brought Mr. Gradgrind much financial and social success. He has made his fortune as a hardware merchant, a trade that, appropriately, deals in hard, material reality. Later, he becomes a Member of Parliament, a position that allows him to indulge his interest in tabulating data about the people of England. Although he is not a factory owner, Mr. Gradgrind evinces the spirit of the Industrial Revolution insofar as he treats people like machines that can be reduced to a of scientific principles.
While the narrator’s tone toward him is initially mocking and a significant change in the course of the novel, thereby earning the narrator’s sympathy. When Louisa confesses that she feels something important is missing in her life and that she is desperately unhappy with her marriage, Gradgrind begins to realize that his system of education may not be perfect. This intuition is confirmed when he learns that Tom has robbed Bounderby’s bank. Faced with these failures of his system, Gradgrind admits, “The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet.” His children’s problems teach him to feel love and sorrow, and Gradgrind becomes a wiser and humbler man, ultimately “making his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope and Charity.” 1
Mr. Thomas Gradgrind Thomas Gradgrind is a wealthy, retired merchant in Coketown, England; he later becomes a Member of Parliament. Mr. Gradgrind espouses a philosophy of rationalism, self interest, and cold, hard fact. Mr. Thomas Gradgrind represents the Ublitarian philosophy of the nineteenth century. He describes himself as an “eminently practical” man, and he tries to raise his children-Louisa, Tom, Jane, Adam Smith, and Malthus-to be equally practical by forbidding the development of their imaginations and emotions.
Mr. Gradgrind is the intellectual founder of the Gradgrind educational system and he is also a member of Parliament. He represents the rigor of “hard facts” and statistics. It is only after Louisa’s emotional breakdown that he has a change of heart and becomes more intellectually accepting of enterprises that are not exclusively dedicated to profit and fact. Thomas Gradgrind is the first character we meet in Hard Times, and one of the central figures through whom Dickens weaves a web of intricately connected plotlines and characters. Dickens introduces us to this character with a description of his most central feature: his mechanized, monotone attitude and appearance.
The opening scene in the novel describes Mr. Gradgrind’s speech to a group of young students, and it is appropriate that Gradgrind physically embodies the dry, hard facts that he crams into his students’ heads. The narrator calls attention to Gradgrind’s “square coat, square legs, square shoulders,” all of which suggest Gradgrind’s unrelenting rigidity. In the first few chapters of the novel, Mr. Gradgrind expounds his philosophy of calculating, rational self-interest. He believes that human nature can be governed by completely rational rules, and he is “ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you what it comes to.” This philosophy has brought Mr. Gradgrind much financial and social success. He has made his fortune as a hardware merchant, a trade that, appropriately, deals in hard, material reality.
Later, he becomes a Member of Parliament, a position that allows him to indulge his interest in tabulating data about the people of England. Although he is not a factory owner, Mr. Gradgrind represents the spirit of the Industrial Revolution insofar as he treats people like machines that can be reduced to a number of scientific principles. While the narrator’s tone toward him is initially mocking and ironic, Gradgrind undergoes a significant change in the course of the novel, thereby earning the narrator’s sympathy. When Louisa confesses that she feels something important is missing in her life and 1 that she is desperately unhappy with her marriage, Gradgrind begins to realize that his system of education may not be perfect. This intuition is confirmed when he learns that Tom has robbed Bounderby’s bank. Faced with these failures of his system, Gradgrind admits, “The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet.” His children’s problems teach him to feel love and sorrow, and Gradgrind becomes a wiser and humbler man, ultimately “making his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope and Charity.”
In the first book (Sowing), he takes into his home a young girl whose father, a circus clown, has abandoned her. He undertakes her education but fails since she is the product of another environment. In this book, he presents Bounderby’s proposal for marriage to Louisa and is pleased when she recognizes that wealth is important. In the second book (Reaping), Gradgrind emerges as a loving father for the first time. He takes Louisa back into his home after she leaves Bounderby.
When his daughter comes to him as a daughter looking for help and sanction, he reacts as a father . In the last book (Garnering), Gradgrind abandons his philosophy of facts again to help Tom, his wayward son, to flee from England so that he will not be imprisoned for theft . Gadgrind also vows to dear the name of an accused worker, Stephen Blackpool. Here he leams – much to his regret – that Bitzer, one of his former students , has learned his lesson well ; Bitzer refuses to help young Tom escape and gives his reasons based on facto and data as Thomas Gradgrind had taught him.
Thomas Gradgrind is one of the most important characters in the novel. of five children of which the two oldest are Louisa and Tom. He regards himself as eminently practical and works as a teacher at one of the Coketown schools. He is also a good friend of Mr Bounderby, a well known owner of factories in the city.
Although he is Mr. Gradgrind’s best friend, Josiah Bounderby money and power than in facts. Indeed, he is himself a fiction, or a fraud. Bounderby’s inflated sense of pride is illustrated by his oft-repeated declaration, “I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.” This statement generally prefaces the story of Bounderby’s childhood poverty and suffering, a story designed to impress its listeners with a sense of the young Josiah Bounderby’s determination and self-discipline. However, Dickens explodes the myth of the self-made man when Bounderby’s mother, Mrs. Pegler, reveals that her son had a decent, loving childhood and a good education, and that he was not abandoned, after all.
Bounderby’s attitude represents the social changes created capitalism. Whereas birth or bloodline formerly determined the social hierarchy, in an industrialized, capitalist society, wealth determines who holds the most power. Thus, Bounderby takes great delight in the fact that Mrs. Sparsit, an aristocrat who has fallen on hard times, has become his servant, while his own ambition has enabled him to rise from humble beginnings to become the wealthy owner of a factory and a bank. However, in depicting Bounderby, the capitalist, as a coarse, vain, self-interested hypocrite, Dickens implies that Bounderby uses his wealth and power irresponsibly, contributing to the muddled relations between rich and poor, especially in his treatment of Stephen after the Hands cast out to form a union.
Mr. Bounderby is one of the central characters of the novel. He is a of Mr. Thomas Gradgrind. He employs many of the characters in the novel and he is very wealthy. He marries Louisa Gradgrind (several decades his junior) and the marriage eventually ends unhappily. In the tumult of a bank robbery investigation, Bounderby’s true identity is revealed much to his shame. Throughout the novel, Bounderby is a symbol of lies and hypocrisy. Although he is Mr. Gradgrind’s best friend, Josiah Bounderby is more interested in money and power than in facts. Indeed, he is himself a fiction, or a fraud; he has made his life, his past and his family. declaration, “I am up lies about Bounderby’s inflated sense of pride is illustrated by his oft repeated Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.” This statement generally prefaces the story of Bounderby’s childhood poverty and suffering, a story designed to impress its listeners with a sense of the young Josiah Bounderby’s determination and self-discipline. Bounderby takes pride in being able to overcome poverty and he always states that it was his determination and Srcelligence and hard work that helped him to rise above poverty. He generally uses this story about his poor upbringing to look down upon the lower dasses and always states ut if they are poor then it is because they are lazy.
However, Dickens destroys the myth of the self-made man when Bounderby’s mother, MS Pegler, reveals that her son had a decent, loving childhood and a good education, and Hat he was not abandoned, after all. His true upbringing, by caring and devoted parents, indicates that his social mobility, his rise in society is a lie and calls into question the whole Dea of social mobility in nineteenth-century England. Social mobility refers to how the lower and middle class can improve their situation and rise to the upper dass. Bounderby’s stoitude represents the social changes created by industrialization and capitalism. Whereas birth or bloodline (aristocracy) formerly determined the social position, power, in an ndustrialized, capitalist society, wealth determines who holds the most power. Thus, Bounderby takes great delight in the fact that Mrs. Sparsit, an aristocrat who has fallen on hard times, has become his servant, while his own ambition has enabled him to rise from humble beginnings to become the wealthy owner of a factory and a bank.
In the first book, as a friend of Thomas Gradgrind, he is intent upon having Louisa, Gradgrind’s older daughter, for his wife. In the conclusion of book one he succeeds – by taking Gradgrind’s son into the bank — in marrying Louisa, who does not love him, for she has never been taught to love or dream, only to learn facts. True to his boasting nature, Bounderby adds to the story of his miserable rise to wealth by letting everyone know that he has married the daughter of a wealthy, respectable man. However, in depicting Bounderty, the capitalist, as a vulgar, rude, proud, self-interested hypocrite, Dickens implies that Bounderby uses his wealth and power irresponsibly and thus adds to the muddled (confused) relations between rich and poor, especially in his treatment of Stephen after the Hands cast Stephen out to form a union. An opinionated man, he regards the workers in his factories as “Hands,” for they are only that – not people to him. The only truth to him is his own version of truth. He prides himself on being a so-called self-made man. Fabricating a story of his childhood, he has built himself a legend of the abandoned orphan who has risen from the gutter to his present position.
