Hard Times (with an Introduction by Edwin Percy Whipple)

By Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens’s tenth novel, which was first published serially in Dickens’s own periodical journal “Household Words” in 1854, “Hard Times,” is a work that sought to highlight the social and economic divide that was growing between capitalistic mill owners and workers during the Victorian era of Great Britain. Set in the fictitious Coketown, “Hard Times” is a critical examination of the poor working conditions in many English factory towns of the time as well as the changing nature of the aristocracy and the working-class in the second half of the 19th century. The novel centers on the lives of Thomas Gradgrind, senior, the superintendent of the local school, his children, Louisa and Thomas, junior, and Sissy Jupe, a free-spirited circus girl who struggles to fit in as a student under the rigidly utilitarian instruction of the Gradgrind school. Through the lives of Gradgrind’s children, Dickens’s seeks to criticize the failure of excessively utilitarian philosophy which was so prevalent during his time. As Louisa finds herself in an unhappy marriage and Thomas, junior, descends into a life of moral corruption, their father begins to realize the shortcomings of the philosophy that he has so rigidly applied in raising them. This edition includes an introduction by Edwin Percy Whipple.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Digireads.com Publishing
• Release date: Jan 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781420954357

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812–1870) gehört bis heute zu den beliebtesten Schriftstellern der Weltliteratur, in England ist er geradezu eine nationale Institution, und auch bei uns erfreuen sich seine Werke einer nicht nachlassenden Beliebtheit. Sein „Weihnachtslied in Prosa“ erscheint im deutschsprachigen Raum bis heute alljährlich in immer neuen Ausgaben und Adaptionen. Dickens’ lebensvoller Erzählstil, sein quirliger Humor, sein vehementer Humanismus und seine mitreißende Schaffensfreude brachten ihm den Beinamen „der Unnachahmliche“ ein.

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HARD TIMES

By CHARLES DICKENS

Introduction by EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE

Hard Times

By Charles Dickens

Introduction by Edwin Percy Whipple

Print ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5434-0

eBook ISBN 13: 978-1-4209-5435-7

This edition copyright © 2017. Digireads.com Publishing.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Cover Image: a detail of an Illustration for Hard Times, George Cruikshank (1792-1878) (after) / Private Collection / © Look and Learn / Bridgeman Images.

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CONTENTS

Introduction

Book I.

Chapter I.

Chapter II.

Chapter III.

Chapter IV.

Chapter V.

Chapter VI.

Chapter VII.

Chapter VIII.

Chapter IX.

Chapter X.

Chapter XI.

Chapter XII.

Chapter XIII.

Chapter XIV.

Chapter XV.

Chapter XVI.

Book II.

Chapter I.

Chapter II.

Chapter III.

Chapter IV.

Chapter V.

Chapter VI.

Chapter VII.

Chapter VIII.

Chapter IX.

Chapter X.

Chapter XI.

Chapter XII.

Book III.

Chapter I.

Chapter II.

Chapter III.

Chapter IV.

Chapter V.

Chapter VI.

Chapter VII.

Chapter VIII.

Chapter IX.

Introduction

Dickens established a weekly periodical, called Household Words, on the 30th of March, 1850. On the 1st of April, 1854, he began in it the publication of the tale of Hard Times, which was continued in weekly instalments until its completion, in the number for the 12th of August. The circulation of Household Words was doubled by the appearance in its pages of this story. When published in a separate form, it was appropriately dedicated to Thomas Carlyle, who was Dickens’s master in all matters relating to the dismal science of political economy.

During the composition of Hard Times the author was evidently in an embittered state of mind, in respect to social and political questions. He must have felt that he was, in some degree, warring against the demonstrated laws of the production and distribution of wealth; yet he also felt that he was putting into prominence some laws of the human heart which he supposed political economists had studiously overlooked or ignored. He wrote to Charles Knight that he had no design to damage the really useful truths of political economy, but that his story was directed against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else; who would take the average of cold in the Crimea during twelve months as a reason for clothing a soldier in nankeen on a night when he would be frozen to death in fur; and who would comfort the laborer in traveling twelve miles a day to and from his work, by telling him that the average distance of one inhabited place from another, on the whole area of England, is only four miles. This is, of course, a caricatured statement of what statisticians propose to prove by their figures and averages. Dickens would have been the first to laugh at such an economist and statistician as Michael Thomas Sadler, who mixed up figures of arithmetic and figures of rhetoric, tables of population and gushing sentiments, in one odd jumble of doubtful calculations and bombastic declamations; yet Sadler is only an extreme case of an investigator, who turns aside from his special work to introduce considerations which, however important in themselves, have nothing to do with the business he has in hand. Dickens’s mind was so deficient in the power of generalization, so inapt to recognize the operation of inexorable law, that whatever offended his instinctive benevolent sentiments he was inclined to assail as untrue. Now there is no law the operation of which so frequently shocks our benevolent sentiments as the law of gravitation; yet no philanthropist, however accustomed he may be to subordinate scientific truth to amiable impulses, ever presumes to doubt the certain operation of that law. The great field for the contest between the head and the heart is the domain of political economy. The demonstrated laws of this science are often particularly offensive to many good men and good women, who wish well for their fellow-creatures, and who are pained by the obstacles which economic maxims present to their diffusive benevolence. The time will come when it will be as intellectually discreditable for an educated person to engage in a crusade against the established laws of political economy as in a crusade against the established laws of the physical universe; but the fact that men like Carlyle, Ruskin, and Dickens can write economic nonsense, without losing intellectual caste, shows that the science of political economy, before its beneficent truths come to be generally admitted, must go through a long struggle with benevolent sophisms and benevolent passions.

