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Hard Times
Charles Dickens鈥檚 shortest novel, Hard Times presents a harsh appraisal of English society during the Industrial Revolution. Set in fictitious Coketown, Hard Times tells the story of Thomas Gradgrind and his children, Louisa and Tom, as they struggle to make their way in a changing England. Through the characters of Thomas, Louisa, and Tom, Dickens explores the divide between mill owners and workers during the Victorian era.
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HarperPerennialClassics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.
256 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1854
5,156 people are currently reading
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About the author
Charles Dickens
13.1k听books30.4k听followersCharles John Huffam Dickens (1812-1870) was a writer and social critic who created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.
Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens's creative genius has been praised by fellow writers鈥攆rom Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton鈥攆or its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.
On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness, and the next day he died at Gad's Hill Place. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner," he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." His last words were: "On the ground", in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.
(from Wikipedia)
Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction. Dickens's creative genius has been praised by fellow writers鈥攆rom Leo Tolstoy to George Orwell and G. K. Chesterton鈥攆or its realism, comedy, prose style, unique characterisations, and social criticism. On the other hand, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Virginia Woolf complained of a lack of psychological depth, loose writing, and a vein of saccharine sentimentalism. The term Dickensian is used to describe something that is reminiscent of Dickens and his writings, such as poor social conditions or comically repulsive characters.
On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home after a full day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness, and the next day he died at Gad's Hill Place. Contrary to his wish to be buried at Rochester Cathedral "in an inexpensive, unostentatious, and strictly private manner," he was laid to rest in the Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey. A printed epitaph circulated at the time of the funeral reads: "To the Memory of Charles Dickens (England's most popular author) who died at his residence, Higham, near Rochester, Kent, 9 June 1870, aged 58 years. He was a sympathiser with the poor, the suffering, and the oppressed; and by his death, one of England's greatest writers is lost to the world." His last words were: "On the ground", in response to his sister-in-law Georgina's request that he lie down.
(from Wikipedia)
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April 18, 2025
鈥淣ow, 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.鈥�
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 鈥渋nflexible, dry, and dictatorial鈥� voice, direct and committed to his extreme view of teaching as instruction. His name is Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, 鈥渁n eminently practical man鈥�, 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,
鈥淎 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鈥�.
鈥�'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.鈥�
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 鈥渉ands鈥� 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 鈥淗ousehold Words鈥�. He based his invented grimy, soot-besmirched 鈥淐辞办别迟辞飞苍鈥� on Preston. There are fewer descriptive passages than usual in this short novel, but the depressed gloom of Coketown is very effectively conveyed,
鈥淚t 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.鈥�
In principle Dickens was very interested in this area of workers' conditions and the resultant protests. He had touched on working class unrest in 鈥淏arnaby Rudge鈥�, and had intended to write about factories in 鈥淣icholas Nickleby鈥�, although both of these are far longer and more powerful novels. The article he wrote in 鈥淗ousehold Words鈥� after his visit, says,
鈥�... 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.鈥�
Dickens firmly believed that every individual should have dignity and be accorded respect. Unfortunately though, the part of the 鈥淧reston Workers' Bill鈥� that he went on to quote, presents itself as a standard Marxist theory of labour value, mentioning the 鈥済old which is now being used to crush those who created it.鈥� 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 鈥淏leak House鈥�. 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 鈥淗ousehold Words鈥� 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 鈥渃谤耻蝉丑颈苍驳鈥�. 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 鈥淏arnaby Rudge鈥� 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,
鈥渘ot so honest ... not so manly, he was not so good-humoured; he substituted cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe solid sense.鈥�
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 鈥淢r. M'Choakumchild鈥�, 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 鈥淐oriolanian style of nose鈥� (which is always poking into other people's business) and 鈥渄ense black eyebrows鈥�. 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 鈥淒avid Copperfield鈥�. 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 鈥涣濒辞驳颈别蝉鈥�,
鈥淎 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;鈥�
Most memorably, when asked if she is in pain, she remarks vaguely,
鈥淚 think there's a pain somewhere in the room ... but I couldn't positively say that I have got it鈥�.
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, 鈥減eople mutht be amuthed鈥� 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, 鈥淭he Whelp鈥�, 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 鈥淗ousehold Words鈥� 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 鈥渁 drunk鈥�, a hopeless wretched addict. It is Josiah Bounderby who explains in great detail everything that would be involved in such a procedure,
鈥淲hy 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.鈥�
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 鈥淒avid Copperfield鈥�. 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 鈥渟ullen socialism鈥�; yet another's view is that it is his 鈥渕补蝉迟别谤辫颈别肠别鈥� and 鈥渉is only serious work of art鈥�. 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 鈥淥liver Twist鈥�. 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 鈥渁 menu card for a meal rather than one of Dickens's rich feasts,鈥� 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.
鈥�'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.鈥�
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 鈥渋nflexible, dry, and dictatorial鈥� voice, direct and committed to his extreme view of teaching as instruction. His name is Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, 鈥渁n eminently practical man鈥�, 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,
鈥淎 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鈥�.
鈥�'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.鈥�
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 鈥渉ands鈥� 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 鈥淗ousehold Words鈥�. He based his invented grimy, soot-besmirched 鈥淐辞办别迟辞飞苍鈥� on Preston. There are fewer descriptive passages than usual in this short novel, but the depressed gloom of Coketown is very effectively conveyed,
鈥淚t 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.鈥�
In principle Dickens was very interested in this area of workers' conditions and the resultant protests. He had touched on working class unrest in 鈥淏arnaby Rudge鈥�, and had intended to write about factories in 鈥淣icholas Nickleby鈥�, although both of these are far longer and more powerful novels. The article he wrote in 鈥淗ousehold Words鈥� after his visit, says,
鈥�... 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.鈥�
Dickens firmly believed that every individual should have dignity and be accorded respect. Unfortunately though, the part of the 鈥淧reston Workers' Bill鈥� that he went on to quote, presents itself as a standard Marxist theory of labour value, mentioning the 鈥済old which is now being used to crush those who created it.鈥� 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 鈥淏leak House鈥�. 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 鈥淗ousehold Words鈥� 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 鈥渃谤耻蝉丑颈苍驳鈥�. 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 鈥淏arnaby Rudge鈥� 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,
鈥渘ot so honest ... not so manly, he was not so good-humoured; he substituted cunning for their simplicity, and passion for their safe solid sense.鈥�
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 鈥淢r. M'Choakumchild鈥�, 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 鈥淐oriolanian style of nose鈥� (which is always poking into other people's business) and 鈥渄ense black eyebrows鈥�. 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 鈥淒avid Copperfield鈥�. 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 鈥涣濒辞驳颈别蝉鈥�,
鈥淎 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;鈥�
Most memorably, when asked if she is in pain, she remarks vaguely,
鈥淚 think there's a pain somewhere in the room ... but I couldn't positively say that I have got it鈥�.
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, 鈥減eople mutht be amuthed鈥� 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, 鈥淭he Whelp鈥�, 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 鈥淗ousehold Words鈥� 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 鈥渁 drunk鈥�, a hopeless wretched addict. It is Josiah Bounderby who explains in great detail everything that would be involved in such a procedure,
鈥淲hy 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.鈥�
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 鈥淒avid Copperfield鈥�. 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 鈥渟ullen socialism鈥�; yet another's view is that it is his 鈥渕补蝉迟别谤辫颈别肠别鈥� and 鈥渉is only serious work of art鈥�. 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 鈥淥liver Twist鈥�. 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 鈥渁 menu card for a meal rather than one of Dickens's rich feasts,鈥� 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.
鈥�'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.鈥�
June 29, 2008
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.
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.
March 26, 2022
Hard Times, 1854, Charles Dickens
Hard Times 鈥� For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirists the social and economic conditions of the era. Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, a short novel that appeared not in monthly publications like the previous ones, but as a weekly serial in his magazine Household Words, from April 1 to August 12, 1854.
毓賳賵丕賳賴丕蹖 趩丕倬 卮丿賴 丿乇 丕蹖乇丕賳: 芦乇賵夭诏丕乇 爻禺鬲禄貨 芦丿賵乇丕賳 爻禺鬲禄貨 芦丿賵乇丕賳 賲卮賯鬲禄貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 趩丕乇賱夭 丿蹖讴賳夭貨 鬲丕乇蹖禺 賳禺爻鬲蹖賳 禺賵丕賳卮: 乇賵夭 倬丕賳夭丿賴賲 賲丕賴 跇賵卅賳 爻丕賱2010賲蹖賱丕丿蹖
毓賳賵丕賳: 乇賵夭诏丕乇 爻禺鬲貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 趩丕乇賱夭 丿蹖讴賳夭貨 賲鬲乇噩賲: 丨爻蹖賳 丕毓乇丕亘蹖貨 鬲賴乇丕賳貙 賳诏丕賴貙 爻丕賱1364貙 丿乇446氐貨 趩丕倬 丿賵賲 爻丕賱1367貨 趩丕倬 爻賵賲 爻丕賱1368貨 賲賵囟賵毓 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丕夭 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳 亘乇蹖鬲丕賳蹖丕 - 爻丿賴19賲
毓賳賵丕賳: 乇賵夭诏丕乇 爻禺鬲貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 趩丕乇賱夭 丿蹖讴賳夭貨 賲鬲乇噩賲: 丕賱賴丕賲 丿丕賳卮 賳跇丕丿貨 鬲賱禺蹖氐 亘乇丕蹖 賳賵噩賵丕賳丕賳貙 丿乇71氐 丿乇 鬲賴乇丕賳貙 丿亘蹖乇貙 爻丕賱1389貨
毓賳賵丕賳: 丿賵乇丕賳 爻禺鬲貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 趩丕乇賱夭 丿蹖讴賳夭貨 賲鬲乇噩賲: 爻蹖丿 噩賱蹖賱 卮丕賴乇賵丿蹖 賱賳诏乇賵丿蹖貨 鬲賴乇丕賳貙 賳卮乇 爻禺賳貙 賲噩蹖丿貙 爻丕賱1394貙 丿乇416氐貨 卮丕亘讴978600941263貨
毓賳賵丕賳: 乇賵夭诏丕乇 爻禺鬲貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 趩丕乇賱夭 丿蹖讴賳夭貨 賲鬲乇噩賲: 毓丕乇賮 丿賴賯丕賳貨 鬲亘乇蹖夭貙 丌蹖丿蹖賳 爻丕賵貨 爻丕賱1394貨 丿乇76氐貨 卮丕亘讴9786009533466貨
乇賵夭诏丕乇 爻禺鬲貨 蹖讴蹖 丕夭 毓賳賵丕賳賴丕蹖 賮丕乇爻蹖 乇賲丕賳蹖 丕夭 芦趩丕乇賱夭 丿蹖讴賳夭 (夭丕丿賴 爻丕賱1812賲蹖賱丕丿蹖 - 丿乇诏匕卮鬲 爻丕賱1870賲蹖賱丕丿蹖)貙 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴 蹖 亘乇蹖鬲丕賳蹖丕貙 讴賴 賳禺爻鬲蹖賳 亘丕乇 丿乇 爻丕賱1854賲蹖賱丕丿蹖 賲賳鬲卮乇 卮丿貨 丨丕氐賱 賲卮丕賴丿丕鬲 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴貙 丿乇亘丕乇賴 蹖 賵囟毓 氐賳毓鬲 丿乇 卮賴乇 芦賲賳趩爻鬲乇禄貙 賵 芦倬乇蹖爻鬲賵賳鈥屄回� 賵 夭賳丿诏蹖 讴丕乇诏乇丕賳貙 賵 乇賵丕亘胤卮丕賳 亘丕 讴丕乇賮乇賲丕蹖丕賳 丕爻鬲貨 芦鬲丕賲爻 诏乇丕丿诏乇蹖賳丿禄貙 賳賲賵賳賴 蹖 氐丕丨亘 氐賳毓鬲 爻賱胤賴 噩賵貙 賵 丕賴賱 卮賴乇 芦讴賵讴賳丕賵賳禄貙 丕夭 賲乇丕讴夭 氐賳毓鬲蹖貙 芦賲乇丿蹖 丕爻鬲 讴丕賲賱丕賸 丕賴賱 毓賲賱禄 讴賴 亘賴 趩蹖夭蹖 噩夭 乇丕爻鬲蹖賴丕貙 賵 丌賲丕乇 亘丕賵乇 賳丿丕乇丿貙 賵 賮乇夭賳丿丕賳 禺賵丿 芦賱賵蹖夭禄 賵 芦鬲丕賲禄 噩賵丕賳 乇丕貙 亘丕 爻乇讴賵亘 讴乇丿賳 亘蹖鈥屫必呚з嗁� 蹖 噩賳亘賴鈥� 賴丕蹖 匕賵賯蹖貙 賵 丌乇賲丕賳蹖 爻乇卮鬲卮丕賳貙 鬲乇亘蹖鬲 賲蹖鈥屭┵嗀� 芦賱賵蹖夭禄 乇丕 亘賴 賴賲爻乇蹖 讴丕乇禺丕賳賴鈥� 丿丕乇蹖 禺爻蹖爻貙 賵 丨賯賴鈥� 亘丕夭貙 亘賴 賳丕賲 芦噩賵爻丕蹖丕 亘丕賳丿乇亘蹖禄 賲蹖鈥屫囏� 讴賴 爻蹖 爻丕賱 丕夭 丿禺鬲乇卮 亘夭乇诏鬲乇 丕爻鬲貙 賵 禺賱賯 賵 禺賵蹖蹖 亘爻 禺卮賳 丿丕乇丿貙 賵 丕夭 丌賳 賯賲丕卮 丌丿賲賴丕蹖蹖 丕爻鬲貙 讴賴 鬲賲丿賳 氐賳毓鬲蹖 丌賳賴丕 乇丕 亘賴 賵噩賵丿 賲蹖鈥屫①堌必� 芦賱賵蹖夭禄 鬲丕 丕賳丿丕夭賴鈥� 丕蹖貙 丕夭 丌賳 噩賴鬲 亘賴 丕蹖賳 夭賳丕卮賵蹖蹖 鬲賳 丿乇 賲蹖鈥屫囏� 讴賴 鬲乇亘蹖鬲蹖 讴賴 倬丿乇卮 亘賴 丕賵 丿丕丿賴貙 丕賵 乇丕 倬乇禺丕卮噩賵貙 賵 禺賵賳爻乇丿貙 亘丕乇 丌賵乇丿賴 丕爻鬲貙 賵 鬲丕 丕賳丿丕夭賴鈥� 丕蹖 賴賲貙 亘賴 丕蹖賳 亘丕賵乇 讴賴 賲蹖鈥屫堌з囏� 亘賴 亘乇丕丿乇蹖讴賴 鬲賳賴丕 讴爻蹖 丕爻鬲 讴賴 芦賱賵蹖夭禄 丿賵爻鬲卮 賲蹖丿丕乇丿貙 賵 讴丕乇賲賳丿 芦亘丕賳丿乇亘蹖禄 丕爻鬲貙 蹖丕乇蹖 讴賳丿貨 ...貨 丕丿亘蹖丕鬲 賲卮丕噩乇賴 丕爻鬲貨
鬲丕乇蹖禺 亘賴賳诏丕賲 乇爻丕賳蹖 08/04/1400賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 05/01/1401賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 丕. 卮乇亘蹖丕賳蹖
Hard Times 鈥� For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirists the social and economic conditions of the era. Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, a short novel that appeared not in monthly publications like the previous ones, but as a weekly serial in his magazine Household Words, from April 1 to August 12, 1854.