To add to his “self-made” station in life, this blustering, bragging loud person has told the story of his miserable childhood so long and so loud that he believes it himself. The story is simple: he says that after being abandoned by his mother, he was brought up by a drunken grandmother, who took his shoes to buy liquor; he relates often and long how he was on his own as a mere child of seven and how he educated himself in the streets. In the final book, when his story is proved false by the appearance of his mother, who had not abandoned him but who had reared and educated him, he is revealed as a fraud who had, in reality, rejected his own mother, because he was ashamed of her poor and illiterate background. Book two (Reaping) reveals him more fully as a proud, loud and rude man; however, he is dull and ignorant – he does not know that his young wife has found a younger man to whom she is attracted. In the final book, when she leaves him and returns home, his ego cannot stand the blow. He does not change, even though almost everyone and everything around him changes. With this truth being revealed and other events came his downfall and eventual death.
Although Louisa is the novel’s principal female character, she is novel’s other women, particularly her foils, Sissy and Rachael. While these other two embody the Victorian ideal of femininity-sensitivity , compassion, and gentleness-Louisa’s education has prevented her from developing such traits. Instead, Louisa is silent, cold, and seemingly unfeeling. However, Dickens may not be implying that Louisa is really unfeeling, but rather that she simply does not know how to recognize and express her emotions. For instance, when her father tries to convince her that it would be rational for her to marry Bounderby, Louisa looks out of the window at the factory chimneys and observes: “There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out.” Unable to convey the tumultuous feelings that lie beneath her own languid and monotonous exterior, Louisa can only state a fact about her surroundings. Yet this fact, by analogy, also describes the emotions repressed within her.
Even though she does not conform to the Victorian ideals of femininity best to be a model daughter, wife, and sister. Her decision to return to her father’s house rather than elope with Harthouse demonstrates that while she may be unfeeling, she does not lack virtue. Indeed, Louisa, though unemotional, still has the ability to recognize goodness and distinguish between right and wrong, even when it does not fall within the strict rubric of her father’s teachings. While at first Louisa lacks the ability to understand and function within the gray matter of emotions, she can at least recognize that they exist and are more powerful than her father or Bounderby believe, even without any factual basis. Moreover, under Sissy’s guidance, Louisa shows great promise in learning to express her feelings. Similarly, through her acquaintance with Rachael and Stephen, Louisa learns to respond charitably to suffering and to not view suffering simply as a temporary state easily overcome by effort, as her father and Bounderby do.
Louisa is one of the central characters of the novel. She is the eldest children and the prize pupil of the educational system. When she grows older, her father arranges her marriage to Mr. Bounderby. Throughout her life, Louisa is very unfulfilled because she has been forced to deny her emotions. She is brought up in the school and philosophy of facts, and she reacts and performs in a manner in keeping with her training until she faces a situation (the situation being James Harthouse seducing her) for which her education has left her unprepared. She has an emotional breakdown after being tempted into infidelity by Mr. James Harthouse. Her marriage with Mr. Bounderby is soon dissolved and she never remarried. Confused by her coldhearted upbringing, Louisa feels from her emotions and alienated from other people.
Thus she marries Bounderby to please her father and her brother, even though she doesn’t love her husband. Indeed, the only person she loves completely is her brother Tom. The only emotion that fills her barren life is her love for Tom, her younger brother. Although Louisa is the novel’s principal female character, she is distinctive from the novel’s other women, particularly her counterparts, Sissy Jupe and Rachael. While these other two women, Sissy and Rachael represent the Victorian ideal of femininity-sensitivity, compassion, and gentleness-Louisa’s education has prevented her from developing such traits. Instead, silent, cold, and seemingly unfeeling.
However, Dickens may not be implying that Louisa is really unfeeling, but rather that she simply does not know how to recognize and express her emotions. For instance, when her father tries to convince her that it would be rational for her to marry Bounderby, Louisa looks out of the window at the factory chimneys and observes: “There seems to be nothing there but languid and monotonous smoke. Yet when the night comes, Fire bursts out.” Unable to convey the tumultuous feelings that lie beneath her own languid and monotonous exterior, Louisa can only state a fact about her surroundings. Yet this fact, by a similarity, also describes the emotions repressed within her. Even though she does not conform to the Victorian ideals of femininity,
Louisa does her best to be a model daughter, wife, and sister. Her decision to return to her father’s house rather than elope with Harthouse demonstrates that while she may be unfeeling, she does not lack virtue. Indeed, Louisa, though unemotional, still has the ability to recognize goodness and distinguish between right and wrong, even when it does not fall within the strict rules of her father’s teachings. While first Louisa lacks the ability to understand and function within the gray matter of emotions, she can at least recognize that they exist and are more powerful than her father or Bounderby believe, even without any factual basis.
Moreover, under Sissy’s guidance, Louisa shows great promise in learning to express her feelings. Similarly, through her acquaintance with Rachael and Stephen, Louisa learns to respond charitably to suffering and to not view suffering simply as a temporary state that is easily overcome by effort, as her father and Bounderby do. She is still young when she realizes that her father’s system of education has failed her, she then begins to discover the warmth and compassion of life. Only after her emotional conflict with Harthouse does she start her complete re-education.
Louisa Gradgrind is another key-character in the novel and Thomas Gradgrind’s daughter – and later also becomes Mr Bounderby’s wife. Her upbringing and her father’s way of educating his children causes her to feel detached from any emotions of happiness and joy, although she at first may not be aware of it nor the reason why.
The daughter of a clown in Sleary’s circus. Sissy is taken in by Gradgrind when her father disappears. Sissy serves as a foil, or contrast, to Louisa: while Sissy is imaginative and compassionate, Louisa is rational and, for the most part, unfeeling. Sissy embodies the Victorian femininity that counterbalances mechanization and industry. Through Sissy’s interaction with her, Louisa is able to explore her more sensitive, feminine sides. Sissy is abandoned by her father who is a well-meaning circus performer. He feels that she will have a better life if he is not able to hinder her progress in society. Sissy lives with the Gradgrind family but she is a poor pupil at their school.
In contrast to Mr. Gradgrind, Sissy lives by the philosophy of emotion, fancy, hope and benevolence. In the end, her kindhearted nature softens the rough edges of the Gradgrind family and they come to be grateful for what she has done for them. At the end of the novel, Dickens writes that Sissy grows ever more happy and she eventually has children of her own to care for. Cecilia “Sissy” Jupe, who is the antithesis (opposite) of the scholars of Gradgrind’s school. She is part of the circus group, the circus people whose endeavor is to make people happy, is hated by Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby. Sissy, forsaken by her father, who believed that she would have a better life away from the circus, is a warm, loving individual who brings warmth and home. Because of her influence, the younger girl, Jane Gradgrind, grows up to know love, to dream, and to wonder, and loving. In the understanding to the Gradgrind caring.
Sissy is the main force for good in the novel. She is kind, face of being abandoned by her father and then being forced to learn the Gradgrind philosophy, she never stops being the only grounding, emotionally positive force in Coketown. Sissy is also a messenger from the land of imagination, creativity, and selfless actions. For instance, all three are combined when she cheers up her father after a hard day in the círcus ring by reading him fairy tales about ogres and giants. When chaos and confusion sets into the lives of the other characters Sissy appears and brings about some resolution, and peace and comfort for those in need; whether it is Mr Thomas Gradgrind, Louisa, Rachael or even Tom.
She is calm, supportive and even confident and those in need. She confronts Mr James Harthouse and commands him to leave Louisa alone and she plans Tom’s escape and helps arrange a rescue party to help Stphen. She is kind in her emotions, confident, and realistic in her actions. She is obviously tied to the circus, to entertainment, to the life of the imagination. But she is also clearly one of the more realistic and matter-of-fact characters in the novel and this can be seen in the way she deals with the problems that come up in the lives of the people around her. In the conclusion of the book, Sissy can look forward to a life blessed by a husband and children. future foretells her happiness.
The Cecilia Jupe becomes a member in the Gradgrind family after her at the travelling circus in Coketown, abandoned her. She does not share Louisa’s and Thomas’ mechanical rationality and more or less insensible and practical conduct. Instead she proves to be more imaginative and keen on sympathizing with others and thereby acts contrast to the other family members.
