Dickens becomes a very hard author to read once you move past his childhood-centered works. Suddenly, everything is about morality or politics. I enjoy his writing, but you do need both patience and an ability to change the register in which you're reading his work. "Hard Times" was first published in 1854 - few readers of contemporary or modern literature can truly adjust to the sort of language used in his books.

Dickens is truly timeless, timeless through his themes and approach, as well as through his penmanship. Much like Dostoyevsky, his reign is absolute because he was a pioneer of in-depth, character-focused literature, where human beings are portrayed in so much detail and their minds are split open for the reader to look inside them, that by the end of the book the reader is as much a part of their world as they are.

"Hard Times" is actually the author's shortest book and it is a commentary on utilitarianism (as proposed by Jeremy Bentham), a notion that I'm very familiar with, having studied it as part of my degree. I was pleasantly surprised to find the subtle hints and jokes played on contemporary figures or their theories (such as Adam Smith or Thomas Malthus).

“Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them.”

So begins Hard Times, and what an opening this is! We know instantly from this, some of what the novel will be about, and the character of the man who says these words. He is plain-speaking in his “inflexible, dry, and dictatorial” voice, direct and committed to his extreme view of teaching as instruction. His name is Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, “an eminently practical man”, and he has an ailing wife, and five children called Louisa, Tom, Jane - and revealingly - Adam Smith and Malthus. He has a misguided idea of Utilitarianism as a ideal in all things, only valuing facts and statistics, and ruthlessly suppressing the imaginative sides of his children's nature.

Mr. Gradgrind also has a close friend, a banker and mill owner, Josiah Bounderby, who boasts that he is a self-made man, proud that he raised himself in the streets after being abandoned as a child - and in the meantime never letting anyone forget it. Whereas both men express the same hardnosed views, Josiah Bounderby is a very different sort of man, a blustering, arrogant and hypocritical man,

“A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility”.

“'We have never had any difficulty with you, and you have never been one of the unreasonable ones. You don't expect to be set up in a coach and six, and to be fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon, as a good many of 'em do!' Mr. Bounderby always represented this to be the sole, immediate, and direct object of any Hand who was not entirely satisfied.”

Hard Times is an unusual novel for Dickens, in that it is set in a Lancashire mill town in the North of England, and deals with the working conditions of the “hands” or workers there. This is not Dickens's familiar geographical area, nor is this novel his best accomplishment by a long way. Yet the novel is now a bestseller, and often the first one people read, or study at school, because it is his shortest novel.

What prompted Dickens's sudden interest, was a twenty-three week long mill workers' strike in Preston, which Dickens had gone to see in January 1854, prior to writing about it in his periodical “Household Words”. He based his invented grimy, soot-besmirched “Coketown” on Preston. There are fewer descriptive passages than usual in this short novel, but the depressed gloom of Coketown is very effectively conveyed,

“It was a town of red brick, or of 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. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.”

In principle Dickens was very interested in this area of workers' conditions and the resultant protests. He had touched on working class unrest in “Barnaby Rudge”, and had intended to write about factories in “Nicholas Nickleby”, although both of these are far longer and more powerful novels. The article he wrote in “Household Words” after his visit, says,

“... into the relations between employers and employed ... there must enter something of feeling and sentiment ... mutual explanation, forbearance and consideration ... otherwise those relations are wrong and rotten to the core and will otherwise never bear sound fruit.”

Dickens firmly believed that every individual should have dignity and be accorded respect. Unfortunately though, the part of the “Preston Workers' Bill” that he went on to quote, presents itself as a standard Marxist theory of labour value, mentioning the “gold which is now being used to crush those who created it.” This simply went too far, and alienated his readers. The novel was not then very popular; indeed all such criticisms of the upcoming Industrial Revolution were frowned on. Looking backwards was not the way. The popular belief was that rich rewards were in store, rapid progress was assured, and that mechanisation would provide a panacea for all. Only in retrospect can we put Hard Times in context, and see what the author was trying to achieve in this specific short period of history, and also appreciate the many other aspects of the story, which were somewhat overshadowed by this unpopular message.

For Dickens was keen to illustrate his beliefs with this, his tenth novel, published in weekly parts between April and August 1854. He also, perhaps unwisely, widened his remit to include another issue of social reform close to his heart, that of Education. His earlier novels had become increasingly complex, dealing with multiple issues and with many intertwining plots, subplots and mysteries, culminating in the masterly “Bleak House”. However, with Hard Times, he seems to have misjudged the scope slightly. To write a searing indictment of Utilitarianism as currently practised, to damn both employment conditions and industrial action, plus condemning a theoretical Utiliarianism put into practice in schools, and to then put the whole into an entertaining framework with a dash of comedy and romance, was simply overambitious.

Sales of “Household Words” had been flagging, and Dickens attempted to boost these by issuing his new serial in weekly parts, instead of monthly parts, as hitherto. This was alongside all the other activities in his life: editing, directing, acting, his social work and speaking, plus all the domestic dramas he had. Dickens worked best under pressure, but even he admitted that to write episodes of Hard Times week after week was “crushing”. Dickens was a novelist, albeit an exceptionally talented novelist, and one of the first, but he was neither a philosopher nor a political economist - and certainly not a revolutionary. He was also aware that for the large part, his readers would have no truck with unionism. He had set himself a well-nigh impossible task.