毓賳賵丕賳賴丕蹖 趩丕倬 卮丿賴 丿乇 丕蹖乇丕賳: 芦乇賵夭诏丕乇 爻禺鬲禄貨 芦丿賵乇丕賳 爻禺鬲禄貨 芦丿賵乇丕賳 賲卮賯鬲禄貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 趩丕乇賱夭 丿蹖讴賳夭貨 鬲丕乇蹖禺 賳禺爻鬲蹖賳 禺賵丕賳卮: 乇賵夭 倬丕賳夭丿賴賲 賲丕賴 跇賵卅賳 爻丕賱2010賲蹖賱丕丿蹖
毓賳賵丕賳: 乇賵夭诏丕乇 爻禺鬲貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 趩丕乇賱夭 丿蹖讴賳夭貨 賲鬲乇噩賲: 丨爻蹖賳 丕毓乇丕亘蹖貨 鬲賴乇丕賳貙 賳诏丕賴貙 爻丕賱1364貙 丿乇446氐貨 趩丕倬 丿賵賲 爻丕賱1367貨 趩丕倬 爻賵賲 爻丕賱1368貨 賲賵囟賵毓 丿丕爻鬲丕賳 丕夭 賳賵蹖爻賳丿诏丕賳 亘乇蹖鬲丕賳蹖丕 - 爻丿賴19賲
毓賳賵丕賳: 乇賵夭诏丕乇 爻禺鬲貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 趩丕乇賱夭 丿蹖讴賳夭貨 賲鬲乇噩賲: 丕賱賴丕賲 丿丕賳卮 賳跇丕丿貨 鬲賱禺蹖氐 亘乇丕蹖 賳賵噩賵丕賳丕賳貙 丿乇71氐 丿乇 鬲賴乇丕賳貙 丿亘蹖乇貙 爻丕賱1389貨
毓賳賵丕賳: 丿賵乇丕賳 爻禺鬲貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 趩丕乇賱夭 丿蹖讴賳夭貨 賲鬲乇噩賲: 爻蹖丿 噩賱蹖賱 卮丕賴乇賵丿蹖 賱賳诏乇賵丿蹖貨 鬲賴乇丕賳貙 賳卮乇 爻禺賳貙 賲噩蹖丿貙 爻丕賱1394貙 丿乇416氐貨 卮丕亘讴978600941263貨
毓賳賵丕賳: 乇賵夭诏丕乇 爻禺鬲貨 賳賵蹖爻賳丿賴: 趩丕乇賱夭 丿蹖讴賳夭貨 賲鬲乇噩賲: 毓丕乇賮 丿賴賯丕賳貨 鬲亘乇蹖夭貙 丌蹖丿蹖賳 爻丕賵貨 爻丕賱1394貨 丿乇76氐貨 卮丕亘讴9786009533466貨
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鬲丕乇蹖禺 亘賴賳诏丕賲 乇爻丕賳蹖 08/04/1400賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 05/01/1401賴噩乇蹖 禺賵乇卮蹖丿蹖貨 丕. 卮乇亘蹖丕賳蹖
July 9, 2019
The novel depends on the opposition between fact, Dickens's name for the cold and loveless attitude to the life he associated with Utilitarianism, and fancy, which represents all the warmth of the imagination. A contrast which gives it both tension and unity.
September 14, 2022
鈥淭he only difference between us and the professors of virtue or benevolence, or philanthropy - never mind the name - is that we know it is all meaningless, and say so, while they know it equally and will never say so.鈥�
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
One of Dickens' shortest works deemed as one of his best by some readers and critics.... deemed his worse by me. The almost sledgehammer-like satirising of the ills of industrialisation and utilitarianism, with the trials and tribulations of the Gradgrinds. Also a look at the practices, beliefs and education of the ruling classes and how it impacts on the lesser class residents of factory town Coketown (a fictionalised Manchester). Hard times had by all, does not a story make. 3 out of 12.
2009 read
Charles Dickens, Hard Times
One of Dickens' shortest works deemed as one of his best by some readers and critics.... deemed his worse by me. The almost sledgehammer-like satirising of the ills of industrialisation and utilitarianism, with the trials and tribulations of the Gradgrinds. Also a look at the practices, beliefs and education of the ruling classes and how it impacts on the lesser class residents of factory town Coketown (a fictionalised Manchester). Hard times had by all, does not a story make. 3 out of 12.
2009 read
February 22, 2017
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 ...
November 6, 2023
Hard Times is my return to Charles Dickens as an adult. I have read Oliver Twist and David Copperfield as a child. I didn't have an appetite for Dickens when I was young, for his subjects were sad and depressing. But as an adult, I understand and appreciate him. He touched so many sides of the society which were rarely spoken of before. He penetrated into human minds so thoroughly and exposed both their black and white sides. Although these qualities in his writing made me sad and depress before, the same qualities have made me fall in love with his writing now.
Hard Times is Dickens's shortest novel. Through a well outlined and well-written story, Dickens comments on the lives, living, and conditions of towns in the light of industrialization. This social commentary gives a perfect picture of the lives and conditions of living of working-class people and the dominating power exercised on them by their masters over every aspect of their lives, suppressing them and using them to secure their wealth and position in life.
There is also a strong criticism of utilitarianism. This theory was introduced in the aftermath of the industrial revolution to make it easy for the masters to control the working class, depriving them of any capacity to reason and making them live a submissive life according to their whims and fancies. Dickens's use of Facts against Reason throughout the book subtly mocks the theory and exposes the social downfall that it would lead to. He brings the character of Louisa Gradgrind and demonstrates what tragedies one would face if they are suppressed of their capacity to feel and to reason. Although it is a little overstated, the point is clearly proved.
I liked the character variety in the book. They ranged from kind, goodhearted, sweet-tempered to cunning, boastful, treacherous. This wide variety added colour and contrast to the book. The story was engaging, his social views kept me well connected with it all along. I enjoyed his satire very much. Dickens is a realistic writer of the Victorian era and that is the secret of his popularity even today.
Hard Times is Dickens's shortest novel. Through a well outlined and well-written story, Dickens comments on the lives, living, and conditions of towns in the light of industrialization. This social commentary gives a perfect picture of the lives and conditions of living of working-class people and the dominating power exercised on them by their masters over every aspect of their lives, suppressing them and using them to secure their wealth and position in life.
There is also a strong criticism of utilitarianism. This theory was introduced in the aftermath of the industrial revolution to make it easy for the masters to control the working class, depriving them of any capacity to reason and making them live a submissive life according to their whims and fancies. Dickens's use of Facts against Reason throughout the book subtly mocks the theory and exposes the social downfall that it would lead to. He brings the character of Louisa Gradgrind and demonstrates what tragedies one would face if they are suppressed of their capacity to feel and to reason. Although it is a little overstated, the point is clearly proved.
I liked the character variety in the book. They ranged from kind, goodhearted, sweet-tempered to cunning, boastful, treacherous. This wide variety added colour and contrast to the book. The story was engaging, his social views kept me well connected with it all along. I enjoyed his satire very much. Dickens is a realistic writer of the Victorian era and that is the secret of his popularity even today.
December 29, 2018
Hard Times is Dickens鈥檚 novel set in the fictional Coketown and centering around utilitarian and industrial influences on Victorian society.
Dickens鈥檚 brilliant use of characterization can be seen in high form here and as always, his naming of his story鈥檚 populace is entertaining by itself. The best is without a doubt Mr. McChokumchild, a teacher.
Louisa Gradgrind is a thinly disguised fictionalization of John Stuart Mill. One of the great things about reading literature from the 1800s or earlier is that a reader can ascertain how contemporary works have been influenced by the older work.
Wildly inspirational and influential. Elements of Hard Times and Dickens work in general can be seen in Roger Waters works, Monty Python and even The Big Lebowski.
** 2018 - Dickens' character names are the best - Gradgrind? Bounderby, Jupe, Sparsit. Harthouse, Blackpool, Slackbridge. But of course Mr. McChoakumchild is the best, maybe the best in his canon. McChoakumchild's name is an ax upon which his satire grinds, illustrating his social commentary.
Dickens鈥檚 brilliant use of characterization can be seen in high form here and as always, his naming of his story鈥檚 populace is entertaining by itself. The best is without a doubt Mr. McChokumchild, a teacher.
Louisa Gradgrind is a thinly disguised fictionalization of John Stuart Mill. One of the great things about reading literature from the 1800s or earlier is that a reader can ascertain how contemporary works have been influenced by the older work.
Wildly inspirational and influential. Elements of Hard Times and Dickens work in general can be seen in Roger Waters works, Monty Python and even The Big Lebowski.
** 2018 - Dickens' character names are the best - Gradgrind? Bounderby, Jupe, Sparsit. Harthouse, Blackpool, Slackbridge. But of course Mr. McChoakumchild is the best, maybe the best in his canon. McChoakumchild's name is an ax upon which his satire grinds, illustrating his social commentary.
July 16, 2020
Dickens wrote Hard Times as an attempt to increase sales of his flagging magazine and had to produce it in weekly instalments which probably explains why it's so bereft of inspiration and artistry. It's ironic that a novel lauding the importance of heart and imagination as guiding principles in social reform should have a mercantile consideration at root. Hard Times is a leaden rhetorical read. There's little subtlety in its sermonising. There's not even much of a story and what story there is doesn't always make sense. Most surprisingly of all it doesn't include a single memorable character. The characters are programmed automatons of the flimsy plot. Even the humour is relentlessly off key. The only positive note is his standard sentimentalised girl-woman only plays a minor role in this novel.
For me this joins A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield as duds in the Dickens' canon, though it doesn't possess the redeeming features those two novels possessed.
For me this joins A Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield as duds in the Dickens' canon, though it doesn't possess the redeeming features those two novels possessed.
August 22, 2022
Dickens' classic, satirical and realistic novel Hard Times was there in my syllabus, MA. I enjoyed it. The novel juxtaposes emotions against hardcore rationalism. This juxtaposition, however, cannot stand the test of time today (I say it with a weary heart). Dickens' writing might appear a little short to boring in today's context. For those who want to enjoy good language and some challenging narrative, the novel will still be luring.
March 8, 2024
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丕賱賰鬲丕亘 丕賱丕賵賱 : 丕賱亘匕乇
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丕賱卮賵丕乇毓 氐睾賷乇丞 賲兀賴賵賱丞 亘廿賳丕爻 賲鬲卮丕亘賴賵賳 賵禺乇賵噩賴賲 賵毓賵丿鬲賴賲 丕賱賶 毓賲賱 賵丕丨丿 賵賱丕卮卅 賮賶 丨賷丕鬲賴賲 爻賵賶 丕賱毓賲賱 .
賲乇賮賵囟 亘丕賱胤亘毓 丕賳 鬲賵噩丿 丨賵丕卅胤 賲乇爻賵賲 毓賱賷賴丕 禺賷賵賱 賲孬賱丕 丕賵 丕乇囟 賲乇爻賵賲丞 亘丕賱夭賴賵乇 賮賴匕丕 睾賷乇 賵丕賯毓賶 賵賲乇賮賵囟 賲噩乇丿 丕賱鬲賮賰賷乇 賮賶 匕賱賰 .
賵賱丕賳賳爻賶 丕賳 賳匕賰乇 氐丿賷賯賴 丕賱丨賲賷賲 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賵賳丿乇亘賶听 丕賱匕賶 賷鬲賮賯 賲毓賴 鬲賲丕賲丕 賮賶 丕賮賰丕乇賴 賵賲噩乇丿 鬲賲丕賲丕 賲賳 丕賱毓賵丕胤賮 賵賴賵 乇噩賱 賲氐乇賮賶 貙 鬲丕噩乇 賵氐丕丨亘 賲氐賳毓 貙 乇噩賱 毓氐丕賲賶 賱丕 賷鬲賵賯賮 毓賳 鬲匕賰賷乇賳丕 亘匕賱賰 賵亘胤賮賵賱鬲賴 丕賱亘丕卅爻丞.
賵 賲爻夭 爻亘丕乇爻鬲 賵賴賶 丕賱鬲賶 賰丕賳鬲 鬲毓賲賱 賵 鬲丨賷丕 賲毓 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶 賵丕賱鬲賶 賰丕賳 丿賵賲丕 賷匕賰乇 丕氐賱賴丕 賵夭賵噩賴丕 丕賱賲鬲賵賮賶 賵賲賰丕賳鬲賴賲 丕賱毓丕賱賷丞 賲賳 賯亘賱 賵丕賱鬲賶 鬲乇賰鬲 丕賱賲賳夭賱 丨賷賳 鬲夭賵噩 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶 .
賵賳賱鬲賯賶 賮賶 丕賱賲丿乇爻丞 亘 爻賷爻賶 噩賷亘 丕賱鬲賶 丕賱鬲丨賯鬲 丨丿賷孬丕 賱賱賲丿乇爻丞 丨賷賳賲丕 噩丕亍鬲 賲毓 賵丕賱丿賴丕 賱賱亘賱丿丞听 賲毓 丕賱爻賷乇賰 丕賱匕賶 賷毓賲賱 賮賷賴听 賱賲丿賷乇賴 賲爻鬲乇 爻賱賷乇賷 貙 賵亘丕賱胤亘毓 鬲乇亘賷鬲賴丕 賷禺鬲賱賮 賰孬賷乇丕 毓賳 鬲毓丕賱賷賲 賲丿乇爻丞 噩賷乇丕 噩乇丕賳丿 賵丕爻丕賱賷亘賴 賵賯賳丕毓丕鬲賴 .
賮賴賱 爻賷賯亘賱听 亘賵噩賵丿 賮鬲丕丞 賲孬賱听 爻賷爻賶 賮賶 丕賱賲丿乇爻丞 賱鬲丿賲乇 丕賮賰丕乇賴賲 責責
賵鬲噩毓賱 丕賱丕胤賮丕賱 丕賱丕禺乇賵賳 賷賮賰乇賵賳 丕賵 丨丕卮丕 賱賱賴 賷鬲禺賷賱賵賳 馃槻! 禺丕氐丞 亘毓丿賲丕 乇兀賶 丕亘賳丕卅賴 賷卮丕賴丿丕賳 丕賱爻賷乇賰听 賵賴賵 亘丕賱胤亘毓 卮卅 睾賷乇 賲賯亘賵賱听 .
賮賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶听 丕丨丿丕孬 爻賷賰賵賳 賱賴丕 鬲丕孬賷乇 賰亘賷乇 賮賶 丨賷丕丞 爻賷爻賶 賵賲爻鬲賯亘賱賴丕听
賮賴匕丞 賴賶 丕賱亘匕乇丞 丕賱鬲賶 賳乇賶 賲孬丕賱 鬲丕孬賷乇賴丕 賮賶 卮禺氐 賱賵賷夭丕 賵鬲賵賲 貙 賵賳匕賰乇 卮賷卅丕 賴丕賲丕 噩丿丕 賱賵賷夭丕 丕禺鬲 毓胤賵賮丞 賵丨賳賵賳丞 賵鬲丨亘 鬲賵賲 賱丿乇噩丞 鬲噩毓賱賴丕 鬲賮毓賱 丕賶 卮卅 賲賳 丕噩賱 爻毓丕丿鬲賴 貙 卮噩丕毓丞 賱丕鬲禺丕賮 丕賳 鬲鬲丨賲賱 賳鬲賷噩丞 丕賮毓丕賱賴丕 丕賱胤亘賷毓賷丞 賱賰賳 丕賱禺丕胤卅丞 亘賳馗乇 賵丕賱丿賴丕 賰賲卮丕賴丿丞 丕賱爻賷乇賰 丕賵 丕賱鬲禺賷賱 丕賵 丕賱鬲爻丕丐賱 .
賵 賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶 爻鬲賷賮賳 亘賱丕賰亘賵賱 賵乇丕卮賷賱 賰毓丕賲賱賷賳 賮賶 賲氐賳毓 丕賱賳爻賷噩听 賱 亘丕賵賳丿乇亘賶听 貙 賵賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶 丨賷丕鬲賴賲 貙賵丕賱毓噩賵夭 丕賱睾丕賲囟丞 丕賱鬲賶 爻賷賱鬲賯賷賴丕 爻鬲賷賮賳 賮賲賳 賴賶 責責
丕賱賰鬲丕亘 丕賱孬丕賳賶 :丕賱丨氐丕丿
賳賰賲賱 丕賱丨賷丕丞 賲毓 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶 賵 賲爻夭 爻亘丕乇爻鬲听 賵鬲賵賲 賵賱賵賷夭丕听
孬賲 賳鬲毓乇賮 賴賳丕 毓賱賶 賲爻鬲乇 噩賷賲爻 賴丕乇鬲賴丕賵爻 丕賱卮禺氐 丕賱賲氐丕亘 亘丕賱爻兀賲 丕賱匕賶 賱丕 賷賮囟賱 丕賶 丕賱丕乇丕亍 賵丕賱匕賶 賷賳囟賲 丨丿賷孬丕 賱賷噩乇亘 賮賰乇 賲爻鬲乇 噩乇丕賳丿 賵丕賮賰丕乇 亘賱丿鬲賴 貙 賵鬲噩匕亘賴 夭賵噩丞 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶 丕賱鬲賶 賷噩丿賴丕 乇丕亘胤丞 丕賱噩兀卮 賱丕鬲鬲乇賰 賳賮爻賴丕 賱賱鬲氐乇賮丕鬲 丕賱毓賮賵賷丞 賵賷卮毓乇 丕賳 賴賳丕賰 卮禺氐賷丞 丕禺乇賶 賵乇丕亍 鬲賱賰 丕賱卮禺氐賷丞 丕賱噩丕賲丿丞 丨鬲賶 賷馗賴乇 丕賱噩乇賵 賮鬲鬲睾賷乇 爻賲丕鬲 賵噩賴賴丕 賮鬲卮乇賯 賱乇丐賷丞 賴匕丕 丕賱噩乇賵 銆� 丕賱噩乇賵 賴賵 賲爻賲賶 賱賱卮禺氐賷丞 賰賲丕 爻賲丕賴丕 賲爻鬲乇 噩賷賲爻 賵丕毓鬲賲丿賴丕 丿賷賰賳夭 賮賶 丕賱丨丿賷孬 睾丕賱亘丕 毓賳 賴匕賴 丕賱卮禺氐賷丞 丕賱賲爻鬲賮夭丞 丕賱卮丿賷丿丞 丕賱丕賳丕賳賷丞 馃槨 賵賲毓 賵丕噩亘 丕賱丕毓鬲匕丕乇 胤亘毓丕 賱賱噩乇賵 丕賱丨賯賷賯賶 賱鬲卮亘賷賴 賴匕丕 丕賱卮禺氐 丕賱丕賳丕賳賶 亘賴 馃榿銆�
賵亘賴匕丕 丕賱鬲丨賵賱 鬲夭丿丕丿 乇睾亘丞 賲爻鬲乇 噩賷賲爻 賮賶 丕賱鬲賯乇亘 賲賳 賲爻夭 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶 賮賷賯鬲乇亘 賲賳 丕賱噩乇賵 賱賷丨馗賶 亘孬賯鬲賴丕 .
賮賲丕匕丕 爻鬲賰賵賳 賳鬲賷噩丞 乇睾亘鬲賴 責 賵賲丕賴賶 丨賯賷賯丞 卮禺氐賷鬲賴 賵丕賮賰丕乇賴 賵丿賵丕賮毓 丕賮毓丕賱賴 責賵賲丕匕丕 爻賷賮毓賱 丕賱噩乇賵 責 賵賲丕匕丕 爻鬲賮毓賱 賲爻 爻亘丕乇爻鬲 責 賵賲丕賴賶 賳鬲賷噩丞 鬲乇亘賷丞 賲爻鬲乇 噩乇丕賳丿 賱丕亘賳丕卅賴
賵賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶 賲丕丨丿孬 賱賱毓丕賲賱 爻鬲賷賮賳 爻賵丕亍 賲毓 夭賲賱丕卅賴 丕賱毓賲丕賱 丕賵 賲毓 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶
孬賲 賳賳鬲賯賱 賱賱賰鬲丕亘 丕賱孬丕賱孬 : 丕賱丨氐賷賱丞
賱賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶 賳鬲賷噩丞 丕賮賰丕乇 賲爻鬲乇 噩乇丕賳丿 賵賴賱 爻賷馗賱 毓賱賶 丕賷賲丕賳賴听 亘賴丕 責
賵 賳毓賵丿 賱賳賱鬲賯賶 亘爻賷爻賶 賲乇丞 丕禺乇賶 賱賷賰賵賳 賱賴丕 賲賵丕賯賮 賴丕賲丞 賵 賲丐孬乇丞 . 賵賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶听 丕賲賵乇 賲賳 胤賮賵賱丞 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賷 貙 賵賷鬲兀賰丿 亘賰賱 丕賱胤乇賯 丕賱賲賲賰賳丞 賰乇賴賶 賵丕丨鬲賯丕乇賶 賱賱噩乇賵 .
丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 賲丕亘賷賳 丕賱爻賴賱 丕丨賷丕賳丕 賵丕賱氐毓亘 丕丨賷丕賳丕 丕禺乇賶 貙 賱賷爻鬲 氐毓賵亘丞 亘賯丿乇 賵噩賵丿 亘毓囟 丕賱鬲毓亘賷乇丕鬲 賵丕賱賰賱賲丕鬲 丕賱鬲賶 賰丕賳鬲 毓爻賷乇 毓賱賶 賮賴賲賴丕 .賱賰賳 賮賶 丕賱賲噩賲賱 丕毓噩亘鬲賳賶 賵禺丕氐丞 丕賳賶 亘丿兀鬲賴丕 賵亘丿丕禺賱賶 鬲禺賵賮 賲賳賴丕 賱氐毓賵亘鬲賴丕 丕賵 賱孬賯賱賴丕 賱賰賳賴丕 賮丕噩兀鬲賳賶 賮丕賳丿賲噩鬲 賲毓賴丕 賵丕毓噩亘鬲賳賶
賲孬賱賲丕 鬲爻毓丿賳賶 丕賱乇賵丕賷丕鬲 丕賱鬲賶 鬲賱丕賯賶 鬲賵賯毓丕鬲賷 鬲爻毓丿賳賶 丕賱乇賵丕賷丕鬲 丕賱鬲賶 丕鬲賵賯毓 孬賯賱賴丕 賮丕噩丿 丕賳 禺賵賮賶 賱賷爻 賮賶 賲丨賱賴 馃ぉ馃ぉ馃槏馃槏
賲兀禺匕賶 丕賱賵丨賷丿 賴賵 丕賳 賴賳丕賰 亘毓囟 丕賱賰賱賲丕鬲 丕賱鬲賶 賱賲 鬲毓丿 賲毓乇賵賮丞 賵睾賷乇 賲毓乇賵賮 賲毓賳丕賴丕 賱賱賯丕乇卅 丕賱毓丕丿賶 賲孬賱賶 賰丕賳 賲賳 丕賱丕賮囟賱 丕賳 賷囟丕賮 賲毓賳賶 丕賵 卮乇丨 賱賴匕丞 丕賱賰賱賲丕鬲
伽 / 佶 / 佗贍佗贍
丕賱賰鬲丕亘 丕賱丕賵賱 : 丕賱亘匕乇
賵賮賷賴 賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶 噩乇丕丿 噩乇丕賷賳丿 賵丕亘賳丕卅賴 賵賳禺氐 亘丕賱匕賰乇 賱賵賷夭丕 賵鬲賵賲 貙 賵賳乇賶 丕爻賱賵亘 賵賯賳丕毓丞 噩乇丕丿 噩乇丕賷賳丿 爻賵丕亍听 賮賶 丨賷丕鬲賴 丕賵 賮賶 鬲乇亘賷丞 丕亘賳丕卅賴 賵 賮賶 丕賱賲丿乇爻丞 貙 丕賱丨賷丕丞 賵丕賱鬲乇亘賷丞 丕賱賯丕卅賲丞 毓賱賶 丕賱賵賯丕卅毓
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銆娰勜� 鬲毓賱賲賵丕 賴丐賱丕亍 丕賱氐亘賷丞 賵丕賱賮鬲賷丕鬲 卮賷卅丕 毓丿丕 丕賱賵賯丕卅毓貙听 賮丕賱賵賯丕卅毓
听賵丨丿賴丕 賴賶 丕賱賲胤賱賵亘丞 賮賷 丕賱丨賷丕丞 . 賱丕鬲睾乇爻賵丕 卮賷卅丕 爻賵丕賴丕 賵丕賯鬲賱毓賵丕 賰賱 卮卅 毓丿丕賴丕 貙 賮賲丕 亘睾賷乇 丕賱賵賯丕卅毓 賷爻毓賰賲 丕賳 鬲氐賵睾賵丕 毓賯賵賱 丕賱丨賷賵丕賳丕鬲 丕賱賳丕胤賯丞貙听 賱丕賳賴 賲丕 賲賳 卮卅 賷噩丿賶 毓賱賷賴賲 爻賵丕賴丕銆�
丨爻賳丕 賮賳丨賳 賮賶 賲丿乇爻丞 賵毓丕卅賱丞 賵亘賱丿丞 鬲毓鬲賲丿 毓賱賶 丕賱賵賯丕卅毓貙听 賱丕 賷賵噩丿 丕毓鬲乇丕賮 亘丕賱毓賵丕胤賮 貙 賱丕 賵噩賵丿 賱賱禺賷丕賱 貙 賱丕賷賲賰賳 丕賳 賳爻賲丨 亘丕賱鬲爻丕丐賱 貙 丕賱丨噩乇丕鬲 賵丕賱賲亘丕賳賶 禺丕賱賷丞 賲賳听 丕賶 賲馗賴乇 賱賱噩賲丕賱 .
賲丿賷賳丞 賲賳 丕賱丕噩乇 丕賱丕丨賲乇 丕賱匕賶 丕氐亘丨 丕爻賵丿 賲賳 丕賱乇賲丕丿 .