Stephen Blackpool is introduced after we have met the Gradgrind and Blackpool provides a stark contrast to these earlier characters. One of the Hands in Bounderby’s factory, Stephen lives a life of drudgery and poverty. In spite of the hardships of his daily toil, Stephen strives to maintain his honesty, integrity, faith, and compassion. his poverty and virtue contrast with family and Bounderby.
Stephen is an important character not only because Bounderby’s wealth and self-interest, but also because he finds himself in the midst of a labor dispute that illustrates the strained relations between rich and poor. Stephen is the only Hand who refuses to join a workers’ union: he believes that striking is not the best way to improve relations between factory owners and employees, and he also wants to earn an honest living. As a result, he is cast out of the workers’ group. However, he also refuses to spy on his fellow workers for Bounderby, who consequently sends him away. Both groups, rich and poor, respond in the same self-interested, backstabbing way. As Rachael explains, Stephen ends up with the “masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he only wantin’ to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right.”
Through Stephen, Dickens suggests that the employee and employer’s moral integrity, thereby creating a social muddle to which there is no easy solution. Through his efforts to resist the moral corruption on all sides, Stephen becomes a martyr, or Christ figure, ultimately dying for Tom’s crime. When he falls into a mine shaft on his way back to Coketown to clear his name of the charge of robbing Bounderby’s bank, Stephen comforts himself by gazing at a particularly bright star that seems to shine on him in his “pain and trouble.” This star not only represents the ideals of virtue for which Stephen strives, but also the happiness and tranquility that is lacking in his troubled life. Moreover, his ability to find comfort in the star illustrates the importance of imagination, which enables him to escape the cold, hard facts of his miserable existence.
Stephen is a poor laborer in one of Josiah Bounderby’s factories. He is married to a drunk woman who wanders in and out of his life. After losing his job at the factory, Stephen is forced to leave Coketown and find work elsewhere. In his absence, Stephen is accused of committing a crime that he did not actually commit. When returning to Coketown to defend his honor, Stephen falls into a pit and injures himself. He is rescued but he eventually dies. He is introduced after we have met the Gradgrind family and Bounderby, and Blackpool provides a stark contrast to these earlier characters. He is the first character we come across who is from the lower working class. Stephen lives a life of hard work and poverty. Stephen loves Rachael, another “Hand” in one of the factories, but he is unable to marry her because he is already married, albeit to a horrible, drunken woman.
A man of great honesty, compassion, and integrity, Stephen maintains his moral ideals even when he is shunned by his fellow workers and fired by Bounderby. Stephen’s values are similar to those endorsed by the narrator. In spite of the hardships of his daily toil and the troubles and harassments he faces, Stephen strives to maintain his honesty, integrity, faith, and compassion. Stephen is an important character not only because his poverty and virtue contrast with Bounderby’s wealth and self-interest, but also because he finds himself in the midst of a labor dispute that illustrates the strained relations between rich and poor, Stephen is the only Hand who refuses to join a workers’ union: he believes that striking is not the best way to improve relations between factory owners and employees, and he also wants to earn an honest living. As a result, he is cast out of the workers’ group. However, he also refuses to spy on his fellow workers for Bounderby, who consequently sends him away. Both groups, rich and poor, respond in the same self-interested, backstabbing way.
As Rachael explains, Stephen ends up with the “masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he only wantin’ to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right.” Through Stephen, Dickens suggests that industrialization threatens to compromise both the employee and employer’s moral integrity, thereby creating a social muddle or confusion to which there is no easy solution. Dickens employs biblical parallels to portray the characters of the struggling working class. Through his efforts to resist the moral corruption on all sides, Stephen becomes a martyr, or Christ figure, ultimately dying for Tom’s crime. When he falls into a mine shaft on his way back to Coketown to clear his name of the charge of robbing Bounderby’s bank, Stephen comforts himself by gazing at a particularly bright star that seems to shine on him in his “pain and trouble.” This star not only represents the ideals of virtue for which Stephen strives, but also the happiness and tranquility that is lacking in his troubled life. Moreover, his ability to find comfort in the star illustrates the importance of imagination, which enables him to escape the hard facts of his miserable existence cold, Stephen Blackpool, is also the first victim to the labor cause, he is chased out by his fellow workers and fired by his employer, yet he does not join the Bounderby even after Bounderby fires him, nor does he spy on his fellow workers after they shun him. He does not accuse Tom even after he is blamed for Tom’s crime. Stephen bears all that they do to him with a kind and understanding heart. He is likened unto the biblical St. Stephen, the first Christian martyr . Just as the biblical Stephen was stoned by his own people, so is Stephen Blackpool shunned and despised by his own class. Even though he realizes that Bounderby and the other factory owners are abusing the workers and that something must be done to help them, he refuses to join the union. He is perceptive enough to know that Slackbridge, the trade-union agitator, is a false prophet Stephen finds workers against to the people.
Married to a woman who had left him years before the himself hopelessly in love with Rachael, also a worker in the factory. Rachael is likened unto the longsuffering woman of the same name in biblical history. Stephen cannot marry his beloved because the laws of England are for the rich, not the penniless workman. When he goes to Bounderby for help to obtain a divorce from his drunken, degenerate wife, he is scomed and bullied until he speaks up, and replies to Bounderby’s insults. On another occasion he defends the workers against Bounderby’s scathing remarks; consequently, he is fired and has to seek a job in another town. When Stephen learns that he is accused of theft, he starts back to Coketown to clear his name; however, he does not arrive there. He falls into an abandoned mine pit and is found and rescued minutes before his death. Although he is just one of the “Hands” to Bounderby and others of the middle class, Stephen Blackpool is a very sensitive, religious man who bears no enmity toward those who have hurt him.
8. Q. What do you know about the backdrop of the novel Hard Times? Discuss illustratively .
Or,
Q. Consider Dickens’s Hard Times as a novel purely based on the backdrop of industrial revolution.
The first wave of the Industrial Revolution in Britain took place between 1760 and 1830 as technologies emerged to increase production of goods and expanded trade increased demand. These changes in the early decades of the 19th century created a shift toward economies based on manufacturing and urban living that redefined society first in England, as well as the United States and the rest of Europe, throughout the 19th century and into the 20th. The cotton textile industry was one of the first to shift toward automation with the invention of machines such as the spinning jenny and the power loom in the late 1700s. Powered by steam, these devices could produce far more fabric in far less time than a single spinner or weaver could with a traditional wheel and loom. Therefore, cloth production moved from homes or small workshops to factories, prompting workers to migrate from rural areas to cities where factories were located, which greatly changed the time.
English life at While scholars define the Industrial Revolution as taking place the decades that followed witnessed an ongoing proliferation of factories in urban centers. Outside London, especially in the north of England, small towns grew as large numbers there to find work. Housing was hastily, and often poorly. Additional factories were also built to produce the machinery of manufacturing. Mines were expanded to provide coal to power steam engines, which produced tremendous amounts of smoke and coal dust. For example, London became famous for its thick “fog” in the 19th century, the result of industrial smoke mixing with natural moisture in the air.
Hard Times addresses the social and political changes associated with industrialization through the portrayal of Coketown. (Its named in reference to coke, the residue left from burning coal.) The conditions of this fictional industrial city in England mirror those found in growing factory towns such as Manchester , Sheffield, and Liverpool. The substandard housing and the proliferation of smokestacks are presented in detailed descriptions Hard Times.
Charles Dickens’ Hard Times focuses on the numerous relationships and interactions between characters, and the impact that people have on the behaviour of others. It is evident throughout the novel that several of these relationships are one-sided, in the sense that they are merely in the interest of one of the two parties. For instance, Tom’s influence over Louisa allows him to manipulate her for his own good. Similarly, James Harthouse’s pursuit of Louisa’s affection is not out of love, but simply out of aristocratic boredom. Rachel’s influence on Stephen Blackpool allows him to maintain his integrity and honour. Finally, Sissy Jupe’s impact on the Gradgrind family is all give and no take, as her broad imagination allows the family to finally realize that life is not merely about the theory of fact.
The most obvious example of a one-sided relationship in Hard Times is the one between siblings Tom and Louisa. This relationship is far from mutually beneficial, as Tom continually takes advantage of his sister, solely for his own interests. The constant teachings of fact have made Tom’s life empty and mundane. Although Tom is tempted by the creativity of the circus, he displays little emotion upon being disciplined by his father: “Indeed, Thomas did not look at him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a machine”. Due to the constant strict teachings of fact by his father, Mr. Gradgrind, Tom begins to grow tired of this way of life. His interest in the circus is symbolic of his desire to detach from his father and his dull existence.