In naming this book Dickens found much difficulty. He sent the following titles to John Forster, as expressive of his general idea: 1. According to Cocker. 2. Prove It. 3. Stubborn Things. 4. Mr. Gradgrind’s Facts. 5. The Grindstone. 6. Hard Times. 7. Two and Two are Four. 8. Something Tangible. 9. Our Hard-Headed Friend. 10. Rust and Dust. 11. Simple Arithmetic 12. A Matter of Calculation. 13. A Mere Question of Figures. 14. The Gradgrind Philosophy. The author was in favor of one of three of these, 6, 13, and 14; Forster was in favor of either 2, 6, or 11. As both agreed on No. 6, that title was chosen. Yet certainly No. 14, The Gradgrind Philosophy, was the best of all, for it best indicated the purpose of the story. Hard Times is an extremely vague title, and might apply to almost any story that Dickens or any other novelist has written.

It is curious to note the different opinions of two widely differing men, regarding the story itself. Ruskin says that the essential value and truth of Dickens’s writings have been unwisely lost sight of by many thoughtful persons, merely because he presents his truth with some color of caricature. Unwisely, because Dickens’s caricature though often gross is never mistaken. Allowing for the manner of his telling them, the things he tells us are always true. I wish that he could think it right to limit his brilliant exaggeration to works written only for public amusement; and when he takes up a subject of high national importance, such as that he handled in ‘Hard Times,’ that he would use severer and more accurate analysis. The usefulness of that work (to my mind, in several respects, the greatest he has written) is with many persons seriously diminished, because Mr. Bounderby is a dramatic monster, instead of a characteristic example of a worldly master; and Stephen Blackpool a dramatic perfection instead of a characteristic example of an honest workman. But let us not lose the use of Dickens’s wit and insight because he chooses to speak in a circle of stage fire. He is entirely right in his main drift and purpose in every book he has written; and all of them, but especially ‘Hard Times,’ should be studied with great care by persons interested in social questions. They will find much that is partial, and, because partial, apparently unjust; but if they examine all the evidence on the other side, which Dickens seems to overlook, it will appear, after all the trouble, that his view was the finally right one, grossly and sharply told. This is the opinion of an eloquent thinker and writer, who is most at variance with the principles which scientific economists consider to be scientifically established. On the opposite extreme, we have the opinion of Macaulay, who records in his private diary, under the date of August 12, 1854, this disparaging criticism: I read Dickens’s ‘Hard Times.’ One excessively touching, heart-breaking passage, and the rest sullen socialism. The evils he attacks he caricatures grossly and with little humor.

In judging the work neither Ruskin nor Macaulay seems to have made any distinction between Dickens as a creator of character, and Dickens as a humorous satirist of what he considered flagrant abuses. As a creator of character he is always tolerant and many-sided; as a satirist he is always intolerant and one-sided; and the only difference between his satire and that of other satirists consists in the fact that he has a wonderful power in individualizing abuses in persons. Juvenal, Dryden, and Pope, though keen satirists of character, are comparatively ineffective in the art of concealing their didactic purpose under an apparently dramatic form. So strong is Dickens’s individualizing faculty, and so weak his faculty of generalization, that, as a satirist, he simply personifies his personal opinions. These opinions are formed by quick-witted impressions intensified by philanthropic emotions; they spring neither from any deep insight of reason nor from any careful processes of reasoning; and they are therefore contemptuously discarded as fallacies by all thinkers on social problems who are devoted to the investigation of social phenomena and the establishment of economic laws; but they are so vividly impersonated, and the classes satirized are so felicitously hit in some of their external characteristics and weak points, that many readers fail to discover the essential difference between such realities of character as Tony Weller and Mrs. Gamp and such semblances of character as Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. Whatever Dickens understands he humorously represents; whatever he does not understand he humorously misrepresents; but in either case, whether he conceives or misconceives, he conveys to the general reader an impression that he is as great in those characters in which he personifies his antipathies as in those in which he embodies his sympathies.

The operation of this satirical, as contrasted with dramatic genius, is apparent in almost every person who appears in Hard Times, except Sleary and his companions of the circus combination. Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby are personified abstractions, after the method of Ben Jonson; but the charge that Macaulay brings against them that they have little of Dickens’s humor must be received with qualifications. Mr. Bounderby, for example, as the satirical representative of a class, and not as a person who could have had any real existence,—as a person who gathers into himself all the vices of a horde of English manufacturers without a ray of light being shed into his internal constitution of heart and mind,—is one of the wittiest and most humorous of Dickens’s embodied sarcasms. Bounderby becomes a seeming character by being looked at and individualized from the point of view of imaginative antipathy. So surveyed, he seems real to thousands who observe their employers from the outside, and judge of them, not as they are, but as they appear to their embittered minds and hearts. Still the artistic objection holds good, that when a man resembling Mr. Bounderby is brought into the domain of romance or the drama, the great masters of romance and the drama commonly insist that he shall not only be externally represented but internally known. There is no authorized, no accredited, way of exhibiting character but this, that the dramatist or novelist shall enter into the soul of the personage represented, shall sympathize with him sufficiently to know him, and shall represent his passions, prejudices, and opinions as springing from some central will and individuality. This sympathy is consistent with the utmost hatred of the person described; but characterization becomes satire the moment that antipathy supersedes insight, and the satirist berates the exterior manifestations of an individuality whose interior life he has not diligently explored and interpreted. Bounderby, therefore, is only a magnificent specimen of what satirical genius can do, when divorced from the dramatist’s idea of justice, and the dramatist’s perception of those minute peculiarities of intellect, disposition, and feeling which distinguish one bully of humility from another.