Dickens rallied for the underdog, and was keen to demonstrate the continuing inhumane conditions for the poor, and the new sort of constraints that industrialisation would bring in its wake for the workers. But the way he depicts the "good" workers in this novel, Stephen Blackpool and Rachael, shows that his belief was in a sort of "noble poor". He thought they should accept their lot with dignity, and leave it to others to improve their conditions. They are docile and harmless characters, working themselves to death. When difficulties arise, they cannot be self-sufficient. They have no honourable alternative but to go cap in hand to their bosses, relying on a paternalistic system to help them. They thus come across sometimes as mere mouthpieces for ideologies; rather flat and unconvincing prototypes compared with the other characters in the book.

Even if Dickens had had the time and space to develop this novel into the sort of Dickens novel which reigns supreme, it is doubtful whether it would serve the function he probably intended. What it does do, is give a snapshot of people, rather than depict a mass movement. We have individuals to represent the different types, and in Hard Times they unfortunately seem more than ever mere constructs to spout certain opinions. This is probably always going to be a danger with any persuasive novel. Dickens also provided a counterweight to these "noble poor" characters. Just as in “Barnaby Rudge” he had shown us that mob rule was not the answer, here too the organisers of the strike are shown as underhand manipulators, quick to remove themselves from any blame. Slackbridge, the trade union agitator trying to convert the workers to unionism, is described as,

“not so honest ... not so manly, he was not so good-humoured; he substituted cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe solid sense.”

Mr. Gradgrind's school, just as Josiah Bounderby's mill, is equally constrained, based on ideology, dry theory and a sort of blinkered ignorance of the emotional side of life. Thomas Gradgrind, supported by the wonderfully named schoolmaster “Mr. M'Choakumchild”, is not an evil, nor even an unkind man. He is contrasted with Josiah Bounderby right at the start, and Dickens makes it plain in his introduction that a large part of the novel will be to show the growth and development of Gradgrind's character. I certainly felt very sorry for him by the end.

It has to be said, that flawed though this novel is, the characters are an absolute delight. Chief for sheer entertainment value has to be Mrs. Sparsit, Josiah Bounderby's elderly housekeeper with her “Coriolanian style of nose” (which is always poking into other people's business) and “dense black eyebrows”. She has aristocratic connections by way of her great aunt Lady Scadgers, and considers herself a cut above her employer. Her interactions with the blustering, pompous Josiah Bounderby, are a constant source of amusement. There is the pantomime villain, James Harthouse, an exaggerated version of Steerforth in “David Copperfield”. I could almost imagine him twirling his moustache, smooth-talking devil that he is; a heartless and unprincipled young politician. There is the anaemic fact-spouting machine Bitzer. And Mrs. Gradgrind, a minor character, amusingly endearing, always telling her children they should be studying their “ologies”,

“A little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic without any effect, and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her;”

Most memorably, when asked if she is in pain, she remarks vaguely,

“I think there's a pain somewhere in the room ... but I couldn't positively say that I have got it”.

There is the lisping Mr. Sleary and his travelling circus. Dickens always has to include a theatrical troupe, or some entertainers of this type in his novels, and his personal love of the exuberance and spontaneity of the circus, and the generosity of spirit of circus folk, shines through brightly. When Sleary lisps, “people mutht be amuthed” it is really Dickens who is speaking. Dickens held passionate views on the rights of everyone to amusements; fighting against groups who advocated strict observance of the Sabbath, saying that Sunday was the only day that working people had to indulge in simple amusements, or even to attend museums and so forth. To make a circus an integral part of the serious concerns of this novel's plot is quite a tour de force, but he achieves it. Mr. Sleary's circus is essential to both the beginning, where we are introduced to Louisa and Tom peeping under the curtain of the circus tent, intrigued by all the unfamiliar lights, drama, colour and action, and to the ending ... which, naturally, I shall not divulge.

Louisa and Tom, sister and brother, are central characters. Louisa would do anything for her brother, “The Whelp”, as Dickens calls him. She loves Tom dearly, sullen though he is. Louisa develops through experience, much as her father does; she is a very strong character, whose initial sulkiness changes. She has determination and obstinacy, but also a strong sense of duty and justice. Through the story she moves through both indifference to her plight, and cynicism. She undergoes trials and tribulations which might break any young spirit, but remains true to herself. For those who (unfairly) castigate Dickens for docile females, look to Louisa - or her friend Sissy Jupe, from the circus. Or to Mrs. Sparsit, of course, although she is more of a grotesque than an heroic character. No, in every single novel Dickens writes, he provides us with plenty of strong females. It is clear however, that just as he does not like the poor to be too outspoken, he admires the quieter tenaciousness of women in extremis, and views this as an admirable female trait.

Interestingly, at the time of writing this novel, Dickens's own marriage was crumbling. He had included three essays on divorce in “Household Words” that month, and in Hard Times he portrays the plight of a man who is unable to divorce his burdensome wife, even though in this case she is “a drunk”, a hopeless wretched addict. It is Josiah Bounderby who explains in great detail everything that would be involved in such a procedure,

“Why you'd have to go to Doctors' Commons with a suit, and you'd have to go to a Court of Common Law with a suit, and you'd have to get an Act of Parliament to enable you to marry again, and it would cost you ... I suppose from a thousand to fifteen hunded pound ... perhaps twice the money.”