丕賱卮賵丕乇毓 氐睾賷乇丞 賲兀賴賵賱丞 亘廿賳丕爻 賲鬲卮丕亘賴賵賳 賵禺乇賵噩賴賲 賵毓賵丿鬲賴賲 丕賱賶 毓賲賱 賵丕丨丿 賵賱丕卮卅 賮賶 丨賷丕鬲賴賲 爻賵賶 丕賱毓賲賱 .
賲乇賮賵囟 亘丕賱胤亘毓 丕賳 鬲賵噩丿 丨賵丕卅胤 賲乇爻賵賲 毓賱賷賴丕 禺賷賵賱 賲孬賱丕 丕賵 丕乇囟 賲乇爻賵賲丞 亘丕賱夭賴賵乇 賮賴匕丕 睾賷乇 賵丕賯毓賶 賵賲乇賮賵囟 賲噩乇丿 丕賱鬲賮賰賷乇 賮賶 匕賱賰 .
賵賱丕賳賳爻賶 丕賳 賳匕賰乇 氐丿賷賯賴 丕賱丨賲賷賲 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賵賳丿乇亘賶听 丕賱匕賶 賷鬲賮賯 賲毓賴 鬲賲丕賲丕 賮賶 丕賮賰丕乇賴 賵賲噩乇丿 鬲賲丕賲丕 賲賳 丕賱毓賵丕胤賮 賵賴賵 乇噩賱 賲氐乇賮賶 貙 鬲丕噩乇 賵氐丕丨亘 賲氐賳毓 貙 乇噩賱 毓氐丕賲賶 賱丕 賷鬲賵賯賮 毓賳 鬲匕賰賷乇賳丕 亘匕賱賰 賵亘胤賮賵賱鬲賴 丕賱亘丕卅爻丞.
賵 賲爻夭 爻亘丕乇爻鬲 賵賴賶 丕賱鬲賶 賰丕賳鬲 鬲毓賲賱 賵 鬲丨賷丕 賲毓 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶 賵丕賱鬲賶 賰丕賳 丿賵賲丕 賷匕賰乇 丕氐賱賴丕 賵夭賵噩賴丕 丕賱賲鬲賵賮賶 賵賲賰丕賳鬲賴賲 丕賱毓丕賱賷丞 賲賳 賯亘賱 賵丕賱鬲賶 鬲乇賰鬲 丕賱賲賳夭賱 丨賷賳 鬲夭賵噩 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶 .
賵賳賱鬲賯賶 賮賶 丕賱賲丿乇爻丞 亘 爻賷爻賶 噩賷亘 丕賱鬲賶 丕賱鬲丨賯鬲 丨丿賷孬丕 賱賱賲丿乇爻丞 丨賷賳賲丕 噩丕亍鬲 賲毓 賵丕賱丿賴丕 賱賱亘賱丿丞听 賲毓 丕賱爻賷乇賰 丕賱匕賶 賷毓賲賱 賮賷賴听 賱賲丿賷乇賴 賲爻鬲乇 爻賱賷乇賷 貙 賵亘丕賱胤亘毓 鬲乇亘賷鬲賴丕 賷禺鬲賱賮 賰孬賷乇丕 毓賳 鬲毓丕賱賷賲 賲丿乇爻丞 噩賷乇丕 噩乇丕賳丿 賵丕爻丕賱賷亘賴 賵賯賳丕毓丕鬲賴 .
賮賴賱 爻賷賯亘賱听 亘賵噩賵丿 賮鬲丕丞 賲孬賱听 爻賷爻賶 賮賶 丕賱賲丿乇爻丞 賱鬲丿賲乇 丕賮賰丕乇賴賲 責責
賵鬲噩毓賱 丕賱丕胤賮丕賱 丕賱丕禺乇賵賳 賷賮賰乇賵賳 丕賵 丨丕卮丕 賱賱賴 賷鬲禺賷賱賵賳 馃槻! 禺丕氐丞 亘毓丿賲丕 乇兀賶 丕亘賳丕卅賴 賷卮丕賴丿丕賳 丕賱爻賷乇賰听 賵賴賵 亘丕賱胤亘毓 卮卅 睾賷乇 賲賯亘賵賱听 .
賮賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶听 丕丨丿丕孬 爻賷賰賵賳 賱賴丕 鬲丕孬賷乇 賰亘賷乇 賮賶 丨賷丕丞 爻賷爻賶 賵賲爻鬲賯亘賱賴丕听
賮賴匕丞 賴賶 丕賱亘匕乇丞 丕賱鬲賶 賳乇賶 賲孬丕賱 鬲丕孬賷乇賴丕 賮賶 卮禺氐 賱賵賷夭丕 賵鬲賵賲 貙 賵賳匕賰乇 卮賷卅丕 賴丕賲丕 噩丿丕 賱賵賷夭丕 丕禺鬲 毓胤賵賮丞 賵丨賳賵賳丞 賵鬲丨亘 鬲賵賲 賱丿乇噩丞 鬲噩毓賱賴丕 鬲賮毓賱 丕賶 卮卅 賲賳 丕噩賱 爻毓丕丿鬲賴 貙 卮噩丕毓丞 賱丕鬲禺丕賮 丕賳 鬲鬲丨賲賱 賳鬲賷噩丞 丕賮毓丕賱賴丕 丕賱胤亘賷毓賷丞 賱賰賳 丕賱禺丕胤卅丞 亘賳馗乇 賵丕賱丿賴丕 賰賲卮丕賴丿丞 丕賱爻賷乇賰 丕賵 丕賱鬲禺賷賱 丕賵 丕賱鬲爻丕丐賱 .
賵 賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶 爻鬲賷賮賳 亘賱丕賰亘賵賱 賵乇丕卮賷賱 賰毓丕賲賱賷賳 賮賶 賲氐賳毓 丕賱賳爻賷噩听 賱 亘丕賵賳丿乇亘賶听 貙 賵賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶 丨賷丕鬲賴賲 貙賵丕賱毓噩賵夭 丕賱睾丕賲囟丞 丕賱鬲賶 爻賷賱鬲賯賷賴丕 爻鬲賷賮賳 賮賲賳 賴賶 責責
丕賱賰鬲丕亘 丕賱孬丕賳賶 :丕賱丨氐丕丿
賳賰賲賱 丕賱丨賷丕丞 賲毓 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶 賵 賲爻夭 爻亘丕乇爻鬲听 賵鬲賵賲 賵賱賵賷夭丕听
孬賲 賳鬲毓乇賮 賴賳丕 毓賱賶 賲爻鬲乇 噩賷賲爻 賴丕乇鬲賴丕賵爻 丕賱卮禺氐 丕賱賲氐丕亘 亘丕賱爻兀賲 丕賱匕賶 賱丕 賷賮囟賱 丕賶 丕賱丕乇丕亍 賵丕賱匕賶 賷賳囟賲 丨丿賷孬丕 賱賷噩乇亘 賮賰乇 賲爻鬲乇 噩乇丕賳丿 賵丕賮賰丕乇 亘賱丿鬲賴 貙 賵鬲噩匕亘賴 夭賵噩丞 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶 丕賱鬲賶 賷噩丿賴丕 乇丕亘胤丞 丕賱噩兀卮 賱丕鬲鬲乇賰 賳賮爻賴丕 賱賱鬲氐乇賮丕鬲 丕賱毓賮賵賷丞 賵賷卮毓乇 丕賳 賴賳丕賰 卮禺氐賷丞 丕禺乇賶 賵乇丕亍 鬲賱賰 丕賱卮禺氐賷丞 丕賱噩丕賲丿丞 丨鬲賶 賷馗賴乇 丕賱噩乇賵 賮鬲鬲睾賷乇 爻賲丕鬲 賵噩賴賴丕 賮鬲卮乇賯 賱乇丐賷丞 賴匕丕 丕賱噩乇賵 銆� 丕賱噩乇賵 賴賵 賲爻賲賶 賱賱卮禺氐賷丞 賰賲丕 爻賲丕賴丕 賲爻鬲乇 噩賷賲爻 賵丕毓鬲賲丿賴丕 丿賷賰賳夭 賮賶 丕賱丨丿賷孬 睾丕賱亘丕 毓賳 賴匕賴 丕賱卮禺氐賷丞 丕賱賲爻鬲賮夭丞 丕賱卮丿賷丿丞 丕賱丕賳丕賳賷丞 馃槨 賵賲毓 賵丕噩亘 丕賱丕毓鬲匕丕乇 胤亘毓丕 賱賱噩乇賵 丕賱丨賯賷賯賶 賱鬲卮亘賷賴 賴匕丕 丕賱卮禺氐 丕賱丕賳丕賳賶 亘賴 馃榿銆�
賵亘賴匕丕 丕賱鬲丨賵賱 鬲夭丿丕丿 乇睾亘丞 賲爻鬲乇 噩賷賲爻 賮賶 丕賱鬲賯乇亘 賲賳 賲爻夭 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶 賮賷賯鬲乇亘 賲賳 丕賱噩乇賵 賱賷丨馗賶 亘孬賯鬲賴丕 .
賮賲丕匕丕 爻鬲賰賵賳 賳鬲賷噩丞 乇睾亘鬲賴 責 賵賲丕賴賶 丨賯賷賯丞 卮禺氐賷鬲賴 賵丕賮賰丕乇賴 賵丿賵丕賮毓 丕賮毓丕賱賴 責賵賲丕匕丕 爻賷賮毓賱 丕賱噩乇賵 責 賵賲丕匕丕 爻鬲賮毓賱 賲爻 爻亘丕乇爻鬲 責 賵賲丕賴賶 賳鬲賷噩丞 鬲乇亘賷丞 賲爻鬲乇 噩乇丕賳丿 賱丕亘賳丕卅賴
賵賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶 賲丕丨丿孬 賱賱毓丕賲賱 爻鬲賷賮賳 爻賵丕亍 賲毓 夭賲賱丕卅賴 丕賱毓賲丕賱 丕賵 賲毓 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賶
孬賲 賳賳鬲賯賱 賱賱賰鬲丕亘 丕賱孬丕賱孬 : 丕賱丨氐賷賱丞
賱賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶 賳鬲賷噩丞 丕賮賰丕乇 賲爻鬲乇 噩乇丕賳丿 賵賴賱 爻賷馗賱 毓賱賶 丕賷賲丕賳賴听 亘賴丕 責
賵 賳毓賵丿 賱賳賱鬲賯賶 亘爻賷爻賶 賲乇丞 丕禺乇賶 賱賷賰賵賳 賱賴丕 賲賵丕賯賮 賴丕賲丞 賵 賲丐孬乇丞 . 賵賳鬲毓乇賮 毓賱賶听 丕賲賵乇 賲賳 胤賮賵賱丞 賲爻鬲乇 亘丕賳丿賵乇亘賷 貙 賵賷鬲兀賰丿 亘賰賱 丕賱胤乇賯 丕賱賲賲賰賳丞 賰乇賴賶 賵丕丨鬲賯丕乇賶 賱賱噩乇賵 .
丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 賲丕亘賷賳 丕賱爻賴賱 丕丨賷丕賳丕 賵丕賱氐毓亘 丕丨賷丕賳丕 丕禺乇賶 貙 賱賷爻鬲 氐毓賵亘丞 亘賯丿乇 賵噩賵丿 亘毓囟 丕賱鬲毓亘賷乇丕鬲 賵丕賱賰賱賲丕鬲 丕賱鬲賶 賰丕賳鬲 毓爻賷乇 毓賱賶 賮賴賲賴丕 .賱賰賳 賮賶 丕賱賲噩賲賱 丕毓噩亘鬲賳賶 賵禺丕氐丞 丕賳賶 亘丿兀鬲賴丕 賵亘丿丕禺賱賶 鬲禺賵賮 賲賳賴丕 賱氐毓賵亘鬲賴丕 丕賵 賱孬賯賱賴丕 賱賰賳賴丕 賮丕噩兀鬲賳賶 賮丕賳丿賲噩鬲 賲毓賴丕 賵丕毓噩亘鬲賳賶
賲孬賱賲丕 鬲爻毓丿賳賶 丕賱乇賵丕賷丕鬲 丕賱鬲賶 鬲賱丕賯賶 鬲賵賯毓丕鬲賷 鬲爻毓丿賳賶 丕賱乇賵丕賷丕鬲 丕賱鬲賶 丕鬲賵賯毓 孬賯賱賴丕 賮丕噩丿 丕賳 禺賵賮賶 賱賷爻 賮賶 賲丨賱賴 馃ぉ馃ぉ馃槏馃槏
賲兀禺匕賶 丕賱賵丨賷丿 賴賵 丕賳 賴賳丕賰 亘毓囟 丕賱賰賱賲丕鬲 丕賱鬲賶 賱賲 鬲毓丿 賲毓乇賵賮丞 賵睾賷乇 賲毓乇賵賮 賲毓賳丕賴丕 賱賱賯丕乇卅 丕賱毓丕丿賶 賲孬賱賶 賰丕賳 賲賳 丕賱丕賮囟賱 丕賳 賷囟丕賮 賲毓賳賶 丕賵 卮乇丨 賱賴匕丞 丕賱賰賱賲丕鬲
伽 / 佶 / 佗贍佗贍
January 10, 2023
鈥淣ow, 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.鈥�
So begins Charles Dickens鈥� Hard Times. He creates a thesis for a character who believes that facts and a rationalism philosophy can conquer all, and for the next 280 pages will break down this philosophy.
It is well known that Dickens is a rather emotional writer. He wants to make people feel, so such a philosophy as the above must have been quite irritating to him. Imagine if you will that Dickens鈥� point in this novel is a watermelon. I know this sound peculiar, but bear with me. How to make sure that all his readers understand his point?
By doing the following:
This is the most blunt and blatant book imaginable. I鈥檓 not faulting him for that. Dickens wanted to make sure his readers got his point, and he was the most popular author amongst general readers, including many lesser educated. He wanted to make sure they got it, and by God, he would do his best to make sure they did. That said, the lack of subtlety hurt it from a modern perspective... still, he cannot really be faulted for that.