It is ridiculous to assert, as Buskin asserts, that Hard Times is Dickens’s greatest work; for it is the one of all his works, which should be distinguished from the others, as specially wanting in that power of real characterization on which his reputation as a vivid delineator of human character and human life depends. The whole effect of the story, though it lacks neither amusing nor pathetic incidents, and though it contains passages of description which rank with his best efforts in combining truth of fact with truth of imagination, is ungenial and unpleasant. Indeed, in this book, he simply intensified popular discontent; he ignored, or he was ignorant of, those laws the violation of which is at the root of popular discontent; and proclaimed, with his favorite ideal workman, Stephen Blackpool, that not only the relation between employers and employed, but the whole constitution of civilized society itself, was a hopeless muddle, beyond the reach of human intelligence or humane feeling to explain and justify. It is to be observed here, that all cheering views of the amelioration of the condition of the race come from those hard thinkers, whose benevolent impulses push them to the investigation of natural and economic laws. Starting from the position of sentimental benevolence, and meeting unforeseen intellectual obstacles at every step in his progress, Dickens ends in a muddle by the necessity of his method. Had he been intellectually equipped with the knowledge possessed by many men to whom in respect to genius he was immensely superior, he would never have landed in a conclusion so ignominious, and one which the average intellect of well informed persons of the present day contemptuously rejects. If Dickens had contented himself with using his great powers of observation, sympathy, humor, imagination, and characterization in their appropriate fields, his lack of scientific training in the austere domain of social, legal, and political science would have been hardly perceptible; but after his immense popularity was assured by the success of The Pickwick Papers, he was smitten with the ambition to direct the public opinion of Great Britain by embodying, in exquisitely satirical caricatures, rash and hasty judgments on the whole government of Great Britain in all its departments: legislative, executive, and judicial. He overlooked uses, in order to fasten on abuses. His power to excite, at his will, laughter, or tears, or indignation, was so great that the victims of his mirthful wrath were not at first disposed to resent his debatable fallacies while enjoying his delicious fun. His invasion of the domain of political science with the palpable design of substituting benevolent instincts for established laws was carelessly condoned by the statesmen, legists, and economists whom he denounced and amused.

Indeed, the great characteristic of Dickens’s early popularity was this, that it was confined to no class, but extended to all classes, rich and poor, noble and plebeian. The queen on the throne read him, and so did Hodge at the plough; and between the sovereign and her poorest subject there was no class which did not sound his praises as a humorist. Still, every student of the real genius of Dickens must be surprised at the judgment pronounced on his various romances by what may be called the higher, the professional, the educated classes, the classes which, both in England and in the United States, hold positions of trust and honor, and are bound, by the practical necessities of their posts, to be on a level with the advancing intelligence of the age, in legislative, economic, and judicial science. By these persons The Pickwick Papers are, as a general thing, preferred to any other of the works of Dickens. The Lord Chief Justice (afterwards Lord Chancellor) Campbell told Dickens that he would prefer the honor of having written that book to the honors which his professional exertions had obtained for him, that of being a peer of parliament and the nominal head of the law. All persons who have had a sufficiently large acquaintance with the men of practical ability who have risen to power in the United States, whether as judges, statesmen, or political economists, must have been impressed with the opinion of these men, as to the superiority of The Pickwick Papers over all the successive publications of Dickens. Yet it is as certain as any question coming before the literary critic can be, that a number of the works that followed The Pickwick Papers are superior to that publication, not only in force of sentiment, imagination, and characterization, but in everything which distinguishes the individual genius of Dickens,—a genius which, up to the time of David Copperfield, deepened and enlarged in the orderly process of its development. The secret of this preference for The Pickwick Papers is to be found in the fact that the author had, in that book, no favorite theory to push, no grand moral to enforce, no assault on principles about which educated men had made up their minds. These men could laugh heartily at Mr. Buzfuz and Mr. Justice Stareleigh; but when, as in Bleak House, there was a serious attempt to assail equity jurisprudence, they felt that the humorist had ventured on ground where he had nothing but his genius to compensate for his lack of experience and knowledge. Thus it is that a work which, with all its wealth of animal spirits, is comparatively shallow and superficial considered as a full expression of Dickens’s powers of humor, pathos, narrative, description, imagination, and characterization, has obtained a preeminence above its successors, not because it contains what is best and deepest in Dickens’s genius, but because it omits certain matters relating to social and economical science, with which he was imperfectly acquainted, and on which his benevolence, misleading his genius, still urged him vehemently to dogmatize. His educated readers enjoyed his humor and pathos as before, but they were more or less irritated by the intrusion of social theories which they had long dismissed from their minds as exploded fallacies, and did not see that the wit was more pointed, the humor richer, the faculty of constructing a story more developed, the sentiment of humanity more earnest and profound, than in the inartistic incidents of The Pickwick Papers, over which they had laughed until they had cried, and cried until they had laughed again. They desired amusement merely; The Pickwick Papers are the most amusing of Dickens’s works; and they were correspondingly vexed with an author who deviated from the course of amusing them into that of instructing them, only to emphasize notions which were behind the knowledge of the time, and which interfered with their enjoyment without giving them any intelligent instruction.