By embracing a somewhat hedonistic lifestyle, frequently drinking and gambling, Tom finds a sense of freedom. He wants to escape the dull lifestyle and teachings of the Gradgrind household and experience a new way of life. Tom and Louisa love each other deeply; however, Tom uses his sister’s love for him in order to manipulate her to do as he desires. Louisa’s strict upbringing prevents her from truly questioning Tom’s motives, allowing for her brother to take advantage of Louisa’s love for him by manipulating her into marrying Bounderby for his own gain. As Tom’s requests grow in number and in nature, the two grow further apart. The relationship shared by the two is filled with affection at the beginning of the novel, but Tom’s selfishness tears the relationship apart. He keeps Louisa in the dark regarding the bank robbery and, ultimately, his focus on materialism outweighs his feelings for his sister. Tom’s boredom with his lifestyle leads to radical changes in his attitude. A similar boredom leads James Harthouse to pursue Louisa’s love.
Dickens uses the character of James Harthouse to poke fun at the aristocracy at the time. Harthouse comes to Coketown with the intention of entering the world of politics and embracing Gradgrind’s theory of fact, simply out of boredom with his current life. He is a refined and wealthy gentleman from London, but as the old saying goes, “money doesn’t buy happiness’, leaving Harthouse constantly searching for new ways to amuse himself, Upon hearing about Louisa Gradgrind, he immediately makes it his primary goal to seduce the young woman. Although Louisa is resistant, this makes her even more attractive to him. She is so intriguing to him because of her uniqueness. She represents a new blend of beauty and intelligence, and her knowledge of economics is unparalleled.
By discussing Tom’s gambling debts with Louisa, he exploits one of her main weaknesses her unconditional love for her brother. He merely uses Tom’s predicament to exploit Louisa’s inexperience in interpersonal relationships. Although Harthouse’s pursuit of her helps lead to her eventual break-up with Bounderby, Sissy Jupe saves Louisa from the selfish, controlling Harthouse, when she demands that he leaves Coketown: “He was touched in the cavity where his heart should have been – in that nest of addled eggs, where the birds of heaven would have lived if they had not been whistled away – by the fervor of this reproach”. This passage exemplifies Harthouse’s lack of purpose in life. His great wealth and position as an aristocrat prevents him from every finding true love, as he will simply grow tired of stability. His lack of reluctance in leaving Coketown demonstrates how little Louisa truly means to Harthouse. Harthouse’s pursuit of Louisa is more of a quest for him to pass the time than it is about finding true love. His departure from Coketown reveals the little care he has for the feelings of others, as well as his selfishness and immorality. This is completely contrary to the relationship between Stephen Blackpool and Rachel. individual.
Stephen Blackpool is the quintessential example of a considerate and moral Although he is forced to combat the difficult working conditions and dehumanizing lifestyle of a factory worker during the Industrial Revolution, Stephen maintains his morality and honesty, with the help of Rachel. Stephen’s home, which originally serves as a safe haven from the long working days, is taken over by his alcoholic wife, forcing Blackpool to drift around Coketown. Blackpool’s inability to acquire a divorce from his misery of a wife prevents him from moving away from his past troubles, but Rachel provides him with glimmers of hope and happiness, leading to him calling her his angel. She is the complete opposite of his current wife, displaying qualities of compassion and sensitivity.
The epiphanic moment in the relationship between the two occurs Stephen’s wife from killing herself. Stephen wakes up and sees his wife ready to drink poison; however, he is psychologically unable to get up and prevent her from doing so: “All this time, as if a spell were on him, he was motionless and powerless, except to watch her”. In that moment, Stephen’s frustration and sadness with his life overrides his usual strong morals. The stress his wife places upon him leaves him unable to control his desire to see her deceases or harmed. He is unable to bring himself to stop his wife from committing suicide, yet Rachel is. In doing so, Rachel motivates Stephen to uphold his strong character and honor, despite the hard times.
Rachel cares for his wife and plays a vital role in pushing Stephen to legitimate interests as both a worker and a gentleman. While his fellow workers abandon Stephen due to his beliefs about the union, Rachel supports him until the very end, when he dies essentially for Tom’s crime. Although Stephen’s death allows him to escape from marriage, he leaves Rachel alone and saddened. Rachel is the driving force his dreadful behind Stephen’s actions in the novel and allows him to maintain his true beliefs and morals about work and life. Much as Rachel encourages Stephen to pursue his true beliefs, Sissy Jupe enlightens the Gradgrind family of imagination and thinking.
Sissy Jupe’s impact on the Gradgrind family is the most important relationship in the novel. The strict teachings of Thomas Gradgrind turn the household into one giant machine of fact, whereas Sissy’s upbringing in the circus has allowed for her constant indulgence in imagination. The contrast between Louisa and Sissy in clear; Louisa has been forced to think with her head, while Sissy thinks with her heart. Louisa hasn’t been allowed to be passionate about anything, and her submergence in fact has contained her desire for freedom. Sissy plays a vital role in enabling Louisa to reveal the warm and passionate qualities she has inside of her, despite being brought up in such as cold atmosphere. In fact, Sissy’s romantic way of thinking eventually allows the entire Gradgrind household to realize that there is more to life than merely fact. Thomas Gradgrind is initially disappointed by the circus entertainers and they represent imagination and idealism. These entertainers use their imaginations to find happiness, something that has always been lacking in the Gradgrind household.
She expresses these sentiments to herself , maintain the belief that her father will one day return to her: “O my dear father, my good kind father, where are you gone? You are gone to try to do me some good, I know! You are gone away for my sake, I am sure. And how miserable and helpless you will be without me, poor, poor father, until you come back!” Sissy’s belief that her father has left the circus for her well-being starkly contrasts with Gradgrind’s teaching of fact. That being said, this attitude epitomizes Sissy’s hopeful way of thinking, which eventually brushes off on the Gradgrind household.
Not only does Sissy help Tom find refuge with her old circus entertainers, but she also helps Mrs. Gradgrind recognize the void that has existed forever within their family, the lack of imagination within the household. While Mrs. Gradgrind is unable to clearly express this before her death, she recognizes these qualities in Sissy. Mr. Gradgrind ultimately finds out that his emphasis on fact has denied his family happiness for many years. Gradgrind accepts the fact that his teachings did not produce happiness; therefore, he appoints Sissy to aid in Louisa’s development as an individual. With Sissy’s help, Louisa is on the road to developing the ideal balance of fact and imagination.
To conclude, Dickens’ novel discusses the social impact of the Industrial Revolution and the dehumanization of workers by machines. Much like the repetitive actions involved in working in factories dull the lives of the workers, the teachings of fact prevent characters from reaching their full potential. Louisa’s inability to express herself prevents her from stopping Tom’s exploitation of her love for him. Similarly, Louisa needs Sissy Jupe to send James Harthouse away from Coketown, as her cold upbringing has limited her ability to interact with others. Stephen Blackpool is the best example of an individual who has been dehumanized by the stress and working conditions of being a ‘hand’ during the Industrial Revolution. Only with the help of his so-called angel, Rachel, is he able to maintain his morality and strong values.
While the relationships are often one-sided, the influence that each character has over others is essential in the demise of fact and the rise of critical thinking.
throughout the novel
9. Q. Dickens, as we all know, is utilizing satire to agitate for better conditions in England. To what advantage does Kidderminster serve Dickens’ purpose?
Or,
Q. What do you come to know about the living and working conditions of 19th century London from Dickens’s Hard Times? Discuss illustratively.
Life outside the factories was scarcely better than the Accounts abound of overcrowded and cramped living spaces, the result of low wages and population shift from rural to urban areas. With lack of sanitation is a serious problem, outbreaks of disease were not unusual, especially in manufacturing centers in northern England-location of the fictional Coketown of Hard Times-because they were farther from the regulatory eye of the government in London.
Philosopher Friedrich Engels, before writing The Communist fellow philosopher Karl Marx, published an account of his observations of English factories in 1843. His description of the city of Manchester includes the “irregular cramming together of dwellings in ways which defy all rational plan.” One such cluster of dwellings is described surrounding “a privy without a door, so dirty that the inhabitants can pass into and out of the court only by passing through foul pools of stagnant urine and excrement.”
The rest of his description of Manchester contains similarly stench combined with unsafe and inadequate accommodations. These conditions not only fed Engels’s radical political ideas, but they also led eventually, in the middle of the century, to the formation of more moderate labor unions that aimed to improve wages and conditions working classes. Dickens provides less explicit descriptions of the subpar living factory workers inhabit, but he does present characters such as poor factory worker Stephen Blackpool who offer insight about the human consequences of living in close proximity to such squalor and who make impassioned pleas for improved conditions for himself and his peers.
