The Novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Hard times Essay

The Novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens was, by far, the most enjoyable piece of historical reading that I have done in high school. There were so many themes and ironies under the words that you had to search for, making it an incredibly enjoyable read.

Although it may seem impossible, this novel is both romantic and realist. First of all, the novel is automatically romantic, because it is a novel, which was a product of the romantics in the first place. Through this novel, we see the romanticism of the ugliness of a manmade world devoid of God's works. The few romanticized characters in the novel are made obvious, because they are striving toward something, and even if their goal is unknown, the characters each have something else to live for. Also, there is a realist side to the novel- realist not necessarily as in the opinion of the author, but as in a point the author is trying to get across. Dickens shows us an imaginary world without ideals, no appeal to the imagination, and strict adherence to fact alone. In other words, if you can't touch it or prove it, it doesn't exist. In the novel, we find a grim view of the world with many characters having realist outlooks: devoid of lightheartedness, with every man for himself. It seems that, although Dickens is writing from a romantic prospective, he is trying to get across the point of the fallacy of realism. However, to the open-minded reader, the Truth found in romanticism comes out on top.

Probably the two furthest poles of character in the novel are those of Josiah Bounderby and Stephen Blackpool. Although the two characters' lives are very different, they seem strangely perpendicular. Josiah Bounderby thinks he is solely correct in his ideals, but is ignorant about those of others. Bounderby is a very self-righteous man, obsessed with talking of how he was born in a ditch and has risen to be the self-proclaimed "Josiah Bounderby of Coketown" that he has become. He has bound himself in marriage with a woman 20 years his junior, but is too self-centered to have feelings for her. Stephen Blackpool, although he "might have passed for a particularly intelligent man in his condition. Yet he was not," was one of the wiser characters when it came to romanticism and morals. For example, when he didn't feel that rioting with the Hands was the right thing to do, he was the only one to stand up for his beliefs, and was thus thought of as different, and looked down upon by many. Although he has never been rich, does not proclaim his poverty to provoke pity. Like Bounderby, Stephen, too, is in a loveless marriage, but unlike Bounderby, he also knows true love as well in his beloved Rachael.

The author's view on the industrial town and the workers thereof is very gloomy. Dickens describes the town as dirty and disgusting, saying, "It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage." This paints a frightening picture of the town to the reader. We hear little about the workers in the novel, and when we do, they are boring and mechanical, described as simply "hands", no longer people, because they are so brainwashed in facts that they are incapable of feeling emotion.

Dickens's view of utilitarian education is that is unhealthy and quite unnecessary to remove all fancy from a child's mind. In order to survive the real world, you need romantic ideas. Dickens shows this through the children that have received this "education". Tom Gradgrind, as a child, completely applied himself to the facts. Because of this, he is now the whelp; the child of a carnivorous man, who has trained his son to the point that he has grown up to be selfish and malicious even to those he cares about. He is so completely devoid of morals that he steals from the Bank to repay own debts and turns the blame towards innocent Stephen Blackpool. Unlike many of the students, Louisa Gradgrind realizes there is something missing in her life. "What do I know, father, of tastes and fancies; of aspirations and affections...you have been so careful of me that I never had a child's heart. You have trained me so well that I never dreamed a child's dream." Regardless of her upbringing, she is amazingly compassionate, and goes against her own will for the "good" of her brother, whom she loves and for her father, who insists that this would be what would be most rational for her. Bitzer, also known as "the horse boy", was successful in school, only because he knew how to get on the good side of his teachers. This is however, as far as his schooling got him, because knowing the "correct" definition for a horse got him nowhere, and he is still only successful by being Mrs. Sparsit's gossipmonger on her employees. Sissy Jupe was brought to facts late after living a life of pleasure, therefore is uncorrupted by the "truth, truth, truth" of the other children. In her time at the school, a little of her joy rubs off on Louisa, most likely making the later-to-become Mrs. Bounderby the young woman she became, a woman who wound up discovering that where she was not where she wanted to be, and left the "relationship" to attempt to amend her life.

I believe the author summed up the entire message of this novel in a single passage found in the middle of the book; "... it was a sacred remembrance to these two common people. Utilitarian economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, commissioners of fact, genteel and used-up infidels, grabblers of many little dog's-eared creeds, the poor you will always have with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and affections to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, reality will take a wolfish turn and make an end of you" (152) Good up against evil, Utilitarianism against Truth; it's an age-old battle fought on the battlefields of our society thought which Truth will prevail as long as men like Dickens are there to show us the way.