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?

My friend Levi Stahl once noted how reading Henry James utilized the higher gears of his brain. I have always relished that sentiment, though I fear Henry James is above my pay grade. It is a different kettle with Dickens, my maudlin thoughts drift to Cassavetes on Capra, a reworking of my already repurposed grace. Get behind me, social realism.

Hard Times is an interesting collection of set pieces collected in a smelting town with a set of characters which honestly can be seen in Turgenev. The novel doesn't afford an arc much as a series of consequences. It is here where the other (evil) Scott Walker from Wisconsin finds his nocturnal emission: organized labor chokes the life out of people. It couldn't be inhaling coal dust or toiling every day bereft of Vitamin C, no, it is collective bargaining and an improper educational system. I should note that the Governor isn't a character in this novel. Only his peculiar sentiment.

Siblings are raised in a Spartan pedagogic environment, one which worships facts and retention as opposed to creativity. The daughter then marries a self made Scott Pruitt, while the wayward son fancies gambling and living above his station. There is no mention of an ostrich jacket. There is an honest worker. He can't abide by the union and, before Bob's your uncle, he is fingered for a robbery. Life can only aspire to transcend self-interest. It remains but an aspiration.

إذا فسد التعليم، فسد كل شئ
بعيداً عن أعمال التشويق و الأثارة التي أشتهر بها الكثير من كتاب عصره، يقدم لنا تشارلز ديكنز رواية هادئة تنتقد الكثير من سلبيات المجتمع و تفضح آثارها
الأب جرادجريند يمثل الثورة الصناعية التى غزت اوربا وقتها بكل ما تحمله من أهمال للمشاعر وتقديس للمادة وحدها فيعلم أبناءه على مبدا العقل البحت متناسيا القلب والعواطف الإنسانية ،مما أوقعهم في مشاكل اجتماعية بعد ذلك
الرواية تحاول نقد الكثير من الظواهر الأجتماعية التى عاصرها تشارلز ديكنز، بداية من التعليم الذى يركز على تقديس قيمة العقل وحده دون أى جهد لتعزيز و تطوير القيم الجمالية و الأنسانية و العاطفية ، مروراً بمجتمع صناعي بحت تحكمه المادة و قوانينها القاسية، و نهاية بحضارة زائفة لا تري فى الأنسان سوى ترس فى آلة ضخمة و باتالي تهمل تماماً كافة أحتياجاته و مشاعره الأنسانية

I never thought I'd enjoy a Charles Dickens novel so much...on to the next one.

I believe Coketown is based on Manchester. If it is, then it's interesting that the mills that inspired Dickens to write Hard Times might have been the same ones that influenced Friedrich Engels to write The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1845.

Written in 1854, Hard Times shows Dickens is concerned with the way in which industrialisation de-humanises people. Bounderby treats people as numbers and Gradgrind suffocates his children with a warped education. This book covers the Victorian period where there was a shift in power away from the aristocracy towards the hard-nosed industrialists who were making fortunes from people's misery.

Più passano gli anni e le letture si accumulano più la distanza tra scrittori di 'oggi' e scrittori di 'ieri' mi sembra crescere. Certo, quelli di ieri, hanno il vantaggio di essere sopravvissuti alla scrematura del tempo diventando una specie di distillato a lunga capacità di invecchiamento. Non sempre la loro lettura è agevole, la lingua può essere ridondante, il ritmo troppo lento, i temi forse (forse!) a volte lontani dalle esperienze contemporanee, il giudizio morale onnipresente. Ma la profondità di spessore dei personaggi, la ricerca (non la ricercatezza) delle parole, la grazia dei giri di frase, l'ampiezza degli sguardi sull'umano, la conoscenza e l'uso appropriato delle figure retoriche - tra tutte quella magica arietta che fa pizzicare il naso, l'ironia, - costituiscono per me il massimo piacere della lettura.
Anche questi Tempi difficili non fa eccezione. I protagonisti sono più tipi sociali che esseri individuali ma la grandezza di Dickens sta nel farcelo dimenticare.

I always approach a Dickens novel with some trepidation mainly because they're usually long, incredibly wordy and Dickens always seemed to see the worst in women.

I got the audio version of Hard Times and it was beautifully narrated by Bertie Carvel. The story is not overlong but it still made my blood boil. Having said that it boiled equally for the characterisations of men and women (they're often more like caricatures).