I鈥檝e now read four Dickens books and of the four this is my least favorite. It doesn鈥檛 have the emotional impact of A Tale of Two Cities, the good humor of Oliver Twist or the perfect delivery of his moral that A Christmas Carol has. That鈥檚 not to say this is a bad book, it was quite a comfortable read with moments of the genius I鈥檝e come to expect from him, it just didn鈥檛 quite match up to what I鈥檝e enjoyed in the past. I鈥檝e noticed that I tend to prefer Dickens when he鈥檚 in a more comedic mode, and while there is humor here, it is overall a much more serious book. At one point, prior to starting to read Dickens, I almost chose this to be my first one on account of it being so short compared to his other books. I'm glad I didn't as I'm not sure I would have felt the need to immediately jump to another of his works. Still, I鈥檓 glad I read it and will be continuing making my way through his works. 3/5 stars.
So begins Charles Dickens鈥� Hard Times. He creates a thesis for a character who believes that facts and a rationalism philosophy can conquer all, and for the next 280 pages will break down this philosophy.
It is well known that Dickens is a rather emotional writer. He wants to make people feel, so such a philosophy as the above must have been quite irritating to him. Imagine if you will that Dickens鈥� point in this novel is a watermelon. I know this sound peculiar, but bear with me. How to make sure that all his readers understand his point?
By doing the following:
This is the most blunt and blatant book imaginable. I鈥檓 not faulting him for that. Dickens wanted to make sure his readers got his point, and he was the most popular author amongst general readers, including many lesser educated. He wanted to make sure they got it, and by God, he would do his best to make sure they did. That said, the lack of subtlety hurt it from a modern perspective... still, he cannot really be faulted for that.
I鈥檝e now read four Dickens books and of the four this is my least favorite. It doesn鈥檛 have the emotional impact of A Tale of Two Cities, the good humor of Oliver Twist or the perfect delivery of his moral that A Christmas Carol has. That鈥檚 not to say this is a bad book, it was quite a comfortable read with moments of the genius I鈥檝e come to expect from him, it just didn鈥檛 quite match up to what I鈥檝e enjoyed in the past. I鈥檝e noticed that I tend to prefer Dickens when he鈥檚 in a more comedic mode, and while there is humor here, it is overall a much more serious book. At one point, prior to starting to read Dickens, I almost chose this to be my first one on account of it being so short compared to his other books. I'm glad I didn't as I'm not sure I would have felt the need to immediately jump to another of his works. Still, I鈥檓 glad I read it and will be continuing making my way through his works. 3/5 stars.
Want to read
January 15, 2024they were the hard of times, they were the hard of times
May 7, 2025
John Ruskin declared Hard Times Dickens' best novel. It is worth asking why this was Ruskin's opinion, since he would have been the first to recognize that comparing works of art with each other and discussing which is the best is a sportsman's habit, not a judge of enlightened art. Let us understand that Ruskin meant Hard Times was one of his favorites among Dickens's books. Was it a whim of taste? Or is there another rational explanation for the preference? I think so.
Excerpt from the Introduction to Hard Times, in 1911 by Bernard Shaw.
In this very committed novel, but also profoundly moving (from my point of view, in any case), Charles Dickens denounces, beyond the living conditions of the workers of the first mechanized spinning mills in the North of England, the Industrial Revolution in his work. This historical process was not content with modifying the landscapes, the scales, and the ways of living, thinking, and producing; it simply replaced them with others, without resemblances or standard measures with the landscapes, the scales, and the ways of living, thinking, and producing of the agricultural and artisanal age that preceded. In this way, the Industrial Revolution was a fundamental change in civilization. A shift in civilization of such brutality that the sky adopted another color, the earth no longer had the same consistency or the same relief, and the two no longer joined on the same line as before. Before that, the air changed its smell and density, and disoriented men and women experienced the most difficulty adapting to the furiously utilitarian, madly materialistic, hideously disfigured world they had created. In this respect, Difficult Times is undoubtedly among the first novels describing the Anthropocene.
These proletarians and these bourgeois who were born in the space of a handful of years were all individuals thrown into the unknown at the speed of throwing stones. Of course, they did not all land in the same place. Still, whatever their point of fall, all had been forced to conceive new ways of living or surviving in this new world; all had to reinvent themselves as human beings in this society dedicated to machinery, perpetual motion, and profitability; everyone had to find justifications or explanations for their existence as rich or poor. It is the stories of some of these men and women that Dickens tells us in this dark social novel, which, beyond its biting irony and its virulent criticism of a greedy, contemptuous bourgeoisie sure of its good right (but also of a working class that is too gullible and easily influenced), is also a plea in favor of imagination and fantasy.
It would seem that Hard Times was the subject of numerous negative reviews for various reasons, whether at the time of its publication or more recently. It is profoundly different from the author's previous great novels, if only because it is or seems more austere, more desperate, and we do not find as many truculent characters as usual, but I loved it. All the more adored because it could be that the questions he asks about the thirst for power, the taste for profit, economic alienation, or education have lost none of their relevance since 1854.
Excerpt from the Introduction to Hard Times, in 1911 by Bernard Shaw.
In this very committed novel, but also profoundly moving (from my point of view, in any case), Charles Dickens denounces, beyond the living conditions of the workers of the first mechanized spinning mills in the North of England, the Industrial Revolution in his work. This historical process was not content with modifying the landscapes, the scales, and the ways of living, thinking, and producing; it simply replaced them with others, without resemblances or standard measures with the landscapes, the scales, and the ways of living, thinking, and producing of the agricultural and artisanal age that preceded. In this way, the Industrial Revolution was a fundamental change in civilization. A shift in civilization of such brutality that the sky adopted another color, the earth no longer had the same consistency or the same relief, and the two no longer joined on the same line as before. Before that, the air changed its smell and density, and disoriented men and women experienced the most difficulty adapting to the furiously utilitarian, madly materialistic, hideously disfigured world they had created. In this respect, Difficult Times is undoubtedly among the first novels describing the Anthropocene.
These proletarians and these bourgeois who were born in the space of a handful of years were all individuals thrown into the unknown at the speed of throwing stones. Of course, they did not all land in the same place. Still, whatever their point of fall, all had been forced to conceive new ways of living or surviving in this new world; all had to reinvent themselves as human beings in this society dedicated to machinery, perpetual motion, and profitability; everyone had to find justifications or explanations for their existence as rich or poor. It is the stories of some of these men and women that Dickens tells us in this dark social novel, which, beyond its biting irony and its virulent criticism of a greedy, contemptuous bourgeoisie sure of its good right (but also of a working class that is too gullible and easily influenced), is also a plea in favor of imagination and fantasy.
It would seem that Hard Times was the subject of numerous negative reviews for various reasons, whether at the time of its publication or more recently. It is profoundly different from the author's previous great novels, if only because it is or seems more austere, more desperate, and we do not find as many truculent characters as usual, but I loved it. All the more adored because it could be that the questions he asks about the thirst for power, the taste for profit, economic alienation, or education have lost none of their relevance since 1854.
July 23, 2019
"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."
My reading of theories of pedagogy and knowledge development usually is quite separate from my reading of fiction for the pure pleasure of being human!
But now recently I have come across several references to the wonderful Dickensian caricature of positivism with the suggestive name of Gradgrind. There is a war going on in the world of schooling, with a clear front between those who are in favour of the measurable fact-based model that fictional Gradgrind tried on his own environment, with quite heartbreaking results, and those who have interpreted the opposite of Gradgrindianism as the way forward, and claim that inquiry, creativity and transferable skills are the pillars of education, and that facts are obsolete before they enter the heads of the suffering child vessels.
Now I am quite sure that Dickens could have written a brilliant satire on the extreme opposite of Gradgrind's pedagogy if he had seen it in action. How are children to develop ideas if they have no knowledge to get inspired by? How are they going to proceed in inquiry if they have no basic understanding of the scientific concepts? How are they going to create exciting and artistic visual and textual artefacts without the literacy skills that are the tools leading towards linguistic and artistic mastery? How are they going to "research" a history topic independently that they have never heard of before, and definitely cannot put into context?
As happy as I am whenever Gradgrind shows up in the educational debates, I have to say that his very presence as a negative example of old-school knowledge is an ironic symbol of the value of "knowing" the iconic history of literary or scientific reference points. If you haven't had some kind of basic schooling in literature, you won't understand what Gradgrind's evil represents: to evaluate his mentioning in the school debate, you have to know about Victorian standpoints, Dickens' position within them, Gradgrind's failure, and educational theories over the past century that have swung like a pendulum from one extreme to the other.
So cheers to the fact that facts are part of life - and the devil is in the PART!
My reading of theories of pedagogy and knowledge development usually is quite separate from my reading of fiction for the pure pleasure of being human!
But now recently I have come across several references to the wonderful Dickensian caricature of positivism with the suggestive name of Gradgrind. There is a war going on in the world of schooling, with a clear front between those who are in favour of the measurable fact-based model that fictional Gradgrind tried on his own environment, with quite heartbreaking results, and those who have interpreted the opposite of Gradgrindianism as the way forward, and claim that inquiry, creativity and transferable skills are the pillars of education, and that facts are obsolete before they enter the heads of the suffering child vessels.
Now I am quite sure that Dickens could have written a brilliant satire on the extreme opposite of Gradgrind's pedagogy if he had seen it in action. How are children to develop ideas if they have no knowledge to get inspired by? How are they going to proceed in inquiry if they have no basic understanding of the scientific concepts? How are they going to create exciting and artistic visual and textual artefacts without the literacy skills that are the tools leading towards linguistic and artistic mastery? How are they going to "research" a history topic independently that they have never heard of before, and definitely cannot put into context?
As happy as I am whenever Gradgrind shows up in the educational debates, I have to say that his very presence as a negative example of old-school knowledge is an ironic symbol of the value of "knowing" the iconic history of literary or scientific reference points. If you haven't had some kind of basic schooling in literature, you won't understand what Gradgrind's evil represents: to evaluate his mentioning in the school debate, you have to know about Victorian standpoints, Dickens' position within them, Gradgrind's failure, and educational theories over the past century that have swung like a pendulum from one extreme to the other.
So cheers to the fact that facts are part of life - and the devil is in the PART!
October 31, 2022
Dicken鈥檚 shortest novel and so,so good. We read it for The Literary Life Podcast.
Read
April 27, 2020In current political discourse I have a particular dislike of the phrase 'Hard working families' since it implies it is not good enough to be working, or in a family, or even merely both of those together. No, only if it in addition to that you are sufficiently hard working are you good enough for your needs to be taken seriously in politics, and if you should slacken in your Stakhanovite ardour by preferring maybe to take a holiday rather than like Boxer in to work yourself into the glue factory, then presumably policy makers will think 'to Hell with you then'.
I feel that it was to counter such utilitarianism and the implicit acceptance of GDP ever increasing and the positive balance sheet as the meaning and purpose of life that Dickens wrote this comic melodrama - and and to assert the burning importance of creating in law a form of affordable and accessible divorce, which was a matter of particular concern to Dickens once he decided that he was bored of his wife and preferred rushing about after a young actress instead.
This is possibly my favourite Dickens novel, apart from or including all my other favourite Dickens novels, although it is a shade more melodramatic, than others - at least it does not try to jerk the tears out of you. It is short, punchy and humorous. I think you see in this one, because it is short, how Dickens suffered from an excess of ideas so at the start we are introduced to school teachers Mr & Mrs McChokemchild who appear twice in the novel before disappearing completely. Indeed they are so insignificant that Dickens needn't have bothered naming them.
Although the novel is set in a Northern English industrial town - Coketown this is curiously not much relevant to the plot. Dickens published Gaskell's , but he isn't interested in writing a shock novel about industrial Britain, Coketown as a setting is largely irrelevant to the story which again is not typical of Dickens for whom location is an important character generally in his books.
Nice themes here are family, the bad characters commit the ultimate Victorian shibboleth and reject, deny, or pimp off their families , while the good characters cling to their families and maybe can even be redeemed through family love.
This is novel that is above all about education - the formation of hegemonic social values through schooling in this case a thorough fact obsessed utilitarianism against which fantasy and the right to amusement struggles to be heard, Dickens being Dickens, it is that latter voices which eventually cuts through the 'facts' and eventually we see that Bounderby, the vigorous proponent of the school of hard knocks has in fact created himself as a the richest fantasy of all in his claim to be a self made man. In a beautiful though unsubtle touch (this is not a subtle book) travelling circus performers lodge at a pub called the Pegasus Arms - as though a winged horse wasn't fantastical enough - this one has to have arms too. In this book we are shown that without being taught or indulged with fantasy and pleasure from childhood, we end up depressed and struggling to find purpose or value in life and at continual risk from rogues and bounders.
This is an interesting one from the point of view of Dickens' radicalism too - which again rests on individual redemption - this stands at variance with the theme of education - if anybody was telling Dickens that he had to be coherent and congruent, that was not a voice he paid attention to.
I feel that it was to counter such utilitarianism and the implicit acceptance of GDP ever increasing and the positive balance sheet as the meaning and purpose of life that Dickens wrote this comic melodrama - and and to assert the burning importance of creating in law a form of affordable and accessible divorce, which was a matter of particular concern to Dickens once he decided that he was bored of his wife and preferred rushing about after a young actress instead.
This is possibly my favourite Dickens novel, apart from or including all my other favourite Dickens novels, although it is a shade more melodramatic, than others - at least it does not try to jerk the tears out of you. It is short, punchy and humorous. I think you see in this one, because it is short, how Dickens suffered from an excess of ideas so at the start we are introduced to school teachers Mr & Mrs McChokemchild who appear twice in the novel before disappearing completely. Indeed they are so insignificant that Dickens needn't have bothered naming them.
Although the novel is set in a Northern English industrial town - Coketown this is curiously not much relevant to the plot. Dickens published Gaskell's , but he isn't interested in writing a shock novel about industrial Britain, Coketown as a setting is largely irrelevant to the story which again is not typical of Dickens for whom location is an important character generally in his books.