The character he is speaking to earns a mere few shillings a week. But it seems pertinent that Dickens inserted this detail. Dickens researched his novels quite well, reading a book on the Lancashire dialect prior to writing this, for instance, to make sure his representation of the characters' speech was accurate. Divorce was expensive, legally difficult, and socially unacceptable in the 19th century. It looks as though Dickens underwent intensive research on how to obtain a divorce, to see if it would be feasible for himself. In fact he separated from Catherine, with whom he had ten children, four years later in 1858, but never did divorce her.

There are fewer characters in this novel than usual, and none of them seem to be based on real people Dickens knew, and whom his readers knew. In earlier novels there were often several of these in one novel. It must have been a guilty pleasure for many reading a new serial by Dickens, to look out for a recognisable character, such as his erstwhile friend Hans Christian Andersen, whom he had maliciously immortalised in the odious character of Uriah Heep in “David Copperfield”. So it is quite disappointing to find none included, just as it is disappointing to realise that any illustrations were drawn later on, by various artists, and only a very few within Dickens's own lifetime. Presumably the constraints of writing to a weekly deadline impinged on more than the novel's text itself.

The critics' views of Hard Times lurch from one extreme to the other. One characterises it as “sullen socialism”; yet another's view is that it is his “masterpiece” and “his only serious work of art”. These views seem to be rather partisan, reflecting the political and socio-economic views of the individual, rather than impartially judging any merit in, or assessment of, the novel itself. It is undoubtedly not his best work, but it is enjoyable nevertheless. Parts of it made me laugh out loud; I felt suitably shocked, saddened and indignant at others. It has all Dickens's sarcasm, wit, expostulation, sentiment and ridiculous cameos. He can shift in a page-turn from scathing satire to heart-rending pathos. In a way Hard Times is a throwback. It is dissimilar to the majestic novels which immediately precede it, but is more reminiscent of the biting sarcasm of the early novels such as “Oliver Twist”. It does however show the maturity and skill of the later writer. There is tragedy, frailty, robbery, treachery, deceit, impersonation, violence, greed, overarching ambition, possibly an attempted murder, imprisonment and deportation; all humanity and inhumanity is here.

And what lingers is the message of the vital and enduring importance of the imagination and fantasy; of a young life perilously close to being blighted by an upbringing blinkered by Utilitarian principles. There is the satisfactory ending, characteristic of Dickens's novels, where all the characters are accounted for, and in general (although not in every case) the villains get their just desserts.

Hard Times is like a little taste of Dickens. Sadly you do not get the depth of character, the richness of detail in his powerful descriptions, both of place and character, nor do you get the rich tapestry of convoluted plots. Another critic wrote that it is more like “a menu card for a meal rather than one of Dickens's rich feasts,” and this I find quite apt.

But it is hugely enjoyable and could not be written by anyone else. Give it a try, but if it is your first Dickens, please make sure it is not the only one. You would miss out on so much.

“'How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here? ' said Louisa as she touched her heart.”

literature as social critique

Dickens knew well the dark, satanic mills of 19th century England. Besides being great stories, many of his novels slammed the downside of the industrial revolution that had made England the dominant world power of his times. In a way, I would say that this atmosphere and the people created by those times are the main character in HARD TIMES rather than any one of the individuals depicted. Not having read so many of Dickens' novels, I can hardly qualify as an expert, but I would say that this one is not among his best. In unforgettable scenes (surrounded with lush verbiage), he exposes the shallow soullessness of education at the time,, the arrogance of the rich, and the plight of the poor, not forgetting the crude bombast of the labor organizers. Father-daughter relationships rate highly, marital ones much less so. The good remain high-minded, loyal, and self-sacrificing while the bad are exposed for what they are. The vain, philistine Mr. Bounderby, an exploiter with perfect nouveau riche attitudes, (and apt name) is by far the most vivid character, even if you get sick of him right off. The "good guys"---Stephen Blackpool, Rachael, "Sissy" Jupe, Louisa Gradgrind, and ultimately, her father---are not as interesting as the more shady ones. To tell the story, with all its ins and outs, its turns of the screw, would be superfluous. If you ever liked Dickens, you'll probably enjoy this one too, but if you want a real classic, I suggest "Bleak House", "Great Expectations", or "Oliver Twist", much better than the present volume in my opinion. While Dickens never fails to put in his digs at the injustices and pretenses of society, literature still needs a solid story. This one is a bit frail, but worthwhile all the same.

Alright, so I was quite prejudiced going into this. I read and disliked A Christmas Carol and in my head I feel like I'm not a Dickens fan. Despite this being the first novel of his I've tried. It's his shortest finished book and depicts the social structures of the time, which I'm interested in reading. So it made sense to start here.

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised. I didn't like all of the characters and at times I was frustrated with the plot, but I enjoyed listening to it on audiobook and wanted to find out what happened in the end. So it held my attention, didn't annoy me and has made me consider reading more of his work. I'd call that a win.