The basic story is Thomas Gradgrind has brought his children up not to know anything fluffy or cheerful or frivolous. In this he has a supporter in the shape of Josiah Bounderby who, despite being 50, has got his eye on Gradgrind's eldest daughter, Louisa. So Lou marries Gradgrind to keep her brother, Tom, happy as Tom works in Bounderby's bank. Alongside this there's a social history side that deals with the workers (downtrodden, poor, no hope sort of thing) and the creation of a union. The workers too have their upheavals - bad marriages they can't get out of, peer pressure regarding unions/strikes, straitened circumstances. Yes, it's complicated.

Dickens certainly never seems to like a happy ending. A Christmas Carol must have near killed him. He puts his characters through hell then, when they've almost got happiness in their grasp, he gives them TB or some other disease that back in the 1850s would have killed you.

So I seethed through a lot of this book - I will continue to hear "of Coketown" following Bounderby's name because that's how he introduces himself (every time). In fact if Bounderby wasn't the inspiration for Monty Python's Four Yorkshiremen sketch then I'd be amazed. Also Mrs Sparsit drove me demented - she's a thoroughly revolting creature who wants Bounderby for herself.

I'm afraid to say that of the characters who aren't revolting, the others are pathetic and hopeless (except maybe Cissy).

However after I've said all that I did enjoy it in the main and the ending is not a total gloom-fest.

ربما تحمل بعض الروايات الأجنبية فكرة، حكمة ما؛
تضيق وتتسع بحسب أثرها على القاريء وما تلمسه من نبضات تكوينه .

لكن إبداع اللغة يتجلّى لي في الأدب العربيّ
من جمال أساليبها أحب أن أنهل، وفي روعة بلاغتها أشتاق للإبحار
لا مثيل للحرف العربي في إسعادي وإطرابي ..

“ إنّ الذي ملأ اللغات محاسناً .. جعل الجمال و سرّه في الضّاد ”
- أحمد شوقي

the first half severely dragged but the next two parts made up for it

I'm not even sure where to start with this book. First of all, Hard Times is one of the shorter, and lesser known of the Dickens novels. At only around four hundred pages, it almost seems like a novella compared to his other tomes of one thousand pages or more. The book has some interesting characters. We have Thomas Gradgrind, the obstinate disciplinarian, who raises his children to use their head and facts in all things and to never "wonder" because that will lead to flights of fancy which can only lead you astray. He is to be taken down a piece at a time, so that his contrition at the end of the novel allows us to forgive him and admire him in his role of one of our lead characters. We have a Mr. Bounderby, a friend of Gradgrind, who also adheres to the Philosophy is Fact principle, but more out of slogans than anything else. A detestable man, he is self-made and self-serving, raising himself to a social status that is hypocritical and not altogether of pure fact. Whereas Thomas Gradgrind believes what he is preaching, Mr. Bounderby uses it only a means to an end or for a statement of self. And we have Stephen Blackpool, Dickens typical representation of the lower classes, sporting integrity and morals, enduring the everyday toil of working poverty, while he is victimized by his fellow workers and employer. The lowly servant brought down by the system. Damn the man.

Then we have some female characters such as Sissy, the young woman Gradgrind takes in when her father abandons her, and Mrs. Sparsit, who is ever wiping the brown from her nose where Bounderby is concerned, or contrarily, calling his portrait a "Noodle", when he's not around. I've mentioned before some criticism about Dicken's novels that I've read dealing with the insipid nature of Dickens female characters. While this is often true, in this novel I found the opposite in our female lead, Louisa, Thomas's beloved daughter. While raised in the same way as her brother, Tom "the Whelp", instead of masking indifference to their families rule and wallowing in self-pity and gambling like Tom does, Louisa's intelligence is displayed in the fact (pun intended), that she realizes from the beginning that something essential is missing from her life. She is drawn to the circus as a child, although severely reprimanded by her father, and recognizes an integrity and warmth in Sissy which she herself doesn't have. She gives into a loveless marriage with Mr. Bounderby, hoping that in some way it might help her brother get out of his careless ways, or at the very least, help pay for them. She shows strength, courage, and amenability when none other exist during times of duress.