Still, allowing for the prepossessions of Dickens in writing Hard Times, and forgetting Adam Smith, Ricardo, and John Stuart Mill,—looking at him only as a humorous satirist, profoundly disgusted with some prominent evils of his day,—we may warmly praise the book as one of the most perfect of its kind. The bleakness of the whole representation of human life proceeds from the Gradgrind Philosophy of Life, which emphasizes Fact, and denounces all cultivation of the sentiments and the imagination. As a result of this system, Tom, the son of Mr. Gradgrind, becomes a selfish whelp and sneak thief; his daughter, Louisa, marries Mr. Bounderby, under circumstances which point inevitably to a separation, either on account of adultery or incompatibility of temper and disposition; and young Bitzer, the plebeian product of the system, who glories in his own emancipation from all the ties of son, brother, and husband, who is eloquent on the improvidence of those who marry and have children, and who congratulates himself that he has only one person to feed, and that’s the person he most likes to feed, namely, himself, is doomed to remain what he is, to the end of his life, a soulless, heartless, calculating machine, almost too mean to merit even the spurn of contempt. The first person who stirs the family of Mr. Gradgrind to a vague sense that the human mind possesses the faculty of imagination is Mr. Sleary, the circus-manager; and, in the end, he is the person who saves Tom Gradgrind from the disgrace of being arrested and tried as a felon. Dickens shows much art in making a man like Sleary, who represents the lowest element in the lowest order of popular amusements, the beneficent genius of the Gradgrind family, inclosed as they are in seemingly impenetrable surroundings of propriety, respectability, and prosaic fact. In depicting Sleary, the author escapes from satire into characterization, and adds to the population of Dickens-land one of his most humorously conceived and consistently drawn personages. While his hand is in he strikes off portraits of Master Kidderminster, Mr. E. W. B. Childere, and other members of the circus troupe, with almost equal vigor and fidelity to fact. As a specimen of his humor, Sleary’s description of the search which Merrylegs’ dog made to find him, in order to inform him of his master’s death, is incomparably good. Mr. Gradgrind, as a man of science, suggests that the dog was drawn to him by his instinct and his fine scent. Mr. Sleary shakes his head skeptically. His idea is, that the dog went to another dog that he met on his journey, and asked him if he knew of a person of the name of Sleary, in the horse-riding way,—stout man,—game eye? And the other dog said that he couldn’t say he knew him himself, but knew a dog who was likely to be acquainted with him, and then introduced him to that dog. And you know, Sleary added, that being much before the public, a number of dogs must be acquainted with me that I don’t know. And Sleary goes on to show that after fourteen months’ journey, the dog at last came to him in a very bad condition, lame and almost blind, threw himself up behind, stood on his fore legs, weak as he was, and then he wagged his tail and died. And then Sleary knew that the dog was the dog of Merrylegs. We have not put the narrative into Sleary’s expressive lisp, and can only refer the reader to the original account in the eighth chapter of Hard Times.

The relation between Mr. James Harthouse and Louisa, the wife of Mr. Bounderby, is one of the best situations in Dickens’s novels. Harthouse represents a type of character which was the object of Dickens’s special aversion,—the younger son of a younger son of family,—born bored, as St. Simon says of the Duke of Orleans, and passing listlessly through life in a constant dread of boredom, but seeking distractions and stimulants through new experiences,—a thorough gentleman, made to the model of the time, weary of everything, and putting no more faith in anything than Lucifer. Contrasted with this jaded man of fashion is Louisa Gradgrind, the wife of Mr. Bounderby. Far from being morally and mentally wearied by too large an experience of life, she has had no experience of life at all. Her instincts, feelings, and imagination, as a woman, have been forced back into the interior recesses of her mind by the method of her education, and are, therefore, ever ready to burst forth with an impetuosity corresponding to the force used in their repression and restraint. Now Dickens, as an English novelist, was prevented, by his English sense of decorum, from describing in detail those sensuous and passionate elements in her nature which brought her to the point of agreeing to an elopement with her lover. A French novelist would have had no difficulty in this respect. Leaving out of view such romancers as Alexandre Dumas and Frederic Soulie, with what pleasure would story-tellers of a higher order, like Théophile Gautier, Prosper Mérimée, George Sand, and Charles de Bernard, have recorded their minute analysis of every phase of passion in the breasts of the would-be adulterer and the would-be adulteress! As it is, the reader finds it difficult to understand the frenzy of soul, the terrible tumult of feeling, which rends the heart of Louisa, as she flies to her father on the evening she has agreed to elope with her lover. Such madness as she displays in the culmination of passion might have been explained by exhibiting, step by step, the growth of her passion. Instead of this, we are overwhelmed by the sudden passage of ice into fire, without any warning of the perilous transformation. The method of the French novelists is doubtless corrupting in just the degree in which it is interpretative. Whatever may be said of it, it at least accounts, on the logic of passion, for those crimes against the sanctity of the marriage relation, which all good people deplore but which few good people seem to understand.

It is needless to add, in this connection, any remarks on the singular purity of the relation existing between Rachael and Stephen Blackpool. Any reader who can contemplate it without feeling the tears gather in his eyes is hopelessly insensible to the pathos of Dickens in its most touching manifestations.

EDWIN PERCY WHIPPLE

1894.

Book I.

SOWING

Chapter I.

THE ONE THING NEEDFUL

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

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored inside. The speaker’s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders,—nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was,—all helped the emphasis.

‘In this life, we want nothing but Facts, sir; nothing but Facts!’

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.

Chapter II.

MURDERING THE INNOCENTS

Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir—peremptorily Thomas—Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind—no, sir!

In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ‘boys and girls,’ for ‘sir,’ Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of facts.

Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.

‘Girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger, ‘I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?’

‘Sissy Jupe, sir,’ explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and curtseying.

‘Sissy is not a name,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.’

‘It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,’ returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another curtsey.

‘Then he has no business to do it,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘Tell him he mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?’

‘He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.’

Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.

‘We don’t want to know anything about that, here. You mustn’t tell us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?’

‘If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.’

‘You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then. Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?’

‘Oh yes, sir.’

‘Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.’

(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)

‘Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!’ said Mr. Gradgrind, for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ‘Girl number twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.’

The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white-washed room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies, divided up the centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at the corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the short ends of lashes which, by bringing them into immediate contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white.

‘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) Bitzer.

‘Now girl number twenty,’ said Mr. Gradgrind. ‘You know what a horse is.’

She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer, after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once, and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that they looked like the antennae of busy insects, put his knuckles to his freckled forehead,

Reviews for Hard Times (with an Introduction by Edwin Percy Whipple)

[jonfaith · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here?

