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Title: Hard Times: For These Times by Charles Dickens, Graham Law ISBN: 1-55111-075-X Publisher: Broadview Press Pub. Date: 01 February, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.62 (45 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: More Than Facts
Comment: I initially lamented the fact that Hard Times was assigned to me in my British lit. class. I had read some of Dickens's melodramas like A Tale of Two Cities and Oliver Twist and enjoyed them, but everything I heard about Hard Times said this was nothing like those. This was supposedly just strictly social commentary. My interpretation of that: BORING.
But then I read it.
Hard Times isn't like Dickens's other novels, but I don't think that it has any less heart than those masterpieces. In fact, Dickens endured himself much further to me with this novel as he has his characters perform Thomas Carlyle's enduring philosophy.
The novel follows the Gradgrind family who is raised adhering to FACTS and living in a society which worships the manufacturing machine. As the novel progresses, connections are made and broken, and the characters come to the realization that there is much more to reality than the material facts.
Hard Times is told so compassionately. The reader cares for these people and their tragic lives. The story is also told with biting humor that still cuts at today's society (this novel feels really modern), and the underlying philosophy is one which is so needed in our post-modern world. I would certainly recommend this novel to fans of Dickens and to fans of the truly literary novel.
Rating: 4
Summary: Hard Times-A Commentary on Industrial England
Comment: If you read Hard Times for the sole purpose of being entertained you will probably be highly disappointed. However, if you understand what was happening during this time period, you will realize that Hard Times is in reality, a long commentary. The Industrial Revolution was starting to show its down side. There was rampant poverty and disease, from the overcrowding of the cities. Children of the poor had to work long hours in unsafe factories rather than go to school. The gulf between the haves and the have-nots was very wide. The middle class was only beginning to be a distinct group.
This then was the backdrop of Hard Times. Dickens is making a social and political statement. This is a statement against the mechanizing of society. It starts with Dickens repeated use of the word fact. It is facts that have meaning. Human conventions like feeling, compassion or passion have no meaning or looked down upon as an inconvienent waste of time. If a situation cannot be put down on paper as in an accounting ledger it should not be considered.
This is where the conflict of the book comes in. Which helps humanity more compassion or fact. Is Bounderby a better person than Blackpool? Bounderby, who by his own admission was a self-made man. Untrue as this was he said it enough to make it his own reality. Or Blackpool, a weaver with an alcoholic wife, who was in love with another woman. Facts made Bounderby rich, compassion made Blackpool human.
Louisa presents another conflict. Louisa was educated only by fact. No wonder or inquisitiveness was ever allowed. She was the perfect robot. Doing what she was told when she was told. Just another piece of the machine, however, the piece broke, emotions came out, and they broke down the wall of fact that Mr. Gradgrind had so carefully constructed. Because the feelings have finally been acknowledged things really break down. She finds that not only has she married the wrong man but also the man she did marry is a buffoon whom she cannot respect nor live with.
The reader is left wondering if there is no one who will not be ruined by all the worship to fact. The whelp has certainly been ruined to the point he feels no responsibility to anyone but himself. If a situation can not be used to his advantage then he has no use for it, as a matter of course, he will run when he believes he will have to take responsibility for his own actions.
The gypsies have not been ruined by fact. But only because they live outside of society, they do not conform to the rules of society. These are the people who value character over social status. The gypsies do not value Bounderby and Bitzer with all their pomp and egomania. Rather they value Stephen Blackpool and Cecilia whom can show compassion and kindness no matter a person's station in life.
Hard Times can be used to look at today's society. Are we, as a society more worried about our computers, cell phones, faxes, and other gadgets than our neighbor's well being? Do we only get involved to help others when there is a personal benefit? Or, are we like the gypsies who can look into the character of the person and not worry about the socio-economic status? While Dickens' wrote Hard Times about 19th century England the moral can easily fit into 21st century America
Rating: 4
Summary: Dickens message still relevant.
Comment: Considered by 19th century critics to be one of Dickens' more artistic and literary triumphs, Hard Times can be viewed in present time as a blistering polemic against the rise of industrial society and the dominate philosophy that rose in tandem with the industrial age, utilitarianism
It is well known that Dickens was a chronicler of his times, and his mode of expression, the novel. An intensely emotional individual, Dickens was known to be a power walker, starting in the afternoon, covering miles, to return home just before sunrise. It was during these extensive walks that he witnessed the utter poverty and squalor scattered throughout the streets of London. These walks brought inspiration for many of his novels, particularly, Hard Times.
In this novel, Dickens explores the applications of utilitarianism in its highly rational, and in many ways, brutal forms. The novels general theme is that a philosophy that is only concerned with happiness and survival for the majority, will attempt to quash any and all individual thought and effort. Individual ideas, emotion, imagination and creativity must be ruthlessly rejected in order for the majority of people to think alike, work alike and behave alike to attain a status quo of happiness for all. Rationality must prevail because imagination promotes individuality, which is anathema to mob concerns.
This polemic against utilitarianism is expressed clearly and persuasively in the practice of education. In the opening chapter for example, 'The One Thing Needful", the reader is introduced to this dictatorial emphasis on the rational:
"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 be of any service to them." (p. 47)
Romanticism was now on the wane and utilitarianism and the rise of rationalism infiltrated every aspect of 19th century industrial life - emotion has no place in capitalism - the masses are reduced to statistics.
Dickens main point in writing Hard Times, I believe, was to illustrate the brutality of the applications of the philosophy, utilitarianism, and the destructive results it entails when humaneness, the vital aspect of our nature, is ignored completely. Dickens was reporting, and speaking against a potentially destructive sway in society away from basic humanity and the importance of the individual, towards the highly mechanical and rational 'mob' philosophy of Utilitarianism during the Industrial revolution.
In our so-called modern times, Dickens message continues to be relevant. Our societies emphasis on rationalism and the exclusion of emotion, can only lead to destruction. A balance must be found.
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Title: Hard Times (Cliffs Notes) by Josephine J. Curton ISBN: 0822005786 Publisher: Cliffs Notes Pub. Date: 02 September, 1964 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Little Dorrit (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Stephen Wall, Helen Small ISBN: 0140434925 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1998 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: David Copperfield (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Jeremy Tambling ISBN: 0140434941 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $7.95 |
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Title: The Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit (Penguin Classics) by Charles Dickens, Patricia Ingham ISBN: 0140436146 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: The Pickwick Papers (PENGUIN CLASSICS) by Charles Dickens ISBN: 0140436111 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 August, 2000 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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