There are many more characters as there often are, as lovely and as detailed as these, however, these were some of the main ones. And once again, we see how Dickens' writing serves to develop the ramifications of public issues for individual lives. He shows us that the consequences for individual men and women matter most in a social system. He also reiterates his main theme over and over again in showing us that a simple life, adhering to the Philosophy of Fact, strips us of our sympathy, leaves us empty, and is a basic misconception of human nature. Like I mentioned earlier, Gradgrind is brought to his knees at the end of the novel in realization of what he's done to his children, showing us the irony of his ideas. Louisa is finally brought light in Gradgrind's eyes, when another man, other than her husband proposes a love-filled affair, something her husband could never fathom. She breaks down in despair and runs to her father, finally telling him everything she's really felt all these years, and this is only the beginning of Gradgrind's downfall. Her brother, Tom, falls too, but he has learned nothing but selfishness from his upbringing and tries to find satisfaction in pursuing his own selfish interests to no avail. When he resorts to desperate means to fill the gap, everything falls apart and Gradgrind finally realizes what he's done to his children. Blackpool, our somewhat hero, or at least stable character of the story, is hurrying home from another town to clear his name of something he's been wrongly accused of when he falls into Old Hell Shaft, a big hole. An appropriate allegory, he is destroyed by this big black hole in nature and left by the uncaring industrialists that have plagued him from the beginning.

Besides the underlying themes, I also found this novel suspenseful and highly entertaining. Although Mr. Sleary's lisp was difficult to understand at times (I found myself reading some of his lines out loud, much to my detriment, but to the merriment of my husband), it still was one of my favorite Dicken's novel thus far. Even though Dickens can be sometimes predictable, I still wasn't sure how the tale would end. And I'm in awe of just how many books he's written and how all of them are so different and enjoyable.

While Dickens writing never ceases to transport me into his world, he's also an expert on relaying his ideologies and political and social beliefs through his stories. On top of this, his characters come to life in new and dramatic ways, differently in each and every novel he writes. He's one of my favorite classical authors and this is another brilliant piece of work in a long line of books. I highly recommend it.

Se um dia, alguém me perguntar porque gosto tanto de ler autores novecentistas, não terei a menor hesitação em responder: o sentido de ordem, de conduta moral (algo que se fosse recuperado hoje em dia, tornaria a nossa sociedade em algo sublime) mas, fundamentalmente, diria, a atualidade das situações, das emoções, das paixões, das respostas às nossas mais variegadas interrogações.

Há muito que Charles Dickens fazia parte da minha lista de escritores obrigatórios, aquela em que elencamos os indispensáveis, cuja leitura sabemos de antemão que só nos irá enriquecer. E, dentro desse objetivo, “Tempos Difíceis” não defraudou, de forma alguma, as expectativas criadas. Andava a namorá-lo há algum tempo e, dentro do pressuposto que admito verdadeiro, que são os livros que nos escolhem, não no momento que julgamos, mas na altura em que são eles a decidir, percebi que tinha chegado a hora de ter sido eleita para usufruir, saborear, deliciar-me com uma narrativa excecional em todas as suas vertentes.

E, simplesmente, fiquei rendida! Não só pelo formidável sentido de humor de Dickens, mas também pelo testemunho e, de certa forma, homenagem que presta à sociedade industrial que, na altura em que o livro foi escrito, mais concretamente, em 1854, se encontrava na sua maior e mais absoluta pujança. E, neste “Tempos Difíceis”, porque, de facto, foram tempos difíceis, pela mão de um extraordinário escritor, sentimos, vivemos, somos também adicionados a uma atmosfera de cinzas e fumos, de prosperidade para uns, de improsperidade (acho que esta palavra não existe mas não me ocorre outra daí a invenção) para a maior parte, comandados pela vontade e economia burguesas que nada mais viam a não ser o lucro, a mais valia nem que isso fosse ou estivesse abaixo dos níveis do, humanamente, comportáveis.

Mas deixando as abstrações, “Tempos Difíceis” tem a capacidade de nos envolver numa trama que tem um pouco de tudo: romance, mistério, crime, mas de uma forma leve pois não nos deixamos enganar pelos perpetradores de má consciência. Mas a grande lição que me ocorre retirar desta excelente história reside no facto que por mais que pensemos que a razão está acima da emoção, da imaginação e da criatividade, tão características da condição humana, ela própria nunca vencerá os ditames do coração e da alma.

Foi o primeiro livro que li de Charles Dickens mas tenho a certeza de que não será o único!