Within Dickens’s oeuvre, this is rather an odd work. Not only is this book the shortest of his novels, but it is the only one that takes place without setting foot in London. Most importantly, this novel is perhaps the most explicitly political of Dickens’s works. The satire in Hard Times takes precedence over the story and the characters. One’s opinion of the book will thus largely depend on one’s opinion of Dickens’s social criticism.
tt
As a sendup of heartless technocracy this book can hardly be surpassed. Dickens is wonderful in ridiculing the pseudo-scientific worldview of these captains of industry and giants of commerce, revealing their philosophy to be little more than narrow-minded selfishness. This book is extremely frustrating, however, as Dickens stops right there—with an individual, moralistic critique. It is as if he believes the world could be set right if the wealthy just had a richer imagination, a deeper emotional life, and hearts more accessible to pity.
tt
Dickens, for example, puts the novel’s striking workers at the same moral level as their penny-pinching bosses, since they too are motivated by selfish gain. Both of them, in other words, are only self-interest materialists, blind to the finer things in life. It is very difficult for me to sympathize with this view, however, as it ignores the vast disparity in the ultimate aims of the two parties—dignified work and a decent life, as opposed to wealth and power. In the place of economic justice, then, Dickens offers us one of his selfless heroines (well, two really), who teach us how to overcome the world through altruism. But I’ll take the workers over Sissy Jupe any day.

Hard Times: For These Times
Penguin edition with intro & notes by Kate Flint

Beyond the Brontes, there aren't many classic novels set in the North of England, and for years I'd been kind-of-meaning to read a few more, especially about workers and heavy industry, Mary Barton, Sons & Lovers, and Hard Times. (As per comment below, North and South was off the table because I'd already seen the TV series and didn't love the plot, and it's also the story of a middle-class southerner moving north, rather than the north qua north.)

And - though it may be inconvenient to suggest that at least some adults are influenced by fiction - this year I have realised that I need a much higher proportion of fictional works I consume in any medium to be about people who work full time and don't have much money, as that makes me more accepting of normal life, and that I have to get things done. This autumn I noticed a big difference in feelings and effort after I had been watching Victorian Slum (a show which, yes, can be cynically seen as prompting contemporary people to think conditions now - or in coming years given expected falls in living standards due to Brexit - aren't so bad) compared with my comparative laziness when the last thing I'd read was part of Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, in which most principal characters are not only rich enough they don't need to work, but can also make life even easier via magic. (Hard Times perhaps didn't contain as many scenes of actually going to work as I assumed it would, and Dickens' esteem for the millworkers is expressed in somewhat patronising ways, but the centrality of work is always there in the background.)

2016 felt like the right time to read Dickens, and especially a book with this title: the gradual reversion to pre-Second World War, or, colloquially, Victorian, degrees of inequality and state support having finally been made obvious by two key Anglo-American votes that seem very unlikely to alleviate that, especially on this side of the Atlantic.

However, I hadn't expected this particular book, chosen purely for its setting, to be so complicatedly pertinent to those political campaigns. (I didn't even know it was Dickens' shortest novel, which my GR friends who know my habits could be forgiven for thinking was my motivation.)

Facts in Hard Times are allied with the nouveau riche and a lack of compassion for the poor among a self-made middle and increasingly ruling class that could be described as Thatcherite. What we have been accustomed to calling the right wing.
Those seeking to understand and humanise the poor and improve their living and working conditions, including Dickens, argue for greater allowance for emotion. What could traditionally be seen as the left.
Apply to the UK and the US in 2016 and the polarities appear to have switched, especially as regards the much-discussed "left behind" section of the electorate. Facts, solid research and a noeliberal establishment presenting itself as the sensible choice were pipped to the post by appeals to emotion, dreams and the lived experience of fed-up people who were tired of being called stupid. (I know about the $50-100k Trump voters, the upper middle class Brexiteers, but I agree that it was the swing vote from prior supporters of Obama and Labour which made that key small percentage difference.) I think Hard Times would be good reading (and thinking) material for those on the left and particularly centre left at the moment.

More so because Gradgrind also isn't as grim as his name appears. He's not actually Wackford Squeers mark II, as I assumed. (And as would be easily assumed from all the readers who hate him. Someone described him as a monster?! I'm pretty certain some of these people would also be the types who say "but he means well, he cares underneath" if he was real.)
Perhaps I don't find him all that grim because he feels like an eminently plausible ancestor. He's rather like some of my own relatives. He's not actively cruel, or violent or angry or inconsistent; he means very well, but he nevertheless has deleterious effects because he just. doesn't. get. it. He's a bit of a robot; he doesn't understand how others are different, why that's okay and how to accommodate their needs, never mind provide emotional attunement. Aspects of Gradgrind family life feel to me like an exaggerated caricature of deeply familiar realities (with people I've known socially, not just some relatives).
But I can understand him; I am also regularly exasperated by people not sharing views of mine which make much more sense on a large scale than common practice (and it is much harder to live with when they are not matters on which one is conventionally "allowed" to speak out and break away) and think that certain social norms ought to be changed.
I daresay others have observed this before me, but Gradgrind is so Aspie. Or more precisely reads like what you get from Aspie + old-school British upbringing.

Of course, the politics aren't quite as simple as they first appear, because Dickens' impoverished characters are presented as nice people whereas the 2016 rightward populist voter is often characterised as racist, or at least not placing a candidate's racism high enough up the list as the other side think they should. A more definite difference is that the Dickensian industrialist fact-propagators are the ones who believe there's almost no such thing as too much hard work, a position now established among the emotional appeals of right-wing populism in Britain and the US. The most constant difference between right and left of 1854 and 2016 appears to be on locus of control and the notion of a deserving and undeserving poor.