Charles Dickens knew firsthand the working conditions in the factories England from his time as a 12-year-old in Warren’s boot-blacking factory in London. His account of this time describes the filthy floors, rotting staircases, constant dampness, and swarms of rats. Child labor in factories was common, as impoverished families needed all sources of income in the changed society, and some children worked because they had no families at all.
Dickens’s experience at Warren’s was unpleasant but less hazardous of young laborers who operated machines. Such conditions eventually prompted Parliament to enact regulations in 1833 to limit working hours and improve conditions for children in factories. Nevertheless, for both children and adults, hours remained long, pay low, food scarce, and, despite some regulation, conditions dirty and often unsafe. In Hard Times, Dickens combines his personal experiences with political understanding to criticize the conditions found in 19th-century factories throughout England and Europe.
10. Q. Critics have called Hard Times an allegory. Would you agree with this statement? Prove your response by making direct reference to passages in the novel.
In an 1855 letter to his friend Charles Knight, publisher of London’s Penny Magazine, Dickens focused on the satirical aspect of the recently published Hard Times, “My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else—the representatives of the wickedest and most enormous vice of this time.” As satire Hard Times uses exaggeration and irony to illustrate and criticize serious social, political , and economic problems during the years after industrialization had taken a firm hold in society.
Objects of Dickens’s ridicule include Coketown and the myths that govern life there. He also pokes fun at Mr. Gradgrind’s educational principles and their implementation as well as the exaggerated characterization of Josiah Bounderby-a man whose malice is cloaked by his ridiculous persona. The juxtapositions of downtrodden factory workers with joyful circus performers and oblivious upper classes also become targets of Dickens’s ridicule. Scholars and critics also have recognized Hard Times as one of Dickens’s most scathing social commentaries, in which he confronts the issues of working conditions associated with industrialization, income inequality, frustrations of the working classes, purposes and results of education, and environmental damage.
The negative viewpoint of Dickens concerning the Industrial Revolution which he relied on in the history of England in the 19th century made lots of politicians and socialists hate him. However, “Dickens’s main intention, as Leavis says, was to comment on certain key characteristics of Victorian civilization. He was concerned about the difference… between Fact and Fancy. The purpose of the novel was to emphasize… that… any method of ruling product or affairs that lacks sympathy, love and understanding between human beings – is in the end… bitterly destructive”( Fielding, 132). In this fiction, Dickens gives us a general idea about the lives of farmers and how the life of city influenced them. For example, children of peasants enrolled in schools or educational institutes and educated on facts and nothing else. Their journey to classes became boring. They believed that their Ilves were just like machines at factories. Coketown is the fictional city in which Dickens describes not only the poor people and their suffering, misery and oppression, but also how prosperous individuals lived at exploiting and limiting freedom and independence of the lower social class.
In fact, Hard Times is a realistic novel that depicts how the industrialization in England drastically changed the lives of people. The poor people work 24 hours as machines without getting their independence and rights, and they do not have enough time to care for their children and this of course would leave very negative impact on their lives. We can say that a lot of families suffered psychological problems because of work pressure at factories. On the other hand, the owners of those mills and manufactures live wealthily and peacefully depending on violating the rights of others.
The novel also discusses the disadvantages of smoke which extends all over the cities and would eventually pollute and deform nature. Hard Times is a novel that describes the educational system of schools at the Victorian Age. It explains how teachers teach pupils merely facts and do not give their pupils any opportunity to express their ideas and thoughts. They do not teach them about imagination. The attitude of teachers is very strict and tough. This would influence their lives and they would believe places are just for learning facts like mathematics.
Dickens in his novel Hard Times comments on the difference Teachers have to teach pupils literature and the important role of literary works in the lives of people due to its great impact, Dickens relates the life of undervalued workers and their children at school for instance the owners of mills and factories always try to apply their utilitarian principles at both schools and factories to control the lives of people and want to tell citizens of England that it is very hard and complex to break-up or resolve 3 this crisis. The owners are the controllers of the English life.
Dickens satirizes Victorian education, and he often uses irony and sarcasm in order to attack or uncover what he thinks is immoral or stupid. In the classroom the pupils are taught under a strict order, and the goal of education is to learn facts. The children are not allowed to use their imagination, or “fancy” as their teachers call it, and Gradgrind presents a Utilitarian vision of education that is meant to censor anything that conflicts with the principle of teaching solely facts. Later he acknowledges that this was a failure on his behalf, because Louisa and Tom both become unhappy and fail to succeed in life.
Once when Louisa is in school she converses with her brother, conversation by saying to him that she wonders. She is overheard by her father whose aim in education is that children should not be affected by imagination or feelings. Mr. Gradgrind declares: “By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder”. Mr. M’Choakumchild, the teacher of Gradgrind’s school, is convinced by this theory, and teaches according to this. Dickens uses his name satirically by reflecting on the teacher’s character and actions. He insinuates that he is choking the children to death by his teaching.
Mrs. Gradgrind does not like when her daughter, Louisa, wonders saying to her brother Tom: “I have such unmanageable thoughts, that they will wonder”. Her mother gets angry and says: “Thomas, it is really shameful … that a boy brought up as you have been, should be found encouraging his sister to wonder, when he knows his father has expressly said that she is not to do it”. Mrs. Gradgrind is not in good spirits and says, “I really do wish that I had never had a family, and then you would have known what it was to do without me!” Her husband was frequently away on parliamentary duties, and the upbringing of the children is mainly in her hands, but she does not fulfill her duties sickly woman.
Thus, Hard Times is an 1854 novel by English author Charles Dickens three parts named after a Biblical verse, “Sowing,” “Reaping,” and “Garnering,” it satirizes English society by picking apart the social and economic ironies of its contemporary life. The novel takes place in a fictional industrial town in Northern England called Coketown, modeled partially on Manchester. The novel is best known for its pessimism regarding the state of trade unions and the exploitation of the working class by capitalist elites.
11.Q. Discuss Dickens’s Hard Times as a utilitarian novel.
Utilitarianism at this time became a popular philosophical school of thought among the educated classes. Developed by political economist John Stuart Mill and social reformer Jeremy Bentham, utilitarianism rested on the idea that self-interest drives all human behavior, and one must evaluate actions by their potential to create pleasure rather than pain to the individual. Understanding the facts, rather than the emotional implications or imagined outcomes, of a given situation is essential to such evaluation. On a larger moral scale, goodness also can be evaluated according to the consequences of actions and how much good or evil those consequences might bring to how many people. In this way one can analyze and quantify human behavior in ways that were very new compared with philosophies of the past.
In Hard Times, the utilitarian model led Dickens to satirize and exaggerate both Mr. Bounderby’s and Mr. Gradgrind’s strict reliance on fact and reason to assess situations and make decisions. Mr. Gradgrind, especially, must face the consequences of such extreme pedagogy when he sees emotional barrenness as its result-in Louisa’s passivity and inability to deal with emotion, in Tom’s detached sense of entitlement and rebellion against the lack of amusement, and in Bitzer’s uncompromising rigidity and soullessness in acting only as he was trained to.
For more than one century, dystopian narrative has been a literary genre. Some writers of written dystopian novels believe that this genre of literature can amuse its readers, and also has the ability to cultivate them to make them understand the meaning of the world where they live. The periods of great black looks or the lack of hopes to see the aspects of things far worse which are abridged by wars, arrogance, tyranny and many other happenings have been written by the dystopian novelists. Many critics and writers defined the word dystopia in various ways. This word is associated with the notion of “badness”. It is difficult to define dystopia because every definer has his/her point of view; therefore, it becomes a subjective term in literature.
Actually, dystopia becomes complex and it is associated with fictional works where its definition is narrowed down. In 1868 J. S. Mills used the word dystopia in his political speech in the state of Ireland where he used the word in contrast with the term utopia. In his speech, he roughly criticizes the policy of government on Irish property stating that “What is commonly called Utopian is something too good to be practicable; but what they [the government] appear to favour is too bad to be practicable.” Jan Pospíšil says “by merely coining the word to contrast what had been thus far called Utopia, he delimited its basic concept. On the basis of this speech, the Oxford English Dictionary describes dystopia as “an imaginary place or condition in which everything as bad as possible.” It will be argued that despite the fairly wide development of dystopian literature, the definition of the term does not necessarily need to be more complex than the one proposed by this entry. As it is defined as being the reverse of utopia, the latter term must be elaborated on prior to attempting to define the former. Utopia is a fictional village created by Thomas More in his eponymous book. It represents his concept of an ideal society. More thus created the framework future “utopian” novels”. Dystopia is a combined word which means a bad place. It denotes an imperfect or incomplete thing.
