HARD TIMES

Plot
This novel is set in a fictional industrial town called Coketown. Thomas Gradgrind, an educator, has
founded a school where his theories are taught, even to his children. He marries her daughter to
Josiah Bounderby, a wealthy city banker, 30 years her senior. 'The girl agrees as she wishes to help
her brother, who is given a job in Bounderby's bank, but the marriage proves unhappy. Tom robs his
employer. At first he manages to cast suspicion on an honest factory worker, but is eventually caught
and forced to flee the country. Eventually Mr. Gradgrind realizes the harm he has caused his children
and renounces his petty and materialistic philosophy.
Setting
The fictional town of Coketown represents a real industrial town in Victorian England. It's a kind of
brick jungle: the factory machinery is like mad elephants and their smoke looks like a snake. It seems
to have turned into some kind of magical but hellish land. All buildings look alike. However, nothing
seems to bother the mill owners. They seem to take pride in Coketown's polluted air.
Structure
Hard Times is divided into three books, each book is divided into separate chapters. Book one,
"Sowing," shows us the seeds planted by Gradgrind/Bounderby education.
The second book, "Reaping", reveals the collection of these seeds, for example Louisa's unhappy
marriage and Tom's criminal ways.
The third book, "The Collection", is tied to a dominant symbol - instability - which is no longer the solid
"ground" on which Mr. Gradgrind's system once stood.
Characters
The philosophy of utilitarianism emerges largely through the actions of Mr. Gradgrind and his follower
Bounderby: while the former educates the children of his family and his school through deeds, the latter
treats the workers of his factory as emotionless objects which can be easily exploited for his work.
Mr Gradgrind believes that human nature is closely related to reason. In fact, his school tries to
transform children into little machines that behave according to these rules. Dickens' main purpose in
Hard Times is to illustrate the dangers of the teaching method called "object lesson".
Bentham's utilitarianism
Victorian values found their basis in some of the thought movements of the time.
The origins of utilitarianism, based on the principles of Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832), can be traced
back to the Greek philosopher Epicurus. According to utilitarianism, an action is morally right if it has
consequences that lead to happiness, and wrong if it causes the opposite. Therefore all institutions should
be tested in the light of reason and common sense to determine whether they are useful. Utilitarianism
suited middle-class interests and contributed to the Victorian belief that any problem could be overcome
through reason.
Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth in 1812. He had an unhappy childhood. His father was
imprisoned for debt and at the age of 12 was put to work in a factory. When the family's finances
improved and his father was released, he was sent to school in London. By 1832 he had become a very
successful shorthand reporter and began working as a reporter for a newspaper. In 1833 his first short
story appeared and in 1836, he adopted the pseudonym 'Boz, publishing Sketches by 'Boz, a collection of
articles and short stories describing the people and scenes of London. It was immediately followed by The
Pickwick Papers. Dickens married Catherine Hogarth in April 1836 and in the same year he became
editor of Bentley's Miscellany and published the second series of Sketches by Boz. Following the success
of The Pickwick Papers, Dickens began a full-time career as a novelist, producing works of increasing
complexity at an astonishing rate, though he also continued his journalism and publishing activities.
Although a Republican, Dickens took a stand against the United States when he visited the country in
1842. In October of that year his American Notes appeared in which he advocated international copyright
and the abolition of slavery. Martin Chuzzlewit, partly set in America, appeared in 1844, a year after the
publication of A Christmas Carol, the first of Dickens' successful Christmas books.
The protagonists of his autobiographical novels, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield and Little Dorrit, have
become symbols of an exploited childhood confronted with the bitter reality of slums and factories. Other
works include Bleak House, Hard Times and Great Expectations, dealing with the conditions of the poor
and the working class in general. By the time of his sudden death in Kent in 1870, Dickens had attracted
adoring crowds to his public appearances in England, Scotland and Ireland; he had met princes and
presidents and amassed a fortune. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.
Characters
Dickens was the creator of characters and caricatures who live immortal in the English
imagination: Mr Pickwick, Mr Gradgrind, Scrooge and many others. His aim was to
arouse the reader's interest by exaggerating the habits of his characters and the language
of the lower and middle classes of London, whose social peculiarities, vanity and ambition
he ridiculed, though without sarcasm. He was always on the side of the poor, the
marginalized and also the working class. Children are often the most important
characters in Dickens' novels. Children become moral rather than educated teachers,
exemplars rather than imitators.
A didactic aim
This didactic attitude has been very effective, as the result has been that the better
educated and wealthier classes have gained knowledge of their poorer neighbours, of
whom they previously knew little or nothing. Dickens' task has never been to induce the
most offended and suffering to rebellion but to sensitize the ruling classes to social
problems without offending his bourgeois readers.
Style and reputation
Dickens used the most effective language and created the most graphic and powerful
descriptions of life and character ever attempted by any novelist. He did it with his
careful choice of adjectives, repetitions of words and structures, juxtapositions of images
and ideas, hyperbolic and ironic remarks. He is considered the greatest novelist in the
English language.
 MR GRADGRIND
The main character is Thomas Gradgrind, which is a metaphor to represent 'utilitarianism,
and therefore the denial of any form of imagination. Indeed, this character represents the
industrial society that leaves no room for dreams, feelings and imagination: the most
important things are production and material happiness. However, Mr. Gradgrind is also
the expression of the Victorian education system: he is the headmaster of a school in
Coketown and thinks that children are vessels that need to be filled with knowledge. At
the end of the novel, Gradgrind understands how limited his world is: reason cannot
explain everything and human beings are also made up of feelings, imagination and
intuition.
Mr Gradgrind was a very sure man of himself and of his own ideas, which recall those of
utilitarian philosophy, according to him in life, only facts count. His bodies, his clothes, his
movements express, thanks to the irony of Dickens, all their absence of authentic vitality.
Just think of Mr Gradgrind's square shape, his thin and tight lips, the few and sharp hairs
on his almost bald head, his finger (also squared) to understand that Dickens' sarcasm is
fully in action in this novel. “Facts!”, shouts Mr. Gradgrind to the intimidated pupils behind
the desks of the bare Victorian classrooms, “Teach children nothing but facts”. This is his
only profound certainty: to educate you need to teach the facts, everything else is useless.
'Grind' means to grind and also to oppress, and this is what Gradgrind does to the
personalities of his pupils, as well as his children. Children are in fact the product of the
father's utilitarian mentality. Faced with his educational failure, Mr Gradgrind is forced to
admit his mistakes and review his outlook on life, supported by Sissy Jupe, his adopted
daughter. Although subjected to the harsh teachings of Gradgrind, Sissy retains her
generosity and naturalness.