At the time I started this book - 15th Nov - I was desperate to try and understand how humour might have a place in such a world of increased poverty, inequality and progressively more dystopian news: I knew it had to, but I couldn't see how, feeling that there must be the beginning of an answer in going back to old comic authors, like Dickens, and Shakespeare's mechanical scenes, written in worlds where life was harder for a far higher percentage of people. Or there was the very specific idea I had for a post-apocalyptic comedy in which one of the main characters in an ensemble was a witty, flamboyant gay guy based on a composite of a couple of friends and some famous people; but no-one else has made it and I haven't quite the chops to write it myself. The thing which has actually given me the greatest sense of "life goes on", even whilst the news feels strange and volatile and full of potential Archduke Ferdinand moments, has been switching for a couple of weeks to the Goodreads community newsfeed - i.e. random people, in theory everyone on the whole damn site. They're a lot more interesting and varied than some of you give them credit for.

So much for all these big a/illusions about the relevance of Hard Times: it's also another of Dickens' sentimental soap operas starring cartoon characters painted in black or white, and minimal greyscale. I like the whole a bit too much to say "mawkish", but agree it's forgivable to use that word of certain scenes. I'm glad I read it when I was old and cynical enough to know that, actually, people rarely change as much as Gradgrind does here, and on the few occasions they do, never as quickly. (I reckon it would take about 18 months of therapy, as well as sheer aptitude, to acquire that amount of emotional insight and expression from cold - it puts me in mind of a case study in one of Daniel Siegel's books, in which a chap described as having a fairly high degree of avoidant attachment, but who also sounds like he has Aspie traits, became much more emotionally open after deciding to do therapy in old age in order to communicate better with his family.) The accumulation in implicit memory over many years of novels and films in which people have rapid character transformations - if someone only says the right thing - led to way too many disappointments when I was younger. Even if one or two people did seem to have observed something like that in me. As a practically middle-aged adult, Gradgrind's Damascene conversion seems as obviously fantastical, impossible fairy-tale wish fulfilment, and a product of Victorian sentimentality, as does the higly improbable and pulpy - and yes, arguably, ultimately mawkish - coincidence between other characters a few chapters later. Such as the bit where Rachael and Sissy find Stephen despite other search parties having failed.

The negative authorial view of suave cad Harthouse  - whilst it was evidently unlikely to happen, I hoped Louisa would shag him because I wanted her to have some throwaway fun with someone infinitely fitter than her husband -  could be an interesting comparison with takes on similar characters of the fin de siecle. His amorality, levity and chameleon nature appear to be used as indictments, but so used am I to seeing near-identical phrases adopted as positives by Wilde and other aesthetes (Did Oscar nick them from Charles? I would not be surprised) that these attributes have lost 90% of their power as criticism.

Hard Times is a funny old thing really, part complex/relevant/political, part pulp of yesteryear - though I guess those are the essence of what Dickens is.

-----

I never used to leave an academic introduction until after I'd read the book, but this time I did.

The notes by Kate Flint (I really like the name “Kate Flint” – spellable, doesn’t stand out too much, yet memorable, poetically consonant and so very definite and solid ) are pretty good as notes in contemporary editions go: there aren’t too many of the explanations of things that should be common knowledge to the vast majority of readers of Eng Lit at this level, but there are still some oddities inexplicably missed out, of which I’d have liked elucidation, as they simply don’t lend themselves to encyclopaedias or search. The latter was every thus; notes never seem to be complete. The introduction is decent – I have a feeling that the reason that nearly all introductions feel somewhat insubstantial these days is only because I first got to know the Penguin / OUP Classics intro as a form whilst aged 10-14, and that is still the time at which I read the greatest concentration of them; inevitably they would have seemed that bit more difficult and more of the information novel at that age.

The central premise of Flint’s commentary is that the novel intentionally defies easy categorisation and (although the term is not used) its binary oppositions are incomplete because it is setting itself up against the rigid system of Victorian Utilitarian philosophy and education. (For example it tends to favour the “natural” over the artificial (unlike the decadents of 40 years later, as I mentioned above), and the section titling headlines this, with agricultural terms in contrast to the industrial setting (how did I miss that?!) But that is not total. It is “not a programmatic book, and is the stronger for it”. Dickens shies away from being too radical politically: his working class characters are sympathetic as individuals with predicaments, and ostracised by the organised trade union (however, those who try to keep them so very downtrodden reform spontaneously, or are exposed as hypocrites).

Whilst reading the first part of Hard Times, I was convinced it must have been written whilst Dickens’ marriage was breaking down, as there is not a good marriage in the book. His pedestalising of Louisa seemed transparently like someone who was becoming attracted to younger women but wrestling with this, as the author evidently thinks the marriage with an age gap of 30-odd years is a bad idea from the first – on checking the history, I saw he had not met Ellen Terry at this point. The introduction has a little but not too much on that well worn topic “the role of women”, found in every list of possible Eng Lit essays to choose between. Dickens does not overtly criticise Louisa’s being educated in the same way as a boy, which makes the book more palatable to modern readers, although there are hints of disapproval in the text that Flint points out, especially when it is seen in the context of nineteenth century advice to women. In the end it is Sissy Jupe who emerges as the most balanced character.