Some writers in literature have used this meaning as an imagined society where everything Dystopia is the corruption of government that does not give its people what they need, require and aspire. It awards its followers what they want just to gain their utilities depending poor or uneducated citizens who do not understand and know laws and political rules that run and organize the lives of people . In literature, the effective and open device to criticize the sociopolitical conditions mirroring on defects, distorting and bad management the imagined and ideal societies could be done by dystopian literature.
The representation of bad and weak places expanding the order is offered by literary dystopia. The hero or heroine in dystopian literature often feels the struggle to liberate or award freedom. Existing inquires about the sociopolitical systems of society are awfully wrong and inaccurate. Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels(1726), Voltaire’s Candide 1759), Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four(1949)and others are the most prominent dystopian literature writers. The writers of dystopian literature believe that destructive and visibility of the future or near-future society can be offered by dystopia.
It is argued that technology might be one of the main into social classes. This would affect the creation of nature that makes it unproductive. Ignorance, insufficiency, overpopulation and capitalism are the most important evils of dystopia. Dickens is the 1. der of dystopian fantasy in English literature. His novel Hard Times is a dystopian reflection of the insufficiency of society in Victorian Age. He gives us a look about how the rich and poor people live in one place and might embrace the same religion but unfortunately they are unequal in rights and freedom. “The life of a population with a rich variety of qualitative distinctions and complex individual descriptions of functioning and impediments to functioning, using a general notion of human need and human functioning in a highly concrete context, it provides the sort of information required to assess the quality of life and involves the reader in the task of making the assessment”. Coketown is a fictional city where Dickens discusses the rules and traditions of capitalism and their utilities in north England. He depicts the very wide gap between social policies and the applied rules in factories. He also challenges those who claim that the increase the development of production would change lives of England.
Dickens strongly utilitarian system of education and the different types of school, he describes teachers and their relationships with the owners of manufactures and how they always try to confirm negatively that the system which has been applied by the capitalism and utilitarianism is the only method that could increase and improve the lives of people of the English nation pupils and students in particular. Utilitarianism in educational system refuses to teach and cultivate the imagination or any imagined subject that deals with fancy and supernatural elements. What they believe is just facts. They argue that life depends on truth and there is no existence to imagination. Some critics think that imagination would destruct and limit the advantage of both utilitarian and capitalist system because they believe that this would fail their plans, ambition, arrogance and pretension. Although the main concern of Dickens’ Victorian era was the Enlightenment-era schism between reason and emotion, disconnection between fact and fancy in the anthology of dystopian literature as well as in Dickens’ works important role.
Fixation facts and exclusion tronstrates the misery that results when children are completely cut off from imagination Nu fancy and subjected to a utilitarian and facts-only education, “Lack of imagination, ancy, and emotion in Dickens’ works leads to standardization and loss of identity”. It is rubiceable in all concerns of the genre of dystopian literature the issue of injustice and corruption in the structures of government and it is perhaps the most pronounced. In many cases, the plot of dystopian novels revolves around the corruption of government and the weakness of the educational system applied in schools. It depicts the suffering of the people and how the flaws and deterioration of the economic system in Victorian Era nad murdered the innocence of children. “George Orwell imagines a society in which the düzens are constantly monitored and controlled by their government which employs propaganda, manipulation, and brainwashing in order to control individual thought and produce desired behavior”.
Dickens, in his two novels(Great Expectations & Hard Times)deals with the legal and economic systems. He thinks that lawyers take bribes instead of exposing truth and achieving it. They are concerned with their private properties and desires. 6 The inequality of social class and the wide gap between the destitution of the poor and the luxury of the rich are the other concern of Dickens. What is meant in this concern is to reflect the realistic facts of his society and to resolve these crises by building new society relying on justice, helping each other, rights and independence. Dickens illustrates the symbols of ash and fire in Hard Times. He always tries to bridge the wide gap between luxury rich and indigence of poor people in which they are unequal. Undoubtedly, Dickens refuses the ideas of bourgeois or the beneficiaries of applying these economic systems and rules. Some scientists and critics believe that laws and ideas of bourgeois might consist of virtues according to the religion they embrace and the religious men they follow.
Gradgrind is a Utilitarian theorist and his philosophy as such is that human nature can be governed by rules. He had been in the hardware trade before he became a member of Parliament, and now he is a schoolmaster at his private school in Coketown. His philosophy of facts and fancy, however, changes significantly during the course of the novel.
Utilitarianism was a method to govern society – life should be lived according to logic and facts, not intuition or feelings. Utilitarianism is a theory on actions that are clear cut, and which dictates that people decide on what is of the greatest utility for them but in Hard Times “Dickens gives the lie to the Utilitarian principle that pursuit of individual fortune benefits society as a whole”.
12. Q. What sort of fact and fancy can you notice in Hard Times? Discuss critically.
By writing the novel Hard Times for the ordinary people, Dickens discusses in a way abasement, indignity, maltreatment and negative effects of the Industrial Revolution, generally in Europe and England in particular. He recognizes that his society needs to read books, stories, and essays which include imagination and fancy and not only relying on facts. Theatre and circus are the two places which supply people with imaginative and fantastic pictures. Dickens thinks that life is not just about facts but there is more in life. Society , in Hard Times, is classified into two different distinctions: the owners of factories and the undervalued workers in the Victorian Age. The novel is about three parts, the first part is concemed with sowing. The second is about reaping and the last one is about gathering or garnering. These names are referring to the Bible. “What you sow you reap and then you harvest . Hard Times is about what you harvest when using only facts. Facts are a symbol of something that is unchangeable and fancy is something that is changeable in people’s imagination and mind. Dickens maintain in his novel that fact and fancy must work together, so the individual can succeed in life, and become a healthy human being”. city(Coketown).
The events of Hard Times take their place in a fictional for the ordinary and poor people who were treated as animals. The meaning of the city refers to coal that was used to power factories during the Industrial Revolution. Coketown is a city of pollution. It can be described as follows: “it was a town of red brick, or brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood It was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage”. Workers do not get their true wages. They are obliged to work for long hours to cover their basic needs in order to live. This is the fact that Dickens always displays in his writings. He concentrates on one thing that all human beings are equal in their rights and responsibilities. He describes this fact in Hard Times:” the measured motion of their shadows on the walls, was the substitute Coketown had to show for the shadows of rustling woods; while, for summer hum of insects, it could offer, all the year around, from the dawn of Monday to the night of Saturday, the whirr of shafts and wheels”.
Before 1857 divorce was possible in England only by an act of Bounderby tells Stephen Blackpool in Hard Times, divorce involved petitioning lower courts as part of the process of bringing the case before Parliament. Costs were prohibitively high, so divorce was reserved for only the wealthy. For the most part only men could seek a divorce and only on the grounds of adultery. Wives could seek a divorce only if they could prove adultery in addition to extreme cruelty, and if a woman left her husband, she could legally compelled to return to him.
In 1857 Parliament passed the Matrimonial Causes Act, which moved divorce from Parliament to a special court. This act may have marginally reduced the cost of divorce, but little else has changed. Adultery remained the only grounds for divorce, but wives no longer had to prove life-threatening cruelty as additional grounds. This meant many people living in permanent conditions of unhappiness and estrangement had no is about recourse. Hard Times is a novel concerning the difference between fact and fancy. It decay and abasement of undervalued workers and their families who work 24 hours without taking their rights and independence. Hard Times is a revolt against the Industrial Revolution in the Victorian Age. Dickens in his writings especially Hard Times, studies the social, economic and political issues of people and their government. He realizes that life is not just a fact running society relying on the economic processes as Mr. Gradgrind did with his pupils and his family. He always relates his teaching with what the capitalistic owners of mills and factories wish merely to build very big wealth and flourish.
This literary work does not merely inspire readers and particularly the but it also presents and proves that Dickens is interested in politics and social affairs of people especially in England. The novel covers the lives of both lower and middle classes who suffered oppression and poverty. One of the most important purposes of Dickens in writing his novel Hard Times is to comment on the faults and mistakes of inventing machines which pollute and decrease the quality of the natural and mineral sources. Also, it aims at discussing the violating and exploiting by the manufacturers.