Mr. Thomas Gradgrind , a very wealthy, former merchant, now retired, only believes in facts, and mathematics, two plus two, is four... facts are important, facts will lift you into prosperity, facts are what to live by, they are the only thing that matters, everything else is worthless ... knowing. He sets up a model school, were the terrorized students, will learn this, ( and other subjects that are unfortunately, also taught) the eminently practical man, teaches his five children at birth ... facts! They fear him, a dictator, at home, his weak minded, sick wife, just looks on, wrapping herself up, to keep warm and complaining of her weariness . But fictitious Coketown , (Manchester) is a dirty, factory town, incessant noises from countless machines, powered by coal, chimneys forever spewing dark gases, polluting the air, thick smoke like a twisting snake high above the atmosphere, moving this way and that, spreading all through the surrounding areas, the filth, the sickness, and early death, to the inhabitants, but the "hands" are not relevant, money is, making lots of it, that, and only that. A foul- smelling canal, and even more, a purple river, flows by , the buildings becoming an ugly gray, quickly, the people have to escape to the countryside, to breath fresh healthy air. Travelers going by this place, can only imagine there is a city there, under the black cloud covering, yet they can't see it. Mr. Gradgrind best friend, if there is such an animal, in his circle, is the banker, and manufacturer, Mr. Josiah Bounderby, always telling anyone, within hearing distance, that he himself, rose from the gutter, to become a rich man, no help... he did it alone . Story after story, of his sleeping in the streets, hungry, soiled, without a farthing to his name. Abandoned by the evil, uncaring, widowed mother, brought up by his horrible, drunken grandmother, who beats the child repeatedly . Entertaining, heart-wrenching, you felt for this man, how he suffered greatly in youth, except it's not quite true ...in fact, lies. Louisa, Mr. Gradgrind's oldest and favorite child, is very pretty, the bachelor Bounderby, has eyes for her, when she reaches the proper age of about 20, the fifty- year -old man, asks for her hand in marriage, of course, conveying this fact first, to her father. Louisa says what does it matter, a prisoner in her own home, the girl hasn't seen anything of the world, disaster follows, the couple have nothing in common, what can they talk about? Mrs. Sparsit, her husband's meddling housekeeper, from a good family, hates her. Louisa, flirts with the restless, gentleman, Mr. James Harthouse, who proudly states that he is no good! Still Louisa, only loves her brother, "The Whelp", young Thomas, getting money from his sister, gambling, drinking, wasting it all and always coming back for more. The selfish boy, works in the bank for Mr. Bounderby, his now, brother- in- law, when the well runs dry, the drunkard "finds" some 150 pounds sterling, inside the bank, not properly being used and sees, that it will be. Implicating an innocent "hand", Stephen Blackpool, fired recently by Bounderby, for speaking too much, shunned by the trade union members, for not joining, he walks the streets a lonely man, with an alcoholic wife who deserted him, she still periodically comes back , to sober up, and a sweetheart, that he can't marry too. Mr.Blackpool, seeks work elsewhere, not knowing he's a suspect, in the puzzling crime. The industrial revolution makes some people rich and others sick, but there is no going back , the dye has been cast ...

I’m really glad I read a novel which I thought would bore me at the beginning; and it wasn’t at all as I expected! Dickens is so modern that, if it weren’t for the Victorian context, clearly recognizable, I’d have considered him a contemporary writer! He just delivers the story in the best way possible, both for literature and the general public. His very elegant and well-pondered irony in describing the Victorian era, his extreme characters (really difficult to forget) interacting with each other as set in their ways as they can be, make his novels unique in the nineteenth-century English literature.
Hard Times deals with education and the idea on which industrial revolution and positivist philosophy were based at the time: everything had to be rational. Everything was a rational Fact and could be explained only through Reason. The characters in the novel are educated to the science of Facts and are completely void of any unnatural and uncontrollable manifestations of the heart. How will they develop in life is the main interest of the writer: will they success in finding a well-paid job in Coketown, bargain a profitable marriage, live decently and happily? And will their parents, the champions of Positivism, who took care of their education first-hand, be happy with their choices, support them throughout their lives and be proud of them?
Some of the other issues addressed in this novel: the gap between rich and poor, the conditions of workers and of the orphans (Dickens himself was a humanitarian in his everyday life).

Oh, how I’ve missed Charles Dickens!

Hard Times is quite different than most other Charles Dickens novels. At around three hundred pages it comes in 1/2 the length (or less) of most of Dickens’ other novels. Readers don’t get the numerous plot lines and laundry list of characters, but it is nonetheless very worthwhile. I loved every minute of reading this.

This novel is sharply written - Dickens was definitely on his game when he wrote this one! I don’t mind exaggeration and dramatization when it is done as cleverly as it was here. An example is the chapter where he used of the imagery of Mrs. Sparsit’s staircase - the literal staircase figuratively used to illustrate the ups and downs of Coketown and of the characters in the story. Dickens’ use of figurative language is second to none - he was just so clever at his craft.

Hard Times is really great and I recommend to fans of Dickens or any fans of Victorian novels.