I haven't read a lot of Dickens in recent times (my last was Bleak House in 2005), so was it me, finding this one particularly soapy, or is it the book? Flint mentions that Hard Times was the first book in thirteen years that Dickens wrote as a weekly - rather than a monthly - serial, which may explain that.

I know, this isn't the classic, broadly drawn out story with 25 characters and lots of side paths like we're used to from Dickens, but nevertheless I think it's one of his best, especially as a historical document. Published in 1854, it offers a harsh indictment of the horrible social conditions in a fictional English industrial town ('Coketown'). And at the same time it illustrates Dickens' moralistic look at gruesome reality.

The protagonist, the goodhearted weaver Stephen Blackpool, is the symbol of the natural wisdom of the laborers ('the Hands'). He becomes victim of both the industrial class as the labour union. Clearly Dickens didn't trust the unions as defenders of the working class, but he rather saw them as a violent, disruptive and double harted element. The author preferred reforms from above, in a context of harmonious cooperation between employees and employers.

Dickens also denounces the arrogance of the bourgeoisie (through the industrial Bounderby and the nihilistic politician Harthouse). And he offers a sharp critique on the emergent philosophy of positivism, with its obsession for hard facts and ruthless logic (a clear reference to the French philosoper Auguste Comte). Above this all hovers the wisdom of charitable female characters like Cecilia and Rachael. Perhaps you can say that Dickens' classic novels are more impressive from a literary point of view, but this social document sure made a lasting impression on me.

Hard Times opens with the usual Dickens comic brio and sabre-toothed satire. Mr Gradgrind’s pursuit of Facts, Facts, Facts deadens his daughter Louisa’s sense of Fancy and humour, until she relents to a marriage to Mr. Bounderby—surely the progenitor of this Monty Python sketch. As the novel moves into its second half, the melodramatic and laboured Steven Blackpool narrative distracts from the more poignant story of circus orphan Sissy and the Gradgrinds. Steven’s phonetic Lancastrian dialect is unnecessarily distracting and the social commentary becomes somewhat tedious upon the arrival of the saucy politician. Too much time is devoted to Mrs Sparsit, a bland fallen lady at the mercy of Bounderby, not enough to Sissy. Let’s not forget the phonetically rendered Lisp of Mr. Sleary, or the hysterical (in the wrong way) fate of Stephen. Apart from these complaints Hard Times is fine: the story isn’t dreary, only the individual elements and plotting seemed a little subpar.

This book is, for me, Dickens' best. I loved every second of it, the darkness of Tom's steady descent into drinking and gambling were brilliant and there were several times I found myself simply rereading a few paragraphs over and over, in awe at them. (The end of Chapter XIX, The Whelp, is something I hold in very high regard as possibly one of his best pieces of writing ever.) I want to deal with the characters individually from here, since I feel they are all very important.

Mr Gradgrind - Facts. This man's obsession with facts and hate for fantasy is possibly one of the most genius parts of the plot, highlighting exactly what Dickens means to say. His regret at the end serves to show the inevitable outcome of living his sort of life, and is done in a very clever way. His name is also wonderful. I like to say it. Gradgrind. It's great, isn't it?

Bounderby - Dickens made me hate him, and he was made to be hated. For all his bluster and superiority he is in fact worse in moral integrity than Stephen or Tom, which is why I was intensely glad as Louisa took her steps away from him. He really is a 'bounder'.

Louisa/Loo - A perfect tragic heroine, but I couldn't help thinking more than once that she should really get some backbone. But I suppose that was the point, so she was well done too.

Cecilia/Sissy - I didn't like her very much, but I did like the way she was used, as the embodiment of fancy and fun. She served to drive the point home and was useful in terms of story development.

Tom/The Whelp - Goodness, I hated him sometimes. As I've already said, his descent was done well and some of the description around him was fantastic. Dickens' habit of referring to him as the whelp was perfect.

Stephen Blackpool - The character I could emphathise with most, he was likeable and pitiable. I loved his struggle with Slackbridge and the Trade Union, and his contrasting relationships with Rachel and his wife made me feel very sorry for both of them. His ending was also very sad, and shows just how cruel people can be to each other.

Mrs Sparsit - One of the most brilliant in the book. The image of her staircase, with Louisa walking to the bottom, is one that has stuck with me as being particularly genius. I also laughed at her disappointment by the train towards the end, as she was so anxious to see the downfall of others she ended up being nothing more than a jobless window.

James Harthouse - Although for most of the book I wished Louisa would run away with him, the end convinced me otherwise. Still, he was a very interesting character who provided a catalyst for all the suppressed emotions of the Gradgrinds/Bounderbys.

All in all, a brilliant book.

Hard Times it's an atypical Dickensian novel, because usually he writes thousand-pages novels and this one instead it's only about 300. I was sorry of it, because it was a very gripping story and I would have liked it to last more.
It's set in the fictional town of Coketown, where there is a factory and the sky is always grey for the smoke.
Here lives Mr Gradgrind, a very rigid schoolmaster, that raises his children Tom and Louisa in a hard way, without letting them be free and have imagination. When they will grow up, though, Mr Gradgrind will have to repent of his educational methods, because both they will be unhappy persons.
The book is full of social issues, like life in the factories, represented by the character of Stephen Blackpool, a working-class man who leads a hard life with a drunkard wife.