13. Q. Discuss how Dickens has represented the concept and spirit of time in his novel Hard Times.
If we ask ourselves where Time originates, or where peoples’ need of counting it comes from, we may find the answer very unsatisfying, if we conclude anything at all. The Encyclopaedia Britannica offers the following explanation: The irreversible and inexorability of the passage of time is borne in on human beings by the fact of death. Unlike other living creatures, they know that their lives may be cut short at any moment and that […] their growth is bound to be followed by eventual decay and, in due time, death (Encyclopaedia Britannica)
When considering this assertion it is possible to draw the inference that since time goes from birth to death it has a sort of direction with a beginning and an end. Hence, we count time from the emergence of one alteration to the next and thereby establish a system of measurement through which we view our own lives. For that reason, time is measured by clocks, almanacs, recognized as the periods of famous peoples’ lives or even periods in which a certain ‘ism’1 dominates human life and culture. Subsequently, our value of time, and how we view our time, is closely related to our understanding of life and the whole reality that surrounds us.
Our experience of time may be linear, whereas some people possess the belief that time is cyclic (e.g. the Buddhists conviction in reincarnation and the rebirth of the soul). The same article from Encyclopaedia Britannica also suggests that this faith in life’s repetitiveness is an adoption from the repetition which can be observed in the seasons. However, it furthermore states that: The day-and-night cycle and the annual cycle of the seasons dominated the conduct of human life until the recent harnessing of inanimate physical forces in the Industrial Revolution made it possible for work to be carried on for 24 hours a day throughout the year […].
Consequently, the Industrial Revolution and its technical developments had considerable impact upon human life and conduct, and therefore also people’s awareness of time and comprehension of it. It seems that Dickens bears this in mind and employs the industrial ‘mechanisation’ of time in Hard Times when he writes about The Gradgrinds, Mr Bounderby and the other characters. In the section entitled “The Study”, we will look closer at how mechanisation affects them.
According to Bernt Gustavsson, who is a Swedish historian of ideas, a conception of the world is defined as a dominating perception of mankind, society and nature in a certain epoch. He asserts that conceptions of the world contain thoughts as well as human labour and fundamental moral principles; in other words, everything that influences our own comprehension of the world and how we put it into order so that we may understand it better. conceptions.
There also seems to be mainly two different kinds of world identifies them as either mechanical or organic. Before the industrial revolution brought about a more mechanized perception of the world (and with it the widespread social, economical and, above all, technological changes) the organic epoch made people experience everything as a growing wholeness to a much greater degree and where everything had its natural given place in relation to everything else. Even mankind and its societies were a link in the chain which this organic conception was composed of. However, the mechanical conception of the world had its’ major breakthrough during the 19th century when an outlook arose, mainly from the philosopher Auguste Comte, which we today call positivism. With the modern natural sciences man could now through precise observations and phenomena and convert theoretical thinking experimentation make predictions about natural into practical techniques. The thought is therefore to have man settle his reasoning and doings according to scientific certainty and useful knowledge. Through this, a new moral was believed to emerge as well as a new society. Three main ideas are possible to make out from this world conception according to Gustavsson: the methods by the natural sciences are models to other sciences and the pattern for all other knowledge, true knowledge is based on experience and constitute facts, and lastly, nature and society are regulated by law · when man understands these laws, mankind can control nature’s and the society’s development. it. Mankind was from resources These ideas changed the way we regard nature and understand now on more obviously distinguished from nature by the conviction that nature needed to be controlled; an understanding which thereby came to mechanize nature itself. As stated above, previous to the dominance of the mechanical conception of the world mankind’s overall understanding was more organic or “natural” and was signified by the belief that everything somehow was connected and that existence was a living wholeness. of the world which existed before the birth Gustavsson writes that: In the conception of the natural sciences everything was highly governed by a purpose. The world is very much to the purpose, everything has a purpose and a meaning. [….] The new natural sciences do not have room for explanations about such things as purpose and meaning. The 9 explanations about purpose disappeared with the new natural science. It is only supposed to describe the laws with which nature functions. These laws are mechanical in the sense that they always follow a prescribed course, they always apply and are applicable are universal. now is mechanical everywhere, they Thus, the world has not changed after having been natural and whereas the way in which mankind regards it has. When we disassemble everything (and categorize it in various ways) to find out how it works we understand its construction and therefore also obtain true knowledge. By taking the world apart in order to see the function of each part we leave the perspective of wholeness behind and do not regard our world as a connected pattern. Instead we explain each happening or reaction with another, all according to strict natural laws. In the same spirit Hard Times begins its story. At the veginning of the novel we are immediately confronted by the importance of exactness and definable approaches which then continues as a connecting thought throughout the story.
14. Q. Consider Dickens’s Hard Times as a realistic novel.
Although we can’t say that this novel contains a complete analysis on capitalism as a system, the writer captures very well the main conflict of his time, that conflict between the rich and the poor. The action takes place in a symbolic town named Coketown, which looks similar with other industrial towns of England of the last century. The town’s streets and houses are built after the one principle of uses that they can bring. Dickens’ symbolism takes such forms as Coketown being a brick jungle, strangled in sameness and smoke, the belching factories as elephants in this jungle, the smoke as treacherous snakes, and the children as little ‘vessels’ which must be filled.
With the description of the town and also of the people is emphasized the principle of utilitarianism. There is first presented in the book called ‘Sowing the main character, named Thomas Gradgrind, ‘a man of facts and calculations’ , who guides himself by the principles of reason. His life is about numbers and percentages and he thinks that everything has a price, even the feelings. He describes him as an eminently practical man and he tries to raise his children to be equally practical by forbidding the development of their imaginations and emotions. All these things lead to the dehumanization of human beings, for example we have the case of Thomas junior, who robs the bank, but blames Stephen Blackpool. Like his sister, he was educated in the cult and in the spirit of giving up dreams and fantasies. The same thing happens to Bitzer, the favourite student of Gradgrind, if we analyze his behaviour that he has especially when he wants to catch Tom.
Another case of dehumanization is represented by the scene when Gradgrind advises his daughter to marry old Bounderby, despite the difference of age. Despite the utilitarian education, Louisa learns with time the feeling that her father feared the most, namely the hatred and she understood the meaning of love. She realized how immature she was when she accepted to marry Bounderby. Also Gradgrind discovers paternal love.
The logic of the entire work contradicts the whole philosophy and views of British formality. And the point of view of British officials is presented in the novel by Bounderby, a ruthless, but very rich man. It has various functions, among which we mention the function of banker and merchant. Although he is Mr. Gradgrind’s best friend, Josiah Bounderby is more interested in money and power than in facts. Indeed, he is himself a fiction, or a fraud. Bounderby’s attitude represents the social changes created by industrialization and capitalism. Whereas birth or bloodline formerly determined the social hierarchy, in an industrialized, capitalist society, wealth determines who holds the most power. Thus, Bounderby takes great delight in the fact that Mrs. Sparsit, an aristocrat who has fallen on hard times, has become his servant, while his own ambition has enabled him to rise from humble beginnings to become the wealthy owner of a factory and nation was divided by Dickens into different classes with their own ideas, habits and their own moral and political principles. Representative of the aristocracy are Mrs. Sparsit and James Harthouse. Mrs. Sparsit fell on hard times after the collapse of her marriage. She is a thruster, selfish and dishonest woman who hopes that she will marry Bounderby. Mrs. Sparsit’s aristocratic background is emphasized by the narrator’s frequent allusions to her ‘Roman’ and ‘Coriolanian’ appearance. The second face of aristocracy is represented by James Harthouse, a young man who comes to Coketown because he is bored with life and he is employed to advance the interests of a political a bank. The working class is represented by the Hands’, one of those being Stephen Blackpool simple and honest man. He is the only Hand who refuses to join a workers’ union: he believes that striking is not the best way to improve relations between factory owners and employees, and he also wants to earn an honest living. As a result, he is cast out of the workers’ group. However, he also refuses to spy on his fellow workers for Bounderby, who consequently sends him away.
Both groups, rich and poor, respond in the same self-interested, backstabbing Rachael explains, Stephen ends up with the ‘masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he only wantin’ to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right. Through Stephen, Dickens suggests that industrialization threatens to compromise both the employee and employer’s moral integrity, thereby creating a social muddle to which there is no easy solution. Through his efforts to resist the moral corruption on all sides, becomes a martyr, or Christ figure, ultimately dying for Tom’s crime.
We also see the chartist meeting, which is a good opportunity for Dickens to his feelings of sympathy towards the workers, who are courageous people, eager for justice. Despite the difficult conditions they live in, work can not knock them and they are determined to assert their rights, thus starting the fight against the oppressors. Another social group is represented by circus artists, people who claim to avoid the philosophy of ‘fact. Their view about life is different than seeing it around the money. They like poetry, music and also love to enjoy the people.