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

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

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

[lisahistory · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This is the version from 1834, as originally published serialized in Household Words. Highly recommended, as read by Phil Benson, who has the perfect accent and intonation for Dickens' only northern novel. I didn't realize till almost the end that "Hard" has a double meaning, not just difficult (as in the life of poor working people) but unemotional and uncaring. The children are taught to be hard, which puts Luisa in a bad marriage and Tom into an immoral lifestyle. Bounderby is hard on others. It is Gradgrind's turn away from being hard which helps save everyone, and the characters who were not hard at all (Stephen, Rachael, and Sissy) meet their various fates but always retain their integrity.

[therebelprince · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Justly one of Dickens' least-read novels, Hard Times is a bit of an anomaly in several ways. His 10th novel, Dickens was writing in the journal Household Words in 1854, which gave him a lot less space than usual - this is perhaps a third the length of your average Dickens work. It's also a fairly straightforward story that strikes one more as a moral treatise than anything else. Aside from the famous circus sequence, the novel feels dry and a little perfunctory. The Lancashire characters' accents are also questionable at best, and indecipherable at worst.

George Bernard Shaw liked this book, and it's not hard to see why. This is perhaps Dickens' most blatantly political book, an argument against society becoming too rational and utilitarian, too capitalist at the extent of humanity. It was an argument that had already been greatly lost by 1854, and one we are still fighting today in 2016. In that sense, Hard Times still encapsulates Dickens' core philosophies. At the same time, this is never going to be one of the works for which CD is remembered. His sheer talent is still there, in spades, but it's notable that after this work, Dickens entered the third and final act of his career, in which his novels were allowed to take their time, and he'd never sound a dull note again.

[powderfinger69 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The message of Hard Times rings very true today. "...that there i[s] a love in the world, not all [S]elf-intere[s]t after all, but [s]omething very different...." However, this was by far the most difficult Dickens read that I can remember. Reading the sections where his satire of the Utilitarians is at its thickest at times feels like walking through quicksand in order to follow the plot. The story is simple and you cannot miss his point, but everything slogs.

[deltaqueen50 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hard Times by Charles Dickens explores and exposes the working conditions in the factories of Northern England in the 1850’s. Dickens was obviously a forward thinker and many of his novels point out conditions that needed improving, in Hard Times he turns his attention on the ambitious businessmen, the educators, the gentry and the would-be gentry who take advantage and exploit the workers. First and foremost, Hard Times appears to be a critique of the politics and economics of the day. Contrary to the Temperance Leagues and Sabbatarians, he believed that hard-working people deserved recreational pursuits to relieve the tedium and stress of their workaday lives. It is also apparent that he felt that children need to be encouraged to use their imagination, that fairy tales and make believe are important to their development. This is the shortest of his novels and is set in the fictitious industrial town of Coketown where the factories belch smoke all day and soot covers the landscape. The subject matter is as dark as the setting, as we read of abuse, suppression and betrayal. This is not a book to read for it’s happy ending, being much darker than David Copperfield or Oliver Twist. The characters on these pages do not get a chance to turn their lives around. I read Hard Times in installment form just as it was originally published in 1854 and although it is a socially conscious, agenda-drive book, there is also a good story here about the citizens of Coketown, many with the wonderfully descriptive names that Dickens bestows upon his characters. Being a shorter book kept the focus on moving the story along and, rather than pages of description or long winded asides, the prose was stylish and clever. As a fan of Dickens, I enjoyed both the fine writing and the sharp social criticism that one comes to expect of this author.

[m.belljackson · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The entrance of kind, caring, and imaginative little Sissy into the fact dominated Gradgrind family surprisingly does little to change the older children, Tom and Louisa. Tom becomes more of a selfish and self-indulgent hypocrite, while Louisaoddly stays distant from the carefree and creative life that Sissy could open for them.Louisa remains so flat in this "eminently practical" existence that she comes across as a depressive.She must have been strikingly beautiful for the handsome, intelligent, willful, rake and villain James Harthouse to be attracted to her even as a passing conquest.The plot evolves so boringly slowly that Harthouse emerges as the only halfway exciting and intriguing characteronce good man Stephen Blackpool has left Coketown. Their names could be reversed since the hero is a sturdy house of heart and the other boasts of a pool of darkness where his heart felt morals should be.Other characters are simply too good to be true or just plain old Dicksonian caricatures.Worse still is that translations are needed for Stephen's noble dialect and Stearly's lisp -they are both like reading paragraphs of baby talk.Only a few memorable quotes among all the admirable descriptions of smoke and fumes: "What does he come here cheeking us for, then?"

[la2bkk · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This was my first Dickens' novel, admittedly my choice as it is considerably shorter than any of his other major works. There were sections I found very entertaining- his reputation for conveying humor and biting social commentary is well earned. That said, I didn't find the actual story line particularly compelling and would have preferred more emphasis on fewer characters. All in all, an enjoyable but not outstanding book.

[mbmackay · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Dickens' 10th full length novel and far from his best. Essentially a polemic against harsh employers, early unions and the unhealthy dirt of newly industrialised cities, the book seems to miss most targets. The main characters seem even more one dimensional than usual - Gradgrind is a a great name for the grinding teacher, but as a character, he fails to be believable. His daughter, Louise, marries the mill owner Bounderby (another great name, but equally a failure as a character) and their marriage forms one of the central themes. In my Dickens marathon over the last 6 months or so, I am yet to find a normal, happy, productive marriage. Louise's marriage is worse than most depicted by Dickens, loveless and unequal, but I find it telling that there are NO normal marriages in such an extensive body of fiction. Read May 2012.