Nice themes here are family, the bad characters commit the ultimate Victorian shibboleth and reject, deny, or pimp off their families , while the good characters cling to their families and maybe can even be redeemed through family love.
This is novel that is above all about education - the formation of hegemonic social values through schooling in this case a thorough fact obsessed utilitarianism against which fantasy and the right to amusement struggles to be heard, Dickens being Dickens, it is that latter voices which eventually cuts through the 'facts' and eventually we see that Bounderby, the vigorous proponent of the school of hard knocks has in fact created himself as a the richest fantasy of all in his claim to be a self made man. In a beautiful though unsubtle touch (this is not a subtle book) travelling circus performers lodge at a pub called the Pegasus Arms - as though a winged horse wasn't fantastical enough - this one has to have arms too. In this book we are shown that without being taught or indulged with fantasy and pleasure from childhood, we end up depressed and struggling to find purpose or value in life and at continual risk from rogues and bounders.
This is an interesting one from the point of view of Dickens' radicalism too - which again rests on individual redemption - this stands at variance with the theme of education - if anybody was telling Dickens that he had to be coherent and congruent, that was not a voice he paid attention to.
September 14, 2022
To a greater or lesser degree, all novels are a composite of an author's imagination in creating characters & settings and that author's own worldview. Hard Times by Charles Dickens, a relatively brief but still complex novel, attempts to fashion the author's views on industrialization in the north of England during the 1850s, the stratified British class system & a mode of education with an emphasis on facts, while also fashioning memorable characters making the best of their lives at a difficult time.
As with many of Dickens' works, the names are distinctive, with Mr. Gradgrind & Josiah Bounderby chief among them. The mill workers are referred to dismissively as "Hands", the rivers & streams polluted by industrialization and the air heavily contaminated by the soot from factories & coal burning homes in an area just near Manchester.
There are so many things at play in this novel that at first, it seems the characters are merely caricatures & the themes rather heavy-handed, with Dickens very much on the side of the downtrodden, underpaid & often abused workers.
However, if one perseveres with Hard Times, there is ample chance that the book will begin to represent a much richer fusing of well-defined characterizations and an author's desire to represent the frailty of the underside of British life at the mid-point of the 19th century.
Countering the grime & tedium of life for the average worker in this novel is a school founded by Thomas Gradgrind, one based on the memorization of rules & data, steeped in facts that can't be questioned, to the complete exclusion of fantasy or poetry or one's individual imagination. Here is the enforced response to a description of a horse, given by a well-versed student named Bitzer:
What Hard Times conveys is a sense of compassion for those contending with the new reality of machines, tall chimneys "belching serpents of smoke, a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dyes, where pistons of steam engines worked monotonously all day long, up & down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness." In this milieu, the human population of Coketown is quite subservient to the machines.
Mr. Gradgrind, the school superintendent & a member of parliament and his friend, Mr. Bounderby, a self-made man who owns a bank & a factory--someone who had no exposure to a model school & is proud of it--both subscribe to a Utilitarian philosophy that is purely results-oriented but wrapped in a belief that machines will cause needed development, whatever the costs may entail. Even Gradgrind's children are seemingly in tow with this approach to life, at least until they become victims of it.
After a time, the workers begin to rebel against conditions and Stephen Blackpool, another of novel's formidable characters, is forced to choose between honoring his loyalty to a saintly woman named Rachael & his fellow factory workers as a strike looms...
Meanwhile, the traveling circus & its owner, a lisping Mr. Sleary, stand as anathema to Mr. Gradgrind & Bounderby but the circus serves as a relief valve for the oppressed of Coketown & other places along the circuit of the traveling circus.
Dickens manages to juxtapose the rigidity of Gradgrind & the buffoonish Bounderby with the apparent flexibility & casual intimacy of the circus family, with its owner, Mr. Sleary, of the belief that in a harsh world, a little levity & a brief escape can take the circus spectator a rather long way.
The formality of some of the language employed, with many complex sentences + the unfamiliarity of circus jargon & other slang of a particular time & place in England will entail frequent trips to the notes within the appendix. Added to that, there is at times some heavy-handed moralizing by the author.
However, there is a great deal more at play in Hard Times than one might initially expect. And, while hardly one of Dickens' most beloved works, it is a novel that I found full of pleasant surprises & an uplifting message about the need for compassion & forgiveness.
I saw a dramatized rendering of Hard Times in 2018 by the Lookingglass Theater of Chicago, complete with trapeze artists representing the spirit of the traveling circus. However, not having read the Dickens novel at that point, the importance of some of the individual relationships was lost on me.
Some years ago, I visited Saltaire, once a model town in West Yorkshire at the north of England, centered on a massive linen mill factory at Bradford, near Leeds. Its owner, Sir Titus Salt had acted with the best of intentions in creating the town with factory & new red brick houses for the workers at about the time that the Dickens novel is set. However, his insistence of an absence of alcohol, compulsory church attendance & payment in scrip eventually caused the workers to rebel & to strike.
The Salt's Mills factory eventually became derelict & on the verge of being torn-down, it was salvaged by Bradford-born artist David Hockney, now upgraded to an assemblage of shops, restaurants, a small theater & other venues, very much worth a visit.
*The version of Hard Times I read was a 1995 Penguin edition, with an introduction & quite helpful notes by Kate Flint. **Within my review are images of Charles Dickens; print of a polluted English city in mid 19th century; a photo image of factory worker from the same period; photo of circus trapeze artist from the Chicago theatrical performance of the novel in 2018; view of Saltaire, the now-refurbished Victorian linen mill & surrounding houses that comprised a mid 19th century "model town". ***There is an interesting 1994 BBC film of Hard Times with Alan Bates as Bounderby.
As with many of Dickens' works, the names are distinctive, with Mr. Gradgrind & Josiah Bounderby chief among them. The mill workers are referred to dismissively as "Hands", the rivers & streams polluted by industrialization and the air heavily contaminated by the soot from factories & coal burning homes in an area just near Manchester.
There are so many things at play in this novel that at first, it seems the characters are merely caricatures & the themes rather heavy-handed, with Dickens very much on the side of the downtrodden, underpaid & often abused workers.
However, if one perseveres with Hard Times, there is ample chance that the book will begin to represent a much richer fusing of well-defined characterizations and an author's desire to represent the frailty of the underside of British life at the mid-point of the 19th century.
Countering the grime & tedium of life for the average worker in this novel is a school founded by Thomas Gradgrind, one based on the memorization of rules & data, steeped in facts that can't be questioned, to the complete exclusion of fantasy or poetry or one's individual imagination. Here is the enforced response to a description of a horse, given by a well-versed student named Bitzer:
Quadruped. Graminivorous. 40 teeth, namely 4 grinders, 4 eye-teeth & 12 incisors. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hooves too. Hoofs hard but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.When another student, referred to as "Girl #20", who had grown up riding horses with a traveling circus company gives a much more experiential response, she is severely admonished. She is in fact, better known as Cecilia or "Sissy Jupe" and has been adopted as a kind of modified servant by the owner of the school, having been abandoned by her father, a clown who could no longer cause circus-goers to laugh.
What Hard Times conveys is a sense of compassion for those contending with the new reality of machines, tall chimneys "belching serpents of smoke, a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dyes, where pistons of steam engines worked monotonously all day long, up & down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness." In this milieu, the human population of Coketown is quite subservient to the machines.
Mr. Gradgrind, the school superintendent & a member of parliament and his friend, Mr. Bounderby, a self-made man who owns a bank & a factory--someone who had no exposure to a model school & is proud of it--both subscribe to a Utilitarian philosophy that is purely results-oriented but wrapped in a belief that machines will cause needed development, whatever the costs may entail. Even Gradgrind's children are seemingly in tow with this approach to life, at least until they become victims of it.
After a time, the workers begin to rebel against conditions and Stephen Blackpool, another of novel's formidable characters, is forced to choose between honoring his loyalty to a saintly woman named Rachael & his fellow factory workers as a strike looms...
Oh my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown! Oh my friends & fellow-countrymen, the slaves of an iron-handed & a grinding despotism! I tell you that the hour has come, when we will rally round one another as One united power & crumble into the dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families, upon the seat of our brows, upon the labor of our hands, upon the strength of our sinews, upon the God-created glorious rights of Humanity & upon the holy & eternal privileges of Brotherhood.When Stephen is derided & dismissed both by his nascent factory union and fired by Bounderby, the factory owner, Hard Times quickly becomes more dynamic, particularly with the budding rebellion of Mr. Gradgrind's once very complacent daughter, Louisa.
Meanwhile, the traveling circus & its owner, a lisping Mr. Sleary, stand as anathema to Mr. Gradgrind & Bounderby but the circus serves as a relief valve for the oppressed of Coketown & other places along the circuit of the traveling circus.
Dickens manages to juxtapose the rigidity of Gradgrind & the buffoonish Bounderby with the apparent flexibility & casual intimacy of the circus family, with its owner, Mr. Sleary, of the belief that in a harsh world, a little levity & a brief escape can take the circus spectator a rather long way.
The formality of some of the language employed, with many complex sentences + the unfamiliarity of circus jargon & other slang of a particular time & place in England will entail frequent trips to the notes within the appendix. Added to that, there is at times some heavy-handed moralizing by the author.
However, there is a great deal more at play in Hard Times than one might initially expect. And, while hardly one of Dickens' most beloved works, it is a novel that I found full of pleasant surprises & an uplifting message about the need for compassion & forgiveness.
I saw a dramatized rendering of Hard Times in 2018 by the Lookingglass Theater of Chicago, complete with trapeze artists representing the spirit of the traveling circus. However, not having read the Dickens novel at that point, the importance of some of the individual relationships was lost on me.
Some years ago, I visited Saltaire, once a model town in West Yorkshire at the north of England, centered on a massive linen mill factory at Bradford, near Leeds. Its owner, Sir Titus Salt had acted with the best of intentions in creating the town with factory & new red brick houses for the workers at about the time that the Dickens novel is set. However, his insistence of an absence of alcohol, compulsory church attendance & payment in scrip eventually caused the workers to rebel & to strike.
The Salt's Mills factory eventually became derelict & on the verge of being torn-down, it was salvaged by Bradford-born artist David Hockney, now upgraded to an assemblage of shops, restaurants, a small theater & other venues, very much worth a visit.
*The version of Hard Times I read was a 1995 Penguin edition, with an introduction & quite helpful notes by Kate Flint. **Within my review are images of Charles Dickens; print of a polluted English city in mid 19th century; a photo image of factory worker from the same period; photo of circus trapeze artist from the Chicago theatrical performance of the novel in 2018; view of Saltaire, the now-refurbished Victorian linen mill & surrounding houses that comprised a mid 19th century "model town". ***There is an interesting 1994 BBC film of Hard Times with Alan Bates as Bounderby.
March 22, 2023
Entertaining but, at heart, a joyless socialist diatribe!
HARD TIMES is set in the ugly and imaginary (but all too realistic) mid-Victorian Northern city of Coketown - a near-dystopian blend of the worst of capitalism and the ravages of rampant industrialization. Its blackened factories belch soot, steam and a poisonous haze of sun-blotting pollution. Its citizens are joyless automotons, dancing their repetitive daily work jig to the mind-numbing tick of a drudging, miserable metronome that is wound up every day by Josiah Bounderby, the heartless factory owner, a banker and ostensibly Coketown's leading citizen.
While the workers have begun to sample the delights of the forbidden fruit of trade unions and labour organization, the very idea is still much in its infancy. Indeed, Bounderby is so completely ensconced in the status quo that he cannot even imagine why a worker would want more than he has and why he would feel that there was anything more that he might possibly need. He genuinely believes that what he offers his workers is complete, generous, utterly selfless and more than sufficient unto their needs.
Thomas Gradgrind is a retired hardware merchant. While not quite in the same league as Bounderby with respect to wealth and insufferable pomposity, Gradgrind is now a teacher and, like Bounderby, is so completely comfortable as to be utterly unable to imagine any other way of living. In fact, Dickens portrays Gradgrind as a staunch utilitarian who does his utmost as a parent, a person, and an educator to eradicate any fanciful notions of imagination, joy, dreaming, aesthetics, music, poetry, fiction or, indeed, even amusement, in both his students and his children. His students' curriculum is centered on "facts, facts, facts" and hard skills such as analysis, deduction, mathematics, science and pure observation are glorified.
HARD TIMES is really the story of Gradgrind's children, Louisa and Thomas Jr, brought up in the sullen atmosphere of Coketown under the strict discipline of their father's colourless educational regimen. It is the story of Louisa's arranged marriage to Bounderby, a man thirty years her senior who imagined her as his bride even as he watched her grow from infancy. It is also the story of Thomas Jr's fall from grace as he is unable to avoid the twin siren calls of the vices of gambling and liquor to escape from the drudgery of life as his father's son and as Bounderby's employee.
While I found HARD TIMES to be as entertaining as any other Dickens novel that I've read (and, frankly, I've loved them all), I did find it to be too bleak and unremittingly socialist in nature. Dickens' far left-wing political leanings were crystal clear.
There were "blacks" and there were "whites" but there were no grays anywhere in sight. HARD TIMES was a story of polar opposites, fact vs fancy, joy, happiness and hope vs despair, honesty vs dishonesty, generosity vs greed, and so on. And, although Dickens did allow the story to end portraying Thomas Gradgrind as a parent who was doing his very best to act on his love for his children, even these acts of altruism were aimed at ultimately ensuring that theft against the evil Bounderby went un-punished. In short, Bounderby and the capitalist class could do no right while the working class could, in effect, do no wrong.
Entertaining, to be sure, and not a story that I would want to have missed but HARD TIMES is also a story that is not as timeless as others Dickens has written.
