Charles Dickens- Hard Times

Biography

Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 9 June 1870) was an

English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known
fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian
era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by
the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary
genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.
Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father
was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education,
he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas,
hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed
extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously
for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Dickens has been accused of harboring racist views. He was also known to
have vocally supported the harsh crackdown against Black Jamaicans during
the Morant Bay rebellion.
On 9 June 1865, while returning from Paris with Ellen Ternan, Dickens was
involved in the Staplehurst rail crash. The train's first seven carriages
plunged off a cast iron bridge that was under repair. The only first-class
carriage to remain on the track was the one in which Dickens was travelling.
Before rescuers arrived, Dickens tended and comforted the wounded and
the dying with a flask of brandy and a hat refreshed with water, and saved
some lives. Before leaving, he remembered the unfinished manuscript for
Our Mutual Friend, and he returned to his carriage to retrieve it. Dickens
later used this experience as material for his short ghost story, "The SignalMan", in which the central character has a premonition of his own death in a
rail crash. He also based the story on several previous rail accidents, such
as the Clayton Tunnel rail crash of 1861. Dickens managed to avoid an
appearance at the inquest to avoid disclosing that he had been travelling
with Ternan and her mother, which would have caused a scandal.
On 8 June 1870, Dickens suffered another stroke at his home after a full
day's work on Edwin Drood. He never regained consciousness, and the next
day, five years to the day after the Staplehurst rail crash, he died at Gad's
Hill Place.

The Story
Hard Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, first published in
1854. It is his only novel not to have scenes set in London. Instead the
story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic
Northern English mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester,

though smaller. Coketown may be partially based on 19th-century

Preston.
The Utilitarians were one of the targets of this novel. Utilitarianism
was a prevalent school of thought during this period, its founders
being Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, father to political theorist John
Stuart Mill. Theoretical Utilitarian ethics hold that promotion of
general social welfare is the ultimate goal for the individual and
society in general: "the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest
number of people." Dickens believed that in practical terms, the
pursuit of a totally rationalised society could lead to great misery. In
Dickens's interpretation, the prevalence of utilitarian values in
educational institutions promoted contempt between mill owners and
workers, creating young adults whose imaginations had been
neglected, due to an over-emphasis on facts at the expense of more
imaginative pursuits.
The novel follows a classical tripartite structure, and the titles of each
book are related to Galatians 6:7, "For whatsoever a man soweth, that
shall he also reap." Book I is entitled "Sowing", Book II is entitled
"Reaping", and the third is "Garnering."

Major characters

-Mr. Bounderby: Josiah Bounderby is a business associate of Mr.

Gradgrind. Given to boasting about being a self-made man, he
employs many of the other central characters of the novel. He has
risen to a position of power and wealth from humble origins (though
not as humble as he claims). He marries Mr. Gradgrind's daughter
Louisa, some 30 years his junior, in what turns out to be a loveless
marriage. They have no children. Bounderby is callous, self-centred
and ultimately revealed to be a liar and fraud.
-Louisa: Loo Gradgrind, later Louisa Bounderby, is the eldest child of
the Gradgrind family. She has been taught to suppress her feelings
and finds it hard to express herself clearly, saying as a child that she
has "unmanageable thoughts." After her unhappy marriage, she is
tempted to adultery by James Harthouse, but resists him and returns
to her father. Her rejection of Harthouse leads to a new understanding
of life and of the value of emotions and the imagination. She
reproaches her father for his dry and fact-based approach to the
world and convinces him of the error of his ways.
-Sissy Jupe: Cecilia (Sissy) Jupe is a circus girl of Sleary's circus, as
well as a student of Thomas Gradgrind's very strict classroom. Sissy
has her own set of values and beliefs which make her seem
unintelligent in the Gradgrind household. At the end of the novel,
when the Gradgrinds' philosophy of religiously adhering solely to facts
breaks down, Sissy is the character who teaches them how to live.