I appreciated it very much.

In a Muddle

This is probably where Dickens found himself to some extent when sales of his periodical Household Words were falling and he started publishing his new novel Hard Times on its pages in order to improve sales figures. These latter did in fact improve, albeit the novel itself seems to have suffered from the weekly publication mode that was the consequence of Dickens’s decision: Now Dickens had to deliver weekly and to cut up his story into shorter chapters. Apart from that, Dickens must have had great ambitions with regard to the message of his novel, and the enemy he was attacking was indeed a powerful and a sprawling one – the philosophy of utilitarianism, which, in a vulgarized form, found its way into everyday life, changing production patterns, public welfare and the school system.

So Dickens had a lot to say, but all in all little weekly space to do this – and he had to tell a story into the bargain. The result is an unusually short novel, for Dickens’s standards at least, whose narrative strands hardly unite and whose course appears rather piecemeal and choppy – it takes, for instance, almost a third of the novel’s length before we see some plot development of any sort. What has happened up to then can be characterized as the parading of ideas before the reader’s eyes. Now, what are these ideas?

”‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!’”

These are the famous opening words of our novel, and one of the topics Dickens pursues on its pages is the criticism of utilitarian schooling, which favoured the instilment of dead and often unrelated chunks of knowledge according to a certain system and which stifled the pupils’ imagination and power of induction along with their motivation to learn. Mr. Gradgrind is the proponent of this kind of uninspired, narrow-minded schooling, and not only is one of the teachers of his school most tellingly named Mr. M’Choakumchild, but also Mr. Gradgrind’s own children, Louisa and Tom, who are paradigms of Mr. Gradgrind’s educational system, will be revealed as failures in real life: Louisa, stunted in her emotional development, will allow herself to be driven into a loveless marriage, and Tom will end up an opportunistic good-for-nothing. Another example of Mr. Gradgrind’s schooling, a pale young boy named Bitzer, will rise in society but become a calculating, self-serving monster. Mr. Gradgrind’s reliance on facts and his exclusion of anything fanciful and interesting to children from his own household and from the lives of his scions may seem a bit of an exaggeration, but given the significant impact utilitarianism had on the educational system in Dickens’s day and age, Mr. Gradgrind can be seen as a type and a caricature that is artistically justified. His sudden change and redemption at the end of the second part of the novel is, in comparison, more difficult to stomach and quite unbelievable.

”Coketown, to which Messrs. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs. Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune.

It was a town of red brick, or of 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. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness. It 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 sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.”

Coketown, which is the name of the fictitious industrial town in which Dickens set his novel, is inextricably linked with the system of utilitarianism represented by Mr. Gradgrind, for it is a “triumph of fact”. One of its main features seems to be efficacy – after all, it’s an industrial town – but efficacy, seen from another angle, all too easily translates into monotony and drabness, hence the ‘melancholy elephant’ and the unvaried streets. Mr. Josiah Bounderby is one of the factory-owners in Coketown, and he likes to present himself as a self-made man who had no advantages in life but owes it all to himself. Mr. Bounderby delights in uncouth behaviour to show his humble origins, but he also likes to have a housekeeper who has high family relations but has come down in the world financially and to marry “Tom Gradgrind’s daughter”, as he puts it – because these are signs of his personal achievements. Yet, little does it surprise us because Mr. Bounderby blows his own horn too unscrupulously, Mr. Bounderby will turn out a humbug, thus allowing Dickens to deal a blow to those who voice ideas like the following, which the often very satirical narrative voice of the novel denounces as another of Coketown’s pet fictions:

”Any capitalist there, who had made sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, always professed to wonder why the sixty thousand nearest Hands didn’t each make sixty thousand pounds out of sixpence, and more or less reproached them every one for not accomplishing the little feat. What I did you can do. Why don’t you go and do it?”

Where there are factory owners, there must also be workers but in Hard Times the ratio of employers and employees is rather odd because whereas we have Mr. Bounderby, Mr. Gradgrind, his family, Mrs. Sparsit and also Mr. Harthouse as – usually morally flawed – representatives of the higher classes, there are only Stephen Blackpool and Rachael as fully-fledged characters with a working-class background. Did I say ‘fully-fledged? That is exactly what they are not, they are not even representatives of the working class because for some reason Stephen Blackpool has taken a vow never to join a trade union, and thus he is shunned by his fellow-workers, who remain a faceless mass on the pages of this novel. Being all on his own, ostracized from his colleagues, doomed to love Rachael but never to find his love fulfilled because he is already married to a hopeless alcoholic, whom Dickens does not even name in order to concentrate the reader’s pity on Stephen and not to have any of it diverted to his wife, sacked by Mr. Bounderby and stumbling from one misfortune into another – pardon the pun –, Stephen Blackpool is more of a melodramatic stock-character, a meek martyr, than an apt representative of real life workers’ grievances. Just consider the following little scene:

”‘Sir, I were never good at showin o ’t, though I ha had’n my share in feeling o ’t. ’Deed we are in a muddle, sir. Look round town—so rich as ’tis—and see the numbers o’ people as has been broughten into bein heer, fur to weave, an’ to card, an’ to piece out a livin’, aw the same one way, somehows, ’twixt their cradles and their graves. Look how we live, an’ wheer we live, an’ in what numbers, an’ by what chances, and wi’ what sameness; and look how the mills is awlus a goin, and how they never works us no nigher to ony dis���ant object—ceptin awlus, Death. Look how you considers of us, and writes of us, and talks of us, and goes up wi’ yor deputations to Secretaries o’ State ’bout us, and how yo are awlus right, and how we are awlus wrong, and never had’n no reason in us sin ever we were born. Look how this ha growen an’ growen, sir, bigger an’ bigger, broader an’ broader, harder an’ harder, fro year to year, fro generation unto generation. Who can look on ’t, sir, and fairly tell a man ’tis not a muddle?’