Paul Weiss
HARD TIMES is set in the ugly and imaginary (but all too realistic) mid-Victorian Northern city of Coketown - a near-dystopian blend of the worst of capitalism and the ravages of rampant industrialization. Its blackened factories belch soot, steam and a poisonous haze of sun-blotting pollution. Its citizens are joyless automotons, dancing their repetitive daily work jig to the mind-numbing tick of a drudging, miserable metronome that is wound up every day by Josiah Bounderby, the heartless factory owner, a banker and ostensibly Coketown's leading citizen.
While the workers have begun to sample the delights of the forbidden fruit of trade unions and labour organization, the very idea is still much in its infancy. Indeed, Bounderby is so completely ensconced in the status quo that he cannot even imagine why a worker would want more than he has and why he would feel that there was anything more that he might possibly need. He genuinely believes that what he offers his workers is complete, generous, utterly selfless and more than sufficient unto their needs.
Thomas Gradgrind is a retired hardware merchant. While not quite in the same league as Bounderby with respect to wealth and insufferable pomposity, Gradgrind is now a teacher and, like Bounderby, is so completely comfortable as to be utterly unable to imagine any other way of living. In fact, Dickens portrays Gradgrind as a staunch utilitarian who does his utmost as a parent, a person, and an educator to eradicate any fanciful notions of imagination, joy, dreaming, aesthetics, music, poetry, fiction or, indeed, even amusement, in both his students and his children. His students' curriculum is centered on "facts, facts, facts" and hard skills such as analysis, deduction, mathematics, science and pure observation are glorified.
HARD TIMES is really the story of Gradgrind's children, Louisa and Thomas Jr, brought up in the sullen atmosphere of Coketown under the strict discipline of their father's colourless educational regimen. It is the story of Louisa's arranged marriage to Bounderby, a man thirty years her senior who imagined her as his bride even as he watched her grow from infancy. It is also the story of Thomas Jr's fall from grace as he is unable to avoid the twin siren calls of the vices of gambling and liquor to escape from the drudgery of life as his father's son and as Bounderby's employee.
While I found HARD TIMES to be as entertaining as any other Dickens novel that I've read (and, frankly, I've loved them all), I did find it to be too bleak and unremittingly socialist in nature. Dickens' far left-wing political leanings were crystal clear.
There were "blacks" and there were "whites" but there were no grays anywhere in sight. HARD TIMES was a story of polar opposites, fact vs fancy, joy, happiness and hope vs despair, honesty vs dishonesty, generosity vs greed, and so on. And, although Dickens did allow the story to end portraying Thomas Gradgrind as a parent who was doing his very best to act on his love for his children, even these acts of altruism were aimed at ultimately ensuring that theft against the evil Bounderby went un-punished. In short, Bounderby and the capitalist class could do no right while the working class could, in effect, do no wrong.
Entertaining, to be sure, and not a story that I would want to have missed but HARD TIMES is also a story that is not as timeless as others Dickens has written.
Paul Weiss
February 8, 2024
A thoroughly fascinating read as always.
March 23, 2016
"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 mind of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them."Roger Waters' lyrics could almost be a direct response to Mr. Gradgrind's ridiculous world view.
Mr. Gradgrind, Hard Times
"We don't need no education
We don't need no thought control"
Another Brick in the Wall (Part II) - Roger Waters, Pink Floyd
The worst thing about Hard Times is the title, very off putting. You get the feeling that the book will indeed give you a hard time and should be avoided like the plague; particularly if you have never read Dickens before and assume that his books are hard to read. As it turned out Hard Times is one of the easiest Dickens books to follow, neither the plot or the prose is particularly convoluted. It is also one of his shortest and most concise, clocking in at a measly 350 or so pages instead of 1000+ like most of his novels.
The major theme, as far as I can discern, is the effect of stifling upbringing and overly rigid fact-based education at the expense of allowing children to cultivate their imagination. Facts and figures are essential for the development of intellect but they need to be balanced with fanciful stories and leisurely pastime. The novel鈥檚 protagonist Louisa was raised and homeschooled by her father to only be concerned with 鈥渇acts facts facts!鈥� and tales of fantasy, circuses etc, are boycotted. This has the effect of turning an innately decent loving girl into a living refrigerator. The effect on her brother is even worse, as he grows up to be a dissipated, deceitful and generally useless individual.
This being a Dickens novel the plight of the poor and the injustice society inflicts on them is depicted with a fierce passion. Both 鈥渢he masters鈥� (factory owners) and trade unionists are portrayed in very poor light. To balance the unsavory characters Dickens also introduces us to his stock 鈥渘ice鈥�, simple and honest characters and several eccentric ones. Also, even with the serious issues, Dickens wants to bring to your attention in this book, he never forgets his storytelling duties, Hard Times is well paced, sometimes funny, sometimes sad, and never drags.
The reason I enjoy reading about Dickens鈥� characters is the reason his detractors criticize him for. His supporting characters tend to be colorful in appearance, behavior and speech. However, they are also frequently cartoonish and unbelievable as real people. This is perfectly acceptable to me because I don鈥檛 think Dickens鈥� intention is to write ultra-real gritty fiction. The crazy characters are there to entertain and also function as caricatures of certain types of people for metaphorical purposes. For example Josiah Bounderby one of the antagonists seems like some kind of angry red balloon, all bluster and extreme arrogance. His housekeeper Mrs. Sparsit is super aristocratic and a real nasty piece of work. James Harthouse, a total cad with the seduction of Louisa in mind. His slick patter is very amusing and brings to mind one of 鈥檚 more outrageous 鈥渕otormouth鈥� characters.
Dickens also gets a lot of flak for his melodramatic sentimental plots and 鈥渄eus ex machina鈥�. All true but without writing a tedious defence of the great man I would simply say that I am OK with it all. I always find his fiction to be accessible, entertaining and poignant. His prose is also a work of art, sometimes sardonic sometimes lyrical. Again the haters find him verbose, and again I enjoy his verbosity.
My audiobook version is superbly performed by actor Martin Jarvis, definitely not just a narration, but an actual dramatic vocal performance with tons of different voices and accents.
In conclusion, this alleged review seems more like an exercise in Dickens fanboying (now that's something you don't see every day!) than a proper review. Ah well, it鈥檚 the best I can do at this time of night.
Last words go to Mr. Sleary, circus manager extraordinaire (who speaks with a lisp)
"People mutht be amuthed. They can鈥檛 be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can鈥檛 be alwayth a working, they an鈥檛 made for it. You mutht have uth, Thquire. Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and make the betht of uth; not the wurtht!"This.
September 15, 2019
氐丿賮丞 兀賵賯毓鬲賴丕 賮賶 胤乇賷賯賶
賮賷噩亘 丕賳 兀賯賵賱 毓賳賴丕 亘毓囟 丕賱兀卮賷丕亍
賰丕賳鬲 賯乇丕亍丞 廿賱夭丕賲賷丞 賵賱賰賳賴丕 賰丕賳鬲 賯乇丕亍丞 乇丕卅毓丞
鬲毓賱賯賳丕 亘賴丕 賮賶 卮亘丕亘賳丕 賱賲 賳賰賳 賳囟噩賳丕 亘毓丿
兀丨亘亘鬲 丕賱賯乇丕亍丞 亘丕賱賱睾丞 丕賱兀氐賱賷丞 賵丨氐賱鬲 毓賱賶 丕賱毓賱丕賲丞 丕賱賰丕賲賱丞 賮賶 賴匕賴 丕賱爻賳丞 賮賶 賲丕丿丞 丕賱賱睾丞 丕賱廿賳噩賱賷夭賷丞
賮兀賶 匕賰乇賶 兀噩賲賱 兀賳卮丿 毓賳 賴匕賴 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 丕賱乇丕卅毓丞
賮賷噩亘 丕賳 兀賯賵賱 毓賳賴丕 亘毓囟 丕賱兀卮賷丕亍
賰丕賳鬲 賯乇丕亍丞 廿賱夭丕賲賷丞 賵賱賰賳賴丕 賰丕賳鬲 賯乇丕亍丞 乇丕卅毓丞
鬲毓賱賯賳丕 亘賴丕 賮賶 卮亘丕亘賳丕 賱賲 賳賰賳 賳囟噩賳丕 亘毓丿
兀丨亘亘鬲 丕賱賯乇丕亍丞 亘丕賱賱睾丞 丕賱兀氐賱賷丞 賵丨氐賱鬲 毓賱賶 丕賱毓賱丕賲丞 丕賱賰丕賲賱丞 賮賶 賴匕賴 丕賱爻賳丞 賮賶 賲丕丿丞 丕賱賱睾丞 丕賱廿賳噩賱賷夭賷丞
賮兀賶 匕賰乇賶 兀噩賲賱 兀賳卮丿 毓賳 賴匕賴 丕賱乇賵丕賷丞 丕賱乇丕卅毓丞
December 28, 2021
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.
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.
Read
April 24, 2019this is what victorian people had to explain utilitarianism because they didn't have the good place on netflix
January 9, 2016
This book is another evidence of Charles Dickens' brilliancy when it comes to writing. He starts with one person and her destiny, but gradually the story becomes more and more intricate and complex, and in the end you end up with a completely different story from what you started out with.
I have quite an ambivalent relationship to Charles Dickens and his books. Some of them I love, some of them confuse me or end up disappointing me. "Hard Times" was a good story, but I was mildly disappointed with the fact that it changes direction. I wanted to continue reading about Sissy and her destiny, but I was disappointed to realize that her story became kind of a parallel plot to the main plot. Nevertheless, the main plot was definitely full of surprises and at times kept you at the edge of your seat, and I liked that.
However, I can't disregard the fact that I was quite bored during most of this novel. I felt like the story became more and more predictable, and I felt like it kept dragging on the same characters and their worries and views on life. Therefore, I ended up rating this one 3 stars, because it's definitely worth a read, but it's not my favourite of Dickens'.
I have quite an ambivalent relationship to Charles Dickens and his books. Some of them I love, some of them confuse me or end up disappointing me. "Hard Times" was a good story, but I was mildly disappointed with the fact that it changes direction. I wanted to continue reading about Sissy and her destiny, but I was disappointed to realize that her story became kind of a parallel plot to the main plot. Nevertheless, the main plot was definitely full of surprises and at times kept you at the edge of your seat, and I liked that.
However, I can't disregard the fact that I was quite bored during most of this novel. I felt like the story became more and more predictable, and I felt like it kept dragging on the same characters and their worries and views on life. Therefore, I ended up rating this one 3 stars, because it's definitely worth a read, but it's not my favourite of Dickens'.
November 29, 2021
I have mixed feelings about Charles Dickens shortest novel, Hard Times. As a satire/social commentary of 19th Century English Industrialization, morality/ethics and utilitarianism (Phew!) it succeeds pretty well. As for straight up storytelling, I think it falls flat.
As a satire, tis a bit heavy-handed and smothers the lively, colorful characters Dickens is so great at creating. One of the characters, Stephen Blackpool, an honest factory worker and man of great integrity, speaks in a vernacular that is difficult to read at times, requiring extra effort. Mr Sleary, the lisping circus proprietor is almost as challenging to read.
I love Dickens, his magnificent prose and the characters he creates but in Hard Times its glaringly apparent that they serve his greater purpose by being caricatures of political/philosophical ideologies at extreme ends of the moral spectrum. 'Good' people are the poor hard working, honest people. 'Bad' people are the rich, immoral factory owners, bankers, etc. An overly simplistic view? But I imagine quite popular with his readership back in the day.
All of this would be fine if the story could rise above it, but none of the threads of the narrative went in any direction I wanted them to go and led to an unsatisfying result. Which ultimately makes for an unsatisfying read.
I ain't be dissing Dickens though; my rating is probably more a reflection of how it compares to some of his other novels which I just loved more..
As a satire, tis a bit heavy-handed and smothers the lively, colorful characters Dickens is so great at creating. One of the characters, Stephen Blackpool, an honest factory worker and man of great integrity, speaks in a vernacular that is difficult to read at times, requiring extra effort. Mr Sleary, the lisping circus proprietor is almost as challenging to read.
I love Dickens, his magnificent prose and the characters he creates but in Hard Times its glaringly apparent that they serve his greater purpose by being caricatures of political/philosophical ideologies at extreme ends of the moral spectrum. 'Good' people are the poor hard working, honest people. 'Bad' people are the rich, immoral factory owners, bankers, etc. An overly simplistic view? But I imagine quite popular with his readership back in the day.
All of this would be fine if the story could rise above it, but none of the threads of the narrative went in any direction I wanted them to go and led to an unsatisfying result. Which ultimately makes for an unsatisfying read.
I ain't be dissing Dickens though; my rating is probably more a reflection of how it compares to some of his other novels which I just loved more..
February 23, 2016
乇亘賲丕 鬲丨賲賱 亘毓囟 丕賱乇賵丕賷丕鬲 丕賱兀噩賳亘賷丞 賮賰乇丞貙 丨賰賲丞 賲丕貨
鬲囟賷賯 賵鬲鬲爻毓 亘丨爻亘 兀孬乇賴丕 毓賱賶 丕賱賯丕乇賷亍 賵賲丕 鬲賱賲爻賴 賲賳 賳亘囟丕鬲 鬲賰賵賷賳賴 .
賱賰賳 廿亘丿丕毓 丕賱賱睾丞 賷鬲噩賱賾賶 賱賷 賮賷 丕賱兀丿亘 丕賱毓乇亘賷賾
賲賳 噩賲丕賱 兀爻丕賱賷亘賴丕 兀丨亘 兀賳 兀賳賴賱貙 賵賮賷 乇賵毓丞 亘賱丕睾鬲賴丕 兀卮鬲丕賯 賱賱廿亘丨丕乇
賱丕 賲孬賷賱 賱賱丨乇賮 丕賱毓乇亘賷 賮賷 廿爻毓丕丿賷 賵廿胤乇丕亘賷 ..