[jwhenderson_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Dickens' novel Hard Times presents some of the themes common to Dickens. There is a young child, Sissy Jupe, whose father abandons her. And we have yet another example of mal-education with the system of Thomas Gradgrind, "facts, facts, facts". Dickens creates interest with deft touches like the scene of Gradgrind's children, Louisa and Thomas, finding their imaginations stirred (perhaps for the first time) at the sight of a Circus. This does not last for long -- not in the family of Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, who runs it just as sternly and irrationally rational as his school. Stir in some colorful supporting characters and we have the start of a rather interesting story. I find the novel to be surprisingly readable. There is something to be said for Dickens' economy of words, paragraphs and chapters as compared with most of his earlier (and later) novels. Unfortunately the economy is achieved at the expense of fun, the wonderfully wild and jovial, bumbling blunderbusses and curious characters that made much of Dickens so much fun are not present (sad!). That having been said it is a fine sentimental story -- ironic in its' aggressive stance against sentiment. The character of Louisa, in particular, seems to be one of Dickens' favorite types: the young woman beset by fate sharing her plight with the likes of Esther Summerson. She comes up short as does this novel in most aspects, when compared with the rest of Dickens' oeuvre.

[elfortunawe · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Hard Times is, first and foremost, a social satire. Though he uses a dramatic story and interesting characters to encapsulate his ideas, the narrative often takes a back seat to the point Dickens is trying to make.Though it's present in all of his work, this method is particularly apparent in Hard Times. Some find this irritating, but I didn't have any problems with it. You could say it detracts from the story, but if all you're looking for is a fun story, then you shouldn't be reading Dickens.Hard Times levels a number of critiques ate the society of the day, but the primary focus is the philosophy of Utilitarianism, embodied by Thomas Gradrind. Utilitarianism was a popular philosophy at the time, and Dickens detested it, obviously. In the book, he provides an example of the effects such a philosophy would have on society if allowed free reign.Note should be made of Louisa Gradgrind, whose upbringing under the auspices of her father, Thomas Grandgrind, was modeled after that of John Stuart Mill, who developed Utilitarianism. Mill, as a result of his education, had a nervous breakdown at the age of twenty, and Dickens uses this, in the character of Louisa, to provide the final blow to his attack on Mill's philosophy.This is a book about ideas, not characters and narrative. The characters in the book, as in all of Dickens' work, are certainly memorable, and the story does a good job carrying the reader along. But Hard Times main value is in it's defense of humanity against mindless systems.

[jmoncton_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I am a big fan of Dickens, but this one was a disappointment for me. Like many of his novels, he is making a commentary on society. In this case, he is criticizing the trend of memorizing facts in education and society's movement toward industrialization. Two of the main characters, siblings Louisa and Tom Gradgrind are brought up to memorize facts and ignore stories and imaginative fancy. They end up being socially dysfunctional; in Louisa's case she is unable to build emotional ties and Tom becomes a complete selfish boor. What this novel was missing is what Dickens does so well in his other books. The characters seemed flat and one-dimensional. Where were the memorable supporting characters like Uriah Heep, or Jenny Wren? The book felt preachy, especially the ending, and lacked the usual humor and warmth for me. My least favorite Dickens so far.

[rachellwin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Louisa Gradgrind and her brother grow up in mid-19th century London filled with nothing by facts, law, discipline, and capitalism. As a result, Louisa enters into a loveless marriage to an ass of an older man, her brother turns to the seedier side of life, while the orphan child, Sissy, who made her home with the Gradgrinds after being deserted by her circus performing father seems to grow into the woman that Louisa should have become. A treatise on the importance of beauty, imagination, and human compassion triumphing over the then-burgeoning trend toward the mechanization of society, Hard Times is a typical Dickens novel with wonderful - and extensive - wordplay, lively dialogue, and a slightly sarcastic sense of humor. Definitely for the advanced reader, I recommend this book for the young adult section of a public library especially because of its place in classical literature.

[jalenv_2 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The most depressing thing about Charles Dickens' Hard Times is how little has changed about the attitude of the rich for the working class even though it's getting closer to two centuries since it was first published.Some of the revelations were no surprise, but that didn't matter. My favorite parts were when Thomas Gradgrind, Senior, discovered the results his teaching of nothing but facts have had on two of his pupils.There are plenty of reasons to become outraged on characters' behalf and several characters well worth detesting.Mr. Tull's narration was good.

[cecilturtle · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Imposed in school, but one of the best ways to learn about the industrial revolution

[lisamaria_c · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I was assigned Hard Times in high school, and actually remembered it as one of the few works by Dickens I had enjoyed. Rereading it, I did still enjoy it on the whole, but I still found in it so many of the qualities that put me off in Dickens--although often they're closely associated with qualities I do like.What I do like is the humor. Dickens can be witty and sharp, and this satire of utilitarianism comes off in bright primary colors, and his distaste for the Industrial Revolution and Industrialists and members of Unions alike in sooty black. Yet in terms of this picture of the Industrial North of England I couldn't help contrasting it in my mind--unfavorably--to Gaskell's North and South. There are ways in which I do find Dickens the superior writer. He had the humor I remember lacking from Gaskell and goodness, Dickens can turn a memorable phrase. But Gaskell's is a much more nuanced portrait of the Industrial Revolution. She shows its dark side--she can't be accused, unlike Dickens' character Bounderby, of trying to claim the smoky, grimy air is good for your health! Or that factory work is "light" and "pleasant." But Gaskell also shows the dynamism of the new forces at work that empowered workers compared to what had come before or to the more agricultural, class-bound South. Dickens' industrialist Bounderby is no more than a caricature--Gaskell's industrialist Thornton is a rounded figure, with virtues and flaws and a point of view that doesn't represent a straw man. On the other side of the class divide, Gaskell's workingman Nicholas Higgins to me represents a much stronger figure than either Slackbridge or the sentimentalized Blackwell in Hard Times. And I hate how Dickens represents the speech of the working class, though he's hardly alone in that in his era or ours. But it was a trial trying to make out Blackwell's speech: "I ha' hed what's been spok'n o' me, and tis' lickly that I shan't mend it." It's not as if educated speakers of English don't drop sounds. How would you pronounce "thought?" But it's not as if Dickens resorts to that kind of phonetic spelling above for upper class characters. Those caricatures, over-the-top characterizations and the hectoring polemics extend even to one of Dickens' most notable characteristics--the use of character names as tags for one-sided qualities--even if I do have to smile at names such as "Gradgrind" or "Bounderby" or "Harthouse."If my rating doesn't fall below a three (and I didn't hesitate to give A Tale of Two Cities lower) it's because, reading Blackwell's dialogue aside, this is so very readable. So much of this book is very, very quotable. I also found Louisa Bounderby an interesting character. She's a much less pallid character than I usually see in Dicken's women characters--including the others within this book not out and out caricatures like Mrs Sparsit. Louisa's a kind of anti-Emma Bovary. If Flaubert's title heroine was a female Don Quixote, driven to destruction by too much fanciful reading, then Louisa is the other side of the spectrum--one made emotionally arid by strangling all imagination and playfulness out of her from an early age to suit her father's utilitarian principles. And at least in this novel I can't accuse Dickens of being verbose--this one is less than 300 pages. Worth reading, despite my reservations.