‘Of course,’ said Mr. Bounderby. ‘Now perhaps you’ll let the gentleman know, how you would set this muddle (as you’re so fond of calling it) to rights.’

‘I donno, sir. I canna be expecten to ’t. ’Tis not me as should be looken to for that, sir. ’Tis them as is put ower me, and ower aw the rest of us. What do they tak upon themseln, sir, if not to do’t?’”

The good thing about Stephen is that he never gets angry but always suffers patiently, and he never really finds fault with anybody. This might have invited Victorian readers to spill many a morally edifying tear over his lot without being too much afraid of him, but to modern readers less given to sentimentality, Stephen is one of the major flaws of the novel, not only because he is clumsily worked into the plot – which is already clumsy in its own right in many ways – but also because he is such a meek lamb.

All in all, Stephen Blackpool and Rachael show Dickens’s greatest weakness, his propensity to cheap melodrama and icky sentimentalism, whereas the novel itself is so short that the author’s relatively weak hand at creating believable plots cannot find a proper counterweight in Dickens’s artistic strengths – namely masterful and atmospheric descriptions, the creation of memorable, larger-than-life characters and the careful building of a slowly and wow!-ly unfolding microcosm that readers feel at home in and that they are familiar with long after closing the book. It is strange that after Dombey and Son, David Copperfield and his masterpiece Bleak House Dickens should have written a book like Hard Times but one might really put this down to the unusual circumstances in which Dickens was writing. It is not as bad as The Old Curiosity Shop but in my opinion it is the weakest of his later novels. Of course, being a Dickens novel, it is still head and shoulders above much other Victorian and non-Victorian writing.

I can remember watching this Granada series in the late 1970s.
The first scene was grey, brown and dirty when all of a sudden
brilliant colour just errupted everywhere - the circus had come
to Coketown. Dickens gave "Hard Times" an unrelieved seriousness,
there are no beloved comic characters apart from Mr Sleary, the circus
manager. Preston was experiencing some intolerable working conditions
among the down trodden workers - a local newspaper article said
that if factory workers from other parts of England were able to
get a wage rise, you could rest assured the people from Preston
wouldn't. Dickens even used his journalistic knowledge to travel
to Preston which he felt was the town at the heart of the "condition
of England" problem. Sympathy for workers and their rights was
being investigated thoroughly in the novels of Elizabeth Gaskell,
in fact the introduction states that only in Gaskell's novels
could someone read of the true state of factory workers. Dickens
however is very vague about things. When Stephen Blackpool is sent
to Coventry I just assumed it was because he was a scab but the
book seemed to imply it may have been because his drunken wife had
returned to him.
It wouldn't be Dickens without some oddball names - Master
Kiddiminister, a young circus worker and Mr. McChoakumchild,
one of the teachers in the Gradgrind school that "spews out
children from a huge "facts, nothing but facts" cannon". The notes
at the back provide an illuminating look at the British school
system circa 1840 - 1,000 pupils taught in 1 room by only 2 masters
and 1 mistress - it was an explanation on why Dickens had his pupils
numbered (Pupil 20 etc). Gradgrind has bought up his own children
in this sterile atmosphere where fairy tales and flights of fancy
are forbidden - Louisa, however, has been caught looking at the
circus and she is far from repentant, so with the arrival of Sissy
Jupe at the Gradgrind's home (she is a carnival child whose father
has abandoned her) you just know that before the end the solid
Gradgrind values are to be turned on their ear.
Almost a novella by Dicken's standards, Sissy disappears from the
book until the last quarter, when Louisa returns to the family
home to find that Sissy has been weaving some "wondering" magic
on the younger children and even her parents. Louisa who inhabits
an emotionless void has obediently married that supreme humbug
Mr. Josiah Bounderby of Coketown who never tires of telling people
that he was born in a ditch, rejected by his mother and brought
up by a drunken grandmother (which makes the revelation by his
soon to appear again mother all the more sweeter). He is encouraged
by the reptilian Mrs. Sparsit who once moved in a very different
social circle as she is fond of exclaiming to all and sundry.
Louisa has married Bounderby because of her great love for her
brother Tom who feels he could really get on if Louisa was there
to smooth his path. He is shown as all that is wrong with his
father's rigid educational system, as is Bitzer, who proves he has
soaked up Gradgrind's principle rules too thoroughly to forget them.
This novel really diverges off the path of the usual Victorian
novel with the appearance of Tom Harthouse, a young gentleman who
stays around just long enough to bring out Louisa's compassion
and to make her realise that she can make a break from Bounderby
with some huge support from Sissy.