鈥� 廿賳賾 丕賱匕賷 賲賱兀 丕賱賱睾丕鬲 賲丨丕爻賳丕賸 .. 噩毓賱 丕賱噩賲丕賱 賵 爻乇賾賴 賮賷 丕賱囟賾丕丿 鈥�
- 兀丨賲丿 卮賵賯賷
鬲囟賷賯 賵鬲鬲爻毓 亘丨爻亘 兀孬乇賴丕 毓賱賶 丕賱賯丕乇賷亍 賵賲丕 鬲賱賲爻賴 賲賳 賳亘囟丕鬲 鬲賰賵賷賳賴 .
賱賰賳 廿亘丿丕毓 丕賱賱睾丞 賷鬲噩賱賾賶 賱賷 賮賷 丕賱兀丿亘 丕賱毓乇亘賷賾
賲賳 噩賲丕賱 兀爻丕賱賷亘賴丕 兀丨亘 兀賳 兀賳賴賱貙 賵賮賷 乇賵毓丞 亘賱丕睾鬲賴丕 兀卮鬲丕賯 賱賱廿亘丨丕乇
賱丕 賲孬賷賱 賱賱丨乇賮 丕賱毓乇亘賷 賮賷 廿爻毓丕丿賷 賵廿胤乇丕亘賷 ..
鈥� 廿賳賾 丕賱匕賷 賲賱兀 丕賱賱睾丕鬲 賲丨丕爻賳丕賸 .. 噩毓賱 丕賱噩賲丕賱 賵 爻乇賾賴 賮賷 丕賱囟賾丕丿 鈥�
- 兀丨賲丿 卮賵賯賷
January 10, 2023
Mavis Staples sings Stephen Foster鈥檚 鈥淗ard Times鈥�
Hard Times is what they now call The Great Depression, about which Studs Terkel wrote his monumental work of oral history. But Hard Times by nineteenth-century English writer Charles Dickens is a book about working class northern England, about which he said,
"My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else."
I read it in my twenties, and read it now in a time when 鈥渄ata-driven鈥� bureaucracies rule the day, and even in public education, where some teachers get their pay docked if their students do not exceed district data expectations. Performance-based development, they call it, performance being exclusively determined by student scores on standardized tests.
鈥淥ne cannot understand the history of education in the United States during the twentieth century unless one realizes that [stats and quantitative guy] Edward L. Thorndike won and [progressive, democratic, conversation- and community-based theorist] John Dewey lost鈥濃€� Ellen Condliffe Lagemann
The most memorable scene in Dickens鈥檚 1854 novel Hard Times (by Dickens) is the first one, where the teacher, Thomas Gradgrind, asks his class to define a horse:
"Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind. "Your definition of a horse."
"Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus (and much more) from Bitzer.
"Now girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind. "You know what a horse is."
Girl number twenty is Sissy who rides horses every day, whose family owns horses. To 鈥渄efine鈥� a horse in this way is incomprehensible and silly to her.
An accumulation of facts is the only knowledge that matters to Gradgrind. Facts, not feelings. The businessman who helped shaped the American Common Core, the set of standards that continues to drive school curriculum in the US, said,鈥淚f you want to apply for a job at GM, they don鈥檛 give a damn how you feel.鈥� He was speaking here against the teaching of the personal essay in school, and stories, something he and his committee intended to drastically reduce in American public school curricula. And they were successful, to the detriment of the love of learning for millions of children. The Common Core privileges argument over story, nonfiction over fiction and poetry, a process that coincides with the conservative takeover of US politics more than a quarter of a century ago, but Dickens saw it already happening 150 years ago in England, skewered in this book.
鈥淣ow, 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鈥濃€擥radgrind
Gradgrind raises his own kids, too, without stories, without feeling, only reason, which leads daughter Louisa to a miserable marriage without love, based only on practical (wealth, social status: Facts!) considerations. Love is not part of the necessary vocabulary of the Gradgrind family or school. But this fact-based approach also leads to societal consequences where the bottom line matters more than humans.
The last thirty years in economic and political philosophy is correctly assumed by many to be guided in part by the brutally selfish ideology of Ayn Rand, but a century before her it is Dickens (in 1854?!) who makes this harsh indictment of mid-19th-century industrial practices and their dehumanizing effects:
鈥淎ny capitalist . . . 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?鈥� As if! And those not achieving that goal correspondingly feel guilty; they know it is their fault they have not had the proper pluck, the determination, to achieve what others have done.
And social practices begin in school:
鈥�. . . it was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn鈥檛 get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.鈥�
But Dickens is clear in his view about school and society:
鈥淭here is a wisdom of the head, and. . . there is a wisdom of the heart.鈥�
Both have to be present for children in school and society to thrive.
Instruction is now required in most school districts to be 鈥渄ata-driven,鈥� which means that which can be reduced to numbers, to statistics, which are more easily gleaned from multiple choice tests than, say, more organic, community-driven projects where the effect might be more complex, un-graph-able, unquantifiable.
What a good book! It鈥檚 satire, but insightful satire, useful. Sure Dickens can be preachy and sentimental as he rails on social practices he finds dehumanizing. But he also can be fun; are there sillier names for teachers than Gradgrind and--this is the best--Chokumchild?!
Janice Ian鈥檚 Better Times Will Come:
A link to the whole Better Times Will Come musical project:
Hard Times is what they now call The Great Depression, about which Studs Terkel wrote his monumental work of oral history. But Hard Times by nineteenth-century English writer Charles Dickens is a book about working class northern England, about which he said,
"My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else."
I read it in my twenties, and read it now in a time when 鈥渄ata-driven鈥� bureaucracies rule the day, and even in public education, where some teachers get their pay docked if their students do not exceed district data expectations. Performance-based development, they call it, performance being exclusively determined by student scores on standardized tests.
鈥淥ne cannot understand the history of education in the United States during the twentieth century unless one realizes that [stats and quantitative guy] Edward L. Thorndike won and [progressive, democratic, conversation- and community-based theorist] John Dewey lost鈥濃€� Ellen Condliffe Lagemann
The most memorable scene in Dickens鈥檚 1854 novel Hard Times (by Dickens) is the first one, where the teacher, Thomas Gradgrind, asks his class to define a horse:
"Bitzer," said Thomas Gradgrind. "Your definition of a horse."
"Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth." Thus (and much more) from Bitzer.
"Now girl number twenty," said Mr. Gradgrind. "You know what a horse is."
Girl number twenty is Sissy who rides horses every day, whose family owns horses. To 鈥渄efine鈥� a horse in this way is incomprehensible and silly to her.
An accumulation of facts is the only knowledge that matters to Gradgrind. Facts, not feelings. The businessman who helped shaped the American Common Core, the set of standards that continues to drive school curriculum in the US, said,鈥淚f you want to apply for a job at GM, they don鈥檛 give a damn how you feel.鈥� He was speaking here against the teaching of the personal essay in school, and stories, something he and his committee intended to drastically reduce in American public school curricula. And they were successful, to the detriment of the love of learning for millions of children. The Common Core privileges argument over story, nonfiction over fiction and poetry, a process that coincides with the conservative takeover of US politics more than a quarter of a century ago, but Dickens saw it already happening 150 years ago in England, skewered in this book.
鈥淣ow, 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鈥濃€擥radgrind
Gradgrind raises his own kids, too, without stories, without feeling, only reason, which leads daughter Louisa to a miserable marriage without love, based only on practical (wealth, social status: Facts!) considerations. Love is not part of the necessary vocabulary of the Gradgrind family or school. But this fact-based approach also leads to societal consequences where the bottom line matters more than humans.
The last thirty years in economic and political philosophy is correctly assumed by many to be guided in part by the brutally selfish ideology of Ayn Rand, but a century before her it is Dickens (in 1854?!) who makes this harsh indictment of mid-19th-century industrial practices and their dehumanizing effects:
鈥淎ny capitalist . . . 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?鈥� As if! And those not achieving that goal correspondingly feel guilty; they know it is their fault they have not had the proper pluck, the determination, to achieve what others have done.
And social practices begin in school:
鈥�. . . it was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn鈥檛 get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.鈥�
But Dickens is clear in his view about school and society:
鈥淭here is a wisdom of the head, and. . . there is a wisdom of the heart.鈥�
Both have to be present for children in school and society to thrive.
Instruction is now required in most school districts to be 鈥渄ata-driven,鈥� which means that which can be reduced to numbers, to statistics, which are more easily gleaned from multiple choice tests than, say, more organic, community-driven projects where the effect might be more complex, un-graph-able, unquantifiable.
What a good book! It鈥檚 satire, but insightful satire, useful. Sure Dickens can be preachy and sentimental as he rails on social practices he finds dehumanizing. But he also can be fun; are there sillier names for teachers than Gradgrind and--this is the best--Chokumchild?!
Janice Ian鈥檚 Better Times Will Come:
A link to the whole Better Times Will Come musical project:
April 17, 2024
Hard Times was the most recent novel that I completed in my personal project of reading all of Charles Dickens鈥� novels in the order of publication. And I must say, that this satirical novel was my least favorite so far. This was published in 1854, first in serialized form and then in book form, taking place not in London but in a fictitious manufacturing town, Coketown, often compared to Manchester. Based on Galatians 6:7, For whatsoever a man sow, that shall he also reap.鈥� The first book is entitled 鈥淪owing,鈥� the second book is entitled 鈥淩eaping鈥�, and the third is 鈥淕arnering.鈥�
In Book I, we are introduced to the superintendent, Thomas Gradgrind, in his school in Coketown where he emphasizes the teaching of facts, nothing but facts. Louisa and Thomas are his two oldest children with three younger children in the family cared for by Sissy. Tom and Louisa befriend Sissy, all of them very unhappy with their strict and rigid upbringing. Mr. Gradgrind鈥檚 close friend and devoid of all sentiment proposes marriage to Louisa, even though he is thirty years her senior. Louisa accepts the proposal and the newlyweds move to Lyon where Bounderby wants to observe how labor is used in the factories. In Book II, Thomas accepts a job with Bounderby and becomes more indebted to him as he becomes more reckless in his conduct. There are other characters, including the mill workers, where one gets wrapped up in their plight culminating in some dramatic ways in Book III, 鈥淕arnering.鈥�
One of the predominant themes was that Charles Dickens wished to educate the readers about the poor working conditions of some of the factories in the industrial towns. There is also the question of morality where the wealthy are portrayed as morally corrupt as he explores the effect of social class in Hard Times. At this point, I am returning to Dickens鈥� London as I begin Little Doritt.
In Book I, we are introduced to the superintendent, Thomas Gradgrind, in his school in Coketown where he emphasizes the teaching of facts, nothing but facts. Louisa and Thomas are his two oldest children with three younger children in the family cared for by Sissy. Tom and Louisa befriend Sissy, all of them very unhappy with their strict and rigid upbringing. Mr. Gradgrind鈥檚 close friend and devoid of all sentiment proposes marriage to Louisa, even though he is thirty years her senior. Louisa accepts the proposal and the newlyweds move to Lyon where Bounderby wants to observe how labor is used in the factories. In Book II, Thomas accepts a job with Bounderby and becomes more indebted to him as he becomes more reckless in his conduct. There are other characters, including the mill workers, where one gets wrapped up in their plight culminating in some dramatic ways in Book III, 鈥淕arnering.鈥�
One of the predominant themes was that Charles Dickens wished to educate the readers about the poor working conditions of some of the factories in the industrial towns. There is also the question of morality where the wealthy are portrayed as morally corrupt as he explores the effect of social class in Hard Times. At this point, I am returning to Dickens鈥� London as I begin Little Doritt.
March 10, 2024
Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirizes the social and economic conditions of the era.
The story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town.
It鈥檚 his shortest novel and until now I thought that it was my favourite of his works, but I praised the writing more than the story (I favour stories like Bleak House, Oliver Twist & Martin Chuzzlewit).
This was a re-read for me, but first time in English (instead of Portuguese).
The writing, in my humble opinion, is simply terrific and far from being ostentatious, pretentious or even flowery.
The plot is simple and straightforward, void of overly dramatic events, and we were presented with a nice revelation or twist, near the conclusion.
The characters are all very well displayed and constructed, and some are unforgettable.
The sense of humour, although subtle, is also present, as well as the author鈥檚 pessimistic view of industrialization and the future.
This is very different from his other books and may not please everyone, but like the first time, I truly enjoyed the storytelling.
PS. Just yesterday I watched the 1994 BBC adaptation for the tv, written and directed by Peter Barnes. It was well done and helped me to add some faces to the characters, but the book is a lot better.
e-book (Kobo): 382 pages (default), 110k words
Paperback (The Modern Library Classics) - introduction by Jane Jacobs: 374 pages (cover to cover)
Audiobook narrated by Sean Murphy: 11h37 minutes (it鈥檚 excellent and I only paid $0.65 Canadian from Kobo audiobook)
The story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town.
It鈥檚 his shortest novel and until now I thought that it was my favourite of his works, but I praised the writing more than the story (I favour stories like Bleak House, Oliver Twist & Martin Chuzzlewit).
This was a re-read for me, but first time in English (instead of Portuguese).
The writing, in my humble opinion, is simply terrific and far from being ostentatious, pretentious or even flowery.
The plot is simple and straightforward, void of overly dramatic events, and we were presented with a nice revelation or twist, near the conclusion.
The characters are all very well displayed and constructed, and some are unforgettable.
The sense of humour, although subtle, is also present, as well as the author鈥檚 pessimistic view of industrialization and the future.
This is very different from his other books and may not please everyone, but like the first time, I truly enjoyed the storytelling.
PS. Just yesterday I watched the 1994 BBC adaptation for the tv, written and directed by Peter Barnes. It was well done and helped me to add some faces to the characters, but the book is a lot better.
e-book (Kobo): 382 pages (default), 110k words
Paperback (The Modern Library Classics) - introduction by Jane Jacobs: 374 pages (cover to cover)
Audiobook narrated by Sean Murphy: 11h37 minutes (it鈥檚 excellent and I only paid $0.65 Canadian from Kobo audiobook)
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