[charlie68_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Reading this back to back with Pickwick Papers this work is darker and more cynical. But still an excellent book, by turns comic, thoughtful and timely, another great novel by Mr. Dickens. Also a masterful performance by the reader, Anton Lesser.

[stbalbach_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is my 10th Dickens novel, read in rough chronological order of publication. I've read worse, and better. Mercifully a single deck and not the normal triple. There are a few genuinely touching scenes of reconciliation and the theme of the need for love over facts is somewhat modern in this age of information and answers. I don't think this novel will stick in my memory for very long, there is a lot of cliche Dickens, although the quality of the writing - choice of words and sentence structure - as always elevates it above genre fiction.I was bemused by the association of "Roman" with the evil characters (easily searched in an electronic edition). Mr. Bounderby has a "Roman nose", Mrs. Sparsit also has a Roman nose and eyebrows Coriolanian. She is a "Roman matron going outside the city walls to treat with an invading general." Mr. Slackbridge is compared with a "Roman Brutus", and Mr. Bounderby plays a "Roman part". There were many stereotypes wrapped up in the word "Roman" for a Victorian reader. Dickens seems to blame the upper-class Aristocratic association with Enlightenment ideals who allied with bankers (big-nosed Mediterraneans ie. Jews, foreigners) that then exploited the good people of England, literally sending them down the "hell pit" to die. It's simplistic and ultimately racist in a 19th century way, but overlooked since the message is humanitarian to improve the condition of the working poor.

[twomoredays · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

've always had somewhat of a dysfunctional relationship with Charles Dickens. I remember, when I was somewhere around the age of seven, I was determined to read Oliver Twist, but being only seven the book was completely impossible. I didn't encounter Dickens again until my eighth grade language arts class where, instead of getting to read A Tale of Two Cities like I wanted to, I was forced to endure Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. Maybe that's where my incessant dislike of Austen began. Finally, I read a small bit of Great Expectations for my freshman English class in high school. I never finished it, though I can't say it was completely miserable.Considering that tedious history, I was not exactly thrilled about having to face yet another Charles Dickens novel, but Hard Times turned out to be quite the surprise. While it took a few pages to get into, I ended up rather liking the novel. As books for humanities go, it was simple and straight forward and I liked the story, the implications, and the symbolism.For a class, this one gets a thumbs up.

[kswolff · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Yuck! Soot, coal, suffering. Rinse, lather, repeat. Even by the standards of Dickens' classic sentimentality for the underdog, this novel is a dud. Probably not the best introduction to Charles Dickens unless you want your child to enjoy the pleasures of never reading again. This novel makes Zola's "Germinal," also about downtrodden coal miners, seem like a work of candy-colored upbeat positivity.

[xleptodactylous · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

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

[meditationesmartini · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Aw, guys, don't pick on Dickens. (And you BEST not be dickin on Pickens.) This is a great-hearted novel, that reminds us just to be kind to one another first of all, and fight the injustice we can see. And sure, Dickens is a bleeding-heart liberal, and sure, it's unforgivable the way he represents the union movement, via Slackbridge, as venal and exploitative. But the accomplishments of the unions in the 19th and 20th centuries (I miss solidarity), much as they wouldn't have come about without that good strong ethic of martial socialism, also wouldn't have come about if they hadn't endeavoured in a world made ready for them by debatechangers like Boz. You need both sides. And sure, yes, there's also the argument that that kind of liberalism undermines the potential for real change; but tell that to all the people who suffered a little bit less after the Poor Laws were repealed. You need both sides.

And like how we forgive Atticus Finch for not challenging Jim Crow, a current reading can easily enough put its hand over its heart and salute the good in Dickens for making a stand, without buying in completely--certainly we'll ignore his "let them eat Christianity" for the poor at every opportunity, his failure to really challenge class privilege--we'll read against him, and recognize with a righteous anger the way that class influences the fates, respectively, of Harthouse, Tom Gradgrind, and Stephen Blackpool. And acknowledge the truth of the representation.

My sister says that university students pick on Dickens because of that thing where you hate what you are--and what do they do but talk about the oppressed from a position of privilege? Dickens is of course guilty as charged on that score, Marx himself also gave him credit for making caring respectable for the self-interested middle classes. And Hard Times was his major salvo.

He fought the injustice he could see. Better champagne socialism than no socialism at all.

[hemlokgang · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel by Dickens. His tone is more caustic than usual, but as always, the social satire, fabulous characters, and complex plot are great. No one names characters like Dickens did!

[intromit · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I loved many of Dickens' other works - "Great Expectations" and "A Tale of Two Cities" are excellent - but "Hard Times" is an awful read. I found it to be pretentious. It is currently sitting on my self with a book mark about three-quarters of the way through it. I won't finish it.