Sissy Jupe is first introduced to the readers as Girl Number Twenty in

Gradgrind's classroom. While Sissy is the device of imagination and
fantasy in the novel, she also serves as the voice of reason. The
reason she cannot grasp the philosophy of Gradgrind's classroom is
because she actually has a more realistic view of how the world
should be perceived. After Louisa and Mr. Gradgrind come to terms
with the fact that their way of life is not working, Sissy is the one they
come to; she takes care of Louisa and helps her live a new, happy life.
-Tom: Thomas (Tom) Gradgrind, Junior is the oldest son and second
child of the Gradgrinds. Initially sullen and resentful of his father's
Utilitarian education, Tom has a strong relationship with his sister
Louisa. He works in Bounderby's bank (which he later robs), and turns
to gambling and drinking. Louisa never ceases to adore Tom, and she
aids Sissy and Mr. Gradgrind in saving her brother from arrest.
-Stephen Blackpool: is a worker at one of Bounderby's mills. He has a
drunken wife who no longer lives with him but who appears from time
to time. He forms a close bond with Rachael, a co-worker, whom he
wishes to marry. After a dispute with Bounderby, he is dismissed from
his work at the Coketown mills and, shunned by his former fellow
workers, is forced to look for work elsewhere. While absent from
Coketown, he is wrongly accused of robbing Bounderby's bank. On his
way back to vindicate himself, he falls down a mine-shaft. He is
rescued but dies of his injuries.

Other characters

Bitzer is a very pale classmate of Sissy's who is brought up on facts

and taught to operate according to self-interest. He takes up a job in
Bounderby's bank, and later tries to arrest Tom.
Rachael is the friend of Stephen Blackpool who attests to his
innocence when he is accused of robbing Bounderby's bank. She is a
factory worker, childhood friend of Blackpool's drunken and often
absent wife, and becomes the literary tool for bringing the two
parallel story lines together at the brink of Hell's Shaft in the final
book.
Mrs. Sparsit is a "classical" widow who has fallen on hard times. She
is employed by Bounderby, and is jealous when he marries Louisa,
delighting in the belief that Louisa is later about to elope with James
Harthouse. Her machinations are unsuccessful and she is ultimately
sacked by Bounderby.
James Harthouse is an indolent, languid, upper-class gentleman,
who attempts to woo Louisa.
Mrs. Gradgrind the wife of Mr. Gradgrind, is an invalid and complains
constantly. Tom Sr.'s apparent attraction to her is that she totally

lacked 'fancy,' though she also seems to lack intelligence and any
empathy for her children.
Mr. Sleary - the owner of the circus which employs Sissy's father. He
speaks with a lisp. A kind man, he helps both Sissy and young Tom
when they are in trouble.
Mrs. Pegler - an old woman who sometimes visits Coketown to
observe the Bounderby estate. She is later revealed to be
Bounderby's mother, proving his "rags-to-riches" story to be
fraudulent.

Summary:
Thomas Gradgrind, proprietor of an experimental private school in
Coketown, insists that the children under him learn only facts. He
believes that the world has no place for fancy or imagination. His own
five children are models of a factual education. Never having been
permitted to learn anything of the humanities, they are ignorant of
literature and any conception of human beings as individuals. Even
fairy tales and nursery rhymes had been excluded from their
education.
One day, as he walks from the school to his home, Gradgrind is
immensely displeased and hurt to find his two oldest children, Louisa
and Tom, trying to peek through the canvas walls of a circus tent. It
eases his mind even less to discover that the two youngsters are not
at all sorry for acting against the principles under which they had
been reared and educated. Later, Gradgrind and his industrialist
friend, Mr. Josiah Bounderby, discuss possible means by which the
children might have been misled from the study of facts. They
conclude that another pupil, Sissy Jupe, whose father is a clown in the
circus, had influenced the young Gradgrinds.
Having decided to remove Sissy Jupe from the school, Bounderby and
Gradgrind set out immediately to tell the girls father. When they
arrive at the inn where the Jupes are staying, they find that the father
has deserted his daughter. Moved by sentiment, Gradgrind decides to
keep the girl in his home and to let her be educated at his school, all
against the advice of Bounderby, who thinks Sissy Jupe will only be a
bad influence on the Gradgrind children.
Years pass, and Louisa and young Tom have matured. Gradgrind
knows that Bounderby, who is thirty years his daughters elder, has
long wished to marry Louisa. Educated away from sentiment, she
agrees to marry Bounderby. Tom, an employee in Bounderbys bank,
is very glad to have his sister marry Bounderby; he wants a friend to
help him if he gets into trouble there. In fact, he advises his sister to

