E.P. Whipple

Whipple, E.P. "On the Economic fallacies of Hard Times." Hard Times. Ed. Kaplan, Fred and Sylvère, Monod. New York: Norton, 2001. 347-351. This article by E. P. Whipple is called “On the Economic Fallacies of Hard Times” and was written in The Atlantic Monthly in 1877. It talks about how Dickens established a weekly periodical called Household Words. Four years later he began the publication of Hard Times that was completed in weekly installments until its finish. Household Words was doubled in length with the completion of Hard Times. It was dedicated to Thomas Carlyle when published in a separate form who was Dickens’ master of political economy. The article tells the audience that he believed Dickens’ was in an embittered state of mind towards political and social questions when he wrote Hard Times. He thinks that Dickens’ was going against the current laws of the production and distribution of wealth and was trying to create new laws in society that he thought political economists never thought of. He proposes that Hard Times was directed against those who only thought logically. Whipple goes on to tell us that Dickens’ was very inefficient in the skill of generalization and whatever went against his beliefs he thought was untrue. Whipple suggests that many of the assessments of Hard Times failed to consider “any distinction between Dickens as a creator of character and Dickens as a humorous satirists of what he considers flagrant abuses.” He thinks that Dickens is understanding and considers many different aspects when thought of a creator of characters, and very one-sided when thought of as a satirists. The only difference between him and other satirists is that he had great skill in individualizing abuses in characters. Dickens is strong in individualizing, weak in generalizing, and personifies his personal opinions as a satirist. Anything that Dickens understands he humorously represents and anything that he does not understand he humorously misrepresents but has a style in which his readers would not be able to tell. Dickens’ satire with his dramatic genius appears in almost every character in Hard Times. Whipple says that the characters of Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind are personified abstractions, and that Macaulay thinks that they have little of Dickens’ humor. He then disagrees with Macaulay and says that Mr. Bounderby is one of the wittiest and most humorous of Dickens’ embodied sarcasms. He believes that the writer should enter into the soul of the person represented, sympathize with them to really know them, and represent their passions, prejudices, and opinions when exhibiting character. Characterization becomes satire when antipathy surpasses insight and the satirist scolds the individual who he has not really explored internally.
Whipple goes on to say that Dickens uses true facts and imagination that made discontent more popular and said what most people would normally not mention or reject. Dickens believed that the whole constitution of civilized society itself was a hopeless muddle, not only the relation between employers and employees. He thought that this hopeless muddle was beyond the reach of human intelligence or feeling to explain and justify. An example of how he portrayed this was used through Stephen Blackpool. He used harsh judgments and spoke the truth about public opinion and the government of Great Britain with his satire. The victims of his satire often enjoyed his work before resenting his debatable fallacies.