[leslie398 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Although there was a lot that I really liked about this book, I didn't find it quite as compelling as some of Dickens' other novels (such as 'A Tale of Two Cities'). Partly this is due to the fact that I had some trouble deciphering the way Dickens wrote the English north country accent of several of the characters, which made this novel slightly less accessible than others of his that I have read. On the plus side, Dickens' view of life in a Northern manufacturing town and his characters are (as usual) extremely well-written. In particular, it was satisfying to me that Gradgrind and Bounderby, great figures of pomposity, each got their comeuppance. Gradgrind becomes reformed and turns out to be not so terrible as misguided. Bounderby is humiliated by the revelation that he had been lying about his humble origins.

[belgrade18 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Not one of Dickens' best, though Dickens is still one of the best writers of the 19th century, even when he was writing as a hack. It was made more interesting a read in this day and age of Tea Partiers and puritanical Evangelicals who hate the thought of paying taxes for the public good, it reminded me that these things are cyclical. A quick read, though, so if you've got it in front of you, give it a shot.

[niecierpek · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A very sentimental and very didactic novel Dickens wrote to expose the evils of industrial revolution and the difficult situation of the factory workers, as well as to satirize utilitarianism- men as machines idea. My feeling was that it was uneven: there were some great, satirical portrayals of male characters there, but much weaker and mostly idealistic female ones. The same can be said about the plot development: some great twists interspersed with really weak moments. So, hardly a masterpiece I would say, but on the whole, an enjoyable read (listen) with great moments to a good performance.

[sweetiegherkin · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

One of Dickens' lesser known works, Hard Times for These Times is similar to his other works in that it touches upon societal problems of the day, such as poverty. I read this about five years ago and while I recall enjoying it, I am fuzzy on the details. I think it is well worth a re-read though and since I am recommending it to myself again, I would definitely recommend to others!

[read4to4live · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

When I saw this audiobook from the library I thought, "Ugh. Not this one." I have some vague recollection of reading Hard Times once -- or trying -- but remember nothing except the bitter aftertaste. Did I give up after the first few pages? Did I skim it for a test and then forget it? Are parts of it written in a dialect that is hard to read with your eyeballs? When I started listening to it in the car, it was awfully slow and dry; but the reader was so good I kept listening. By the end, I was riveted. Was Dickens meant to be read aloud? The narrator Frederick Davidson did a tremendous job with the comic character Mrs. Sparsit; but he also added realism to scenes that might have seemed overly dramatic on the page, such as Louisa's breakdown. My favorite scene to hear was the night Rachel watched over Stephen and his wife, and his tearful promise to her the next day. This audiobook was a great introduction to Dickens and makes me want to hear more.As a side note, I found some similarities between the themes of this story and Mansfield Park. There is nothing wrong, in my opinion, with making facts part of education; the problem is facts without principle or purpose or thoughtfulness or analysis. Mr. Gradgrind's refusal to teach morality and his regrets over the consequences reminded me of Sir Thomas, the father in Mansfield Park: "Sir Thomas, poor Sir Thomas, a parent, and conscious of errors in his own conduct as a parent, was the longest to suffer. He felt that he ought not to have allowed the marriage; that his daughter's sentiments had been sufficiently known to him to render him culpable in authorising it; that in so doing he had sacrificed the right to the expedient . . . These were reflections that required some time to soften . . . the anguish arising from the conviction of his own errors in the education of his daughters was never to be entirely done away . . . [He] clearly saw that he had but increased the evil by teaching them to repress their spirits in his presence so as to make their real disposition unknown to him . . . Here had been grievous mismanagement; but, bad as it was, he gradually grew to feel that it had not been the most direful mistake in his plan of education. Something must have been wanting within, or time would have worn away much of its ill effect. He feared that principle, active principle, had been wanting . . . Bitterly did he deplore a deficiency which now he could scarcely comprehend to have been possible. Wretchedly did he feel, that with all the cost and care of an anxious and expensive education, he had brought up his daughters without their understanding their first duties, or his being acquainted with their character and temper."Other similarities between the two stories are the theme of an ineffectual mother, providing no balance to the father's system of education; the vain, rich playboy who chases women without considering the consequences (Henry Crawford, Jem Harthouse); the poor girl taken into the family who becomes the heart of the family (Fanny, Sissy); and the father's increasing love and value for that girl who has grown up under his protection, but free from the influence of his system of education. In some ways, the father is the driving force of both stories: the consequences of his mistakes drive the narrative; his acceptance of those mistakes provide the conclusion. Of course, Louisa and Maria are very different characters, but they have both married men they can't stand -- so where does Louisa's sense of honor derive, when Maria's is absent? Either it was just innate, or her father's love and constant attention, though often misplaced, still supported some sort of moral grounding that Maria never possessed, or that Mrs. Norris strangled in the cradle.Mrs. Norris has no alter ego in Hard Times, at least not in the children's upbringing; however Mrs. Sparsit certainly exerted an similarly evil influence. Bounderby was happy with Louisa until Mrs. Sparsit persuaded him he should not be; for someone who expressed so much shock at Stephen Blackpool's desire to divorce his wife, her hypocrisy in actively undermining the marriage is appalling. But, her hypocrisy is not out of character, when you consider that in neither case was she motivated by morality, but rather by a desire to exert influence and express contempt.

[yarb_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Dickens at his didactic worst, assembling a cast of paperthin caricatures and prodding them to play out a sledgehammer moral pantomime.

[ldvoorberg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Typical Dickens -- some social commentary, great caricature characters, intertwined events not revealed until the end; all the greatness (even the usual trait-names).

Unlike some of his other books, though, there is no absolute main character. No-nonsense Barnaby marries Gradgrind's daughter Louisa, who agrees to the loveless marriage to help her brother Tom pay his gambling debts. An abandoned child, a mysterious old woman, a nosy "upperclass" servant, slurring carnies, a bankrobbery, romance and intrigue...hilarity and seriousness all rolled together.