marry Bounderby for this reason, and she, loving her brother, agrees
to help him by marrying the WEALTHY banker.
Bounderby is very happy to be married to Louisa. After his marriage,
he places his elderly housekeeper in a room at the bank. Mrs. Sparsit
dislikes Louisa and is determined to keep an eye on her for her
employers sake. After the marriage, all seems peaceful at the bank,
at the Gradgrind home, and at the Bounderby residence.
In the meantime, Gradgrind had been elected to Parliament from his
district. He sends out from London an aspiring young politician, James
Harthouse, who is to gather facts about the industrial city of
Coketown, facts that are to be used in a SURVEY of economic and
social life in Britain. To facilitate the young mans labors, Gradgrind
gives him a letter of introduction to Bounderby, who immediately tells
Harthouse the story of his career from street ragamuffin to
industrialist and banker. Harthouse thinks Bounderby is a fool, but he
is greatly interested in the pretty Louisa.
Through his friendship with Bounderby, Harthouse meets Tom
Gradgrind, who lives with the Bounderbys. Harthouse takes
advantage of Toms drinking problem to learn more about Louisa. He
had heard that she had been subjected to a dehumanizing education,
and feels that she will be easy prey for seduction because of her
loveless marriage to the pompous Bounderby. For these reasons,
Harthouse decides to test Louisas virtue. Before long, Harthouse
gains favor in her eyes. Neither realizes, however, that Mrs. Sparsit,
jealous and resenting her removal from the comfortable Bounderby
house, spies on them constantly.
Everyone is amazed to learn one day that thieves had taken
MONEYfrom the Bounderby bank. The main suspect is Stephen
Blackpool, an employee whom Bounderby had mistreated. Blackpool,
who had been seen loitering in front of the bank, had disappeared on
the night of the theft. Suspicion also falls on Mrs. Pegler, an old
woman known to have been in Blackpools company. A search for
Blackpool and Mrs. Pegler proves fruitless. Bounderby seems content
to wait; he says that the culprits will turn up sooner or later.
The affair between Louisa and Harthouse reaches a climax when
Louisa agrees to elope with the young man. Her better judgment,
however, causes her to return to her father instead of running away
with her lover. Gradgrind is horrified to see what his education had
done to Louisas character, and he tries to make amends to her. The
situation is complicated by Mrs. Sparsit, who learns of the proposed
elopement and tells Bounderby. He angrily insists that Louisa return to
his home. Realizing that his daughter had never loved Bounderby,

Gradgrind insists that she be allowed to make her own choice.

Harthouse disappears, giving up all hope of WINNING Louisa.
Mrs. Sparsit returns to act as Bounderbys housekeeper during
Louisas absence and tries to reinstate herself in Bounderbys
confidence by tracing down Mrs. Pegler. To her chagrin, Mrs. Pegler
turns out to be Bounderbys mother. Bounderby is furious, for his
mother disproves his boasts about being a self-made man. Meanwhile,
Louisa and Sissy Jupe accidentally find Blackpool, who had fallen into
a mine shaft while returning to Coketown to prove his innocence in
the bank theft. After his rescue, he tells them that Tom Gradgrind is
the real culprit. When the young man disappears, his sister and father
find him with the help of Sissy Jupe. They place Tom, disguised, in a
circus until arrangements can be made to spirit him out of the
country. Before he can escape, however, Bounderbys agents find Tom
and arrest him. With the aid of the circus roustabouts, he is rescued
and put on a steamer that carries him away from the police and
Bounderbys vengeance. Mrs. Sparsit, who had caused Bounderby
great embarrassment by producing Mrs. Pegler, is discharged from his
patronage, much to her chagrin. Bounderby himself dies unhappily in
a fit a few years later. The Gradgrinds, all of them victims of an
education of facts, continue to live unhappily, unable to see the
human side of life.

Relating back to Dickens' aim to "strike the heaviest blow in my

power," he wished to educate readers about the working
conditions of some of the factories in the industrial towns of
Manchester, and Preston. Relating to this also, Dickens wished
to confront the assumption that prosperity runs parallel to
morality, a notion which is systematically deconstructed in this
novel through his portrayal of the moral monsters, Mr.
Bounderby and James Harthouse. Dickens was also
campaigning for the importance of imagination in life, and for
people's life to not be reduced to a collection of material facts
and statistical analyses. Dickens's favourable portrayal of the
Circus, which he describes as caring so "little for Plain Fact", is
an example of this.