A portrait which falls into this category is the portrait of Sissy characters who enjoyed a bright environment. Despite having lived a difficult life, because her mother died in childbirth and her father abandoned her Sissy has not lost faith and she wanted to be friends with Louisa because she said she was smarter.
The novel is packed with details, some insignificant, thus creating pure reality. We meet the deploying educational system because students can not express their imagination and they have to say only what they have been taught. There are also mentioned in the novel constitutional acts, which are of great importance for the Victorian age, such as the ‘Magna Charta Libertatum’, iHabes Corpustore’ both having a major importance to England. In the second book is revealed Tom’s character; despite the constraints, which he has to undergo from his own father, he becomes unable to live his own life. He is the one who tells James Harthouse that his sister does not love old Bounderby, and he is the one who really convinced her to marry the old man , not their dad. bank, thus progressing was smart.
Due to their marriage, Tom managed to get a job at the old man’s in terms of material status. At the time when the bank is robbed, everyone knows who the culprit is, so that their imagination gets a fabulous side, some thinking that even the old woman, who comes riding on a broom, may be capable of stealing from the bank. ‘Hard Times’ perfectly fits to the Victorianism, due to the aspect of the educational system falling apart and the industrial town. revolves around money), which is The novel is based on utilitarianism and materialism (everything events are based on facts. The education of the children was made in a conventional way. Unfortunately the traditions have been replaced by unemployment, pollution and greed. Another fact from the novel was the presence of Sissy Jupe, the orphan child. In the novel the Victorian Age is represented by the impression of continuity and stability, everything looked good but it was bad. ‘Hard times ‘ is a realistic novel and we meet complex characters such as Bounderby and Gradgrind and Sissy Jupe. They are victims of the rude times, being results of factors like industrialization, lack of money and the educational system.
15.Q. Critically appreciate the realistic novel of Dickens, Hard Times.
Hard Times is an 1854 novel by English author Charles Dickens. Taking place in three parts named after a Biblical verse, “Sowing,” “Reaping,” and “Garnering,” it satirizes English Society by picking apart the social and economic ironies of its contemporary life. The novel takes place in a fictional industrial town in Northern England called Coketown, modeled partially on Manchester. The novel is best known for its pessimism regarding the state of trade unions and the exploitation of the working class by capitalist elites.
Book 1, “Sowing,” begins from the point of view of school superintendent Mr. Gradgrind. An exacting educator, he interrogates a student named Sissy, revealing his inclination to punish students who are unable to speak strictly in facts. His two sons are named after famous thinkers, Malthus and Adam Smith, and his daughter is named Jane. Gradgrind’s friend Josiah Bounderby is a rich mill owner who constantly reflects on the fruits of his difficult childhood and unshakable entrepreneurial spirit. The two convene and decide to expel Sissy because they think she is disrupting the school. However, they learn that her father has orphaned her in the belief that she might lead a better life without his influence. Mr. Gradgrind offers Sissy, who wants to join the circus, a chance to return to school to work for his wife. She decides on school in the hope that she will find her father again.
Other characters important to the novel include Stephen Blackpool, a mill worker who struggles with a marriage to an alcoholic wife whom he cannot leave; and Mrs. Sparsit, the assistant to Bounderby who rebuffs Blackpool’s appeal to Gradgrind for advice. Louisa is proposed to by Bounderby and ambivalently accepts. Her brother Tom arrives to say farewell as she leaves for Lyon.
“Reaping” begins at Bounderby’s bank in the middle of Coketown. One of Sissy’s classmates, Bitzer, has teamed up with Mrs. Sparsit to watch over it after dark. A man appears and asks for the way to Bounderby’s, claiming he has come from London at the request of Gradgrind. He introduces himself as James Harthouse. Harthouse meets Bounderby who tries to impress him with absurd stories about his youth, boring him. However, he is infatuated with Louisa, whose brother Tom now works under Bounderby.
Louisa and Tom meet Blackpool, giving him pity money, while Tom asks him to meet him at the bank after his shift. As he does, a robbery occurs in the bank; Blackpool is accused of being the criminal. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sparsit is suspicious of the relationship between Louisa and Harthouse, believing it is adulterous. She follows Louisa on her way to her father’s home but loses her. Louisa faints at her father’s doorstep after an incoherent statement about her repressed emotions.
“Garnering” begins at Bounderby’s London hotel. Mrs. mistaken finding that Louisa and Harthouse are lovers, Bounderby goes with her to Louisa’s residence at Stone Lodge, where Gradgrind insists that Louisa is not in love with Harthouse, and had merely fainted after a personal crisis. Bounderby grows angry with Mrs. Sparsit , delivering an ultimatum that Louisa return immediately lest he calls off the marriage.
One Sunday, Sissy and Rachael come upon Stephen it on the way to Coketown. A group of locals pulls him out, but he dies after stating his innocence. The two women now suspect Tom of robbing the bank and framing Stephen. Sissy regrets having helped Tom escape to the circus. They go there and find him wearing blackface. Gradgrind appears, working with the circus owner, Sleary, to help Tom escape to Liverpool, from where he will leave the country, Blitzer valiantly arrives, throwing off the to arrest Tom, inadvertently allowing Tom to escape. many mistakes. The trapped in plot in an attempt At the end of the novel, Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit for her narrator projects into the characters’ future lives, stating that Bounderby will die on the streets of an unknown affliction. Mr. Gradgrind will become a political outcast, Tom will perish in America after apologizing to Louisa. Louisa never married again; she will live a life of charity and kindness, and will have a happy and imaginative life with Sissy’s children. Hard Times, though almost all of its many characters face despair, suggests that the deeply affect even the distant future of their lives. Hard Times, but actions of individuals Many themes can be argued to constitute or be found in the novel one is fundamentally more important for the others to exist. The theme which makes it possible to find other themes to be appalling in the novel, such as e.g. capitalism, industrialism, upbringing etc. (because of the way in which the subjects are carried out and understood by the characters) is the understanding of the concept of time. The underlying theme is the understanding of how we want to appreciate and understand time and life. The time theme is, as has been shown in this essay, operating on two levels in Hard Times: the descriptive setting and the portrayal of characters.
The hypothesis of this essay, as stated in the mechanical and natural time perceptions and descriptions in the novel in order to express his disapproval for the industrial society, and does so by contrasting natural and mechanical time through characters and settings. By keeping the natural view of time/understanding of it repressed and thereby forcing the humane and natural tendencies to struggle for their , the more evidently they will be acknowledged and worth greater force. The struggle between nature and mechanics is shown by always being dominated by the industrial outline whereas the green nature is almost non-existent. Even when nature occasionally shines through the smoke and industrial surroundings it is littered with industrial undertones and influences. The setting of the travelling circus is the only one which could be argued not to be repressed in any way, merely surrounded by the mechanical system of Coketown, and a true safe haven for nature. Although the circus is looked down on by Mr Gradgrind and Mr Bounderby it becomes a hiding-place for young Tom when he tries to avoid his penalty for robbing the Dank. Therefore, in the end, the circus entertainers could be argued to “triumph” when Mr Gradgrind needs them to hide his son, although he never before wanted to have anything to do with them. The circus-entertainers on the other hand never needed anything from the Coketown-system whereas Mr Gradgrind is grateful for their compassionate help.
The corresponding struggle between nature and mechanics in the portrayal of characters is principally provided by Mr Gradgrind, Mr Bounderby, Cecilia Jupe and Louisa Gradgrind. The character of Mr Bounderby is one of the most dominant and mechanized individuals in the novel, as shown above, and plays a big role in it. He could be viewed as the focal point for all the negative and destructive influences the industrialized Coketown has on its citizens since he only wants to express mechanical attitudes when these benefit his own selfishness.
The difference, then, between Mr Bounderby’s and his friend Mr Gradgrind’s mechanization, is that Mr Gradgrind does not embrace the mechanized values or calculative reasoning only when it suits his purposes, but is, in himself , a true product of the system (the mechanical or calculative system which is a reflection of the industrialized society). He truly believes that the truth can be found exclusively in facts. The facts are in turn made up of statistics which are based on exact measurements and calculations. Not only does Mr Gradgrind believes in the system which he advocates and brings up his own children, but, contrarily to Mr Bounderby, he is also concerned with others than himself (e.g. his children). His conviction is not sustained by selfishness as it is in Mr Bounderby but by the belief that it is the right way to do things.
*****************************************************
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickenshard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens hard times by charles dickens
Thnku sir for all this question n answer .. it’s help alot