Charles Dickens

Considered Dickens' harshest indictment of mid-19th-century industrial practices and their dehumanizing effects, Hard Times offers a fascinating tapestry of Victorian life, filled with the richness of detail, brilliant characterization, and passionate social concern that typify the novelist's finest creations.

Hard Times

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'Sir,' returned Mrs. Sparsit, I cannot say that I have heard him precisely snore, and therefore must not make that statement. But on winter evenings, when he has fallen asleep at his table, I have heard him, what I should prefer to describe as partially choke. I have heard him on such occasions produce sounds of a nature similar to what may be sometimes heard in Dutch clocks. Not,' said Mrs. Sparsit, with a lofty sense of giving strict evidence, that I would Convey any imputation on his moral character. Far from it. I have always considered Bitzer a young man of the upright principle; and to that I beg to bear my testimony.

Their shadows were defined upon the wall, but those af the high presses in the room were all blended together om the wall and on the ceiling, as if the brother and sister were overhung by a dark cavern. Or, a fanciful imagination-such treason could have been there might have made it out to be the shadow of their subject, and of its lowering association with their future.

They'll bother her head off, I think. Already she's getting as pale as wax, and as heavy as-I am.

Still, although they differed in every other particular, conceivable and inconceivable (especially inconceivable), they were pretty well united on the point that these unlucky infants were never to wonder. Body number one, said they must take everything on trust. Body number two, said they must take everything on political economy. Body number three, wrote leaden little books for them, showing how the good grown-up baby invariably got to the Savings-bank, and the bad grown-up baby invariably got transported. Body number four, under dreary pretences of being droll (when it was very melancholy indeed), made the shallowest pretences of concealing pitfalls of knowledge, into which it was the duty of these babies to be smuggled and inveigled. But, all the bodies agreed that they were never to wonder.

I think of this book as a precursor to Durkheim’s 1987 study, “Suicide” -- the literary becoming material and the inspired becoming reality. The main tenet of Durkheim’s findings is that the act of suicide is not an individual temperament, but something that is connected to larger social forces. Both of these books present a drab picture of industrialization and explore the harsh realities that come along with that period, how people basically suffer “hard times” under such dominant system.

The book opens with Mr. Gradgrind in all his might of indoctrination, “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.” In this fictional city of Coketown, Facts are considered a panacea for all social ills, which is a belief strongly shared by Mr. Gradgrind. This belief would mold his rigid and controlling nature, affecting the people most immediate to him like Tom and Louisa Gradgrind. At its best, this book is a Victorian melodrama that weaves intricate relationships to societal critique.

There are haunting descriptions of Coketown that seem like they were ripped from today’s capitalist routine: “inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.” The character I am most invested in is Stephen Blackpool, a hardworking loom operator laboring for Mr. Bounderby, the city’s revered elite. His world alone would have been interesting to read, but all these glinting narratives from the other characters take away his shine and eclipses him to be an accessory to the family drama.

Dickens had foreseen the doom of industrialization, and this book is a testament to that. Much like Durkheim’s “Suicide,” this book is an enduring artifact to the inhospitable and inhumane society that is produced through Capital. We have been warned.

Kent Reymark Tocayon

I think of this book as a precursor to Durkheim’s 1987 study, “Suicide” -- the literary becoming material and the inspired becoming reality. The main tenet of Durkheim’s findings is that the act of suicide is not an individual temperament, but something that is connected to larger social forces. Both of these books present a drab picture of industrialization and explore the harsh realities that come along with that period, how people basically suffer “hard times” under such dominant system.

 

The book opens with Mr. Gradgrind in all his might of indoctrination, “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.” In this fictional city of Coketown, Facts are considered a panacea for all social ills, which is a belief strongly shared by Mr. Gradgrind. This belief would mold his rigid and controlling nature, affecting the people most immediate to him like Tom and Louisa Gradgrind. At its best, this book is a Victorian melodrama that weaves intricate relationships to societal critique.

 

There are haunting descriptions of Coketown that seem like they were ripped from today’s capitalist routine: “inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.” The character I am most invested in is Stephen Blackpool, a hardworking loom operator laboring for Mr. Bounderby, the city’s revered elite. His world alone would have been interesting to read, but all these glinting narratives from the other characters take away his shine and eclipses him to be an accessory to the family drama.

 

Dickens had foreseen the doom of industrialization, and this book is a testament to that. Much like Durkheim’s “Suicide,” this book is an enduring artifact to the inhospitable and inhumane society that is produced through Capital. We have been warned.

Hard Times

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