Hard Times

Rating:
Summary: Hardly a masterpiece, but brilliant at times
Review: "Hard Times" belongs to the second half of Dickens's writing career, in which his work becomes rather more somber and, by common critical assent, more mature and satisfying. Personally, I prefer his earlier work and his very first novel, "Pickwick Papers", is to my mind his greatest. Surprisingly, "Hard Times", despite its title and reputation, contains some brilliant flashes of Dickens humour, especially in the earlier part. The descriptions of Bounderby and Gradgrind, and the early dialogue with the circus folk, are genuinely hilarious.

This is Dickens's shortest novel, about a third of the length of each of his previous four. Themes, subplots and characters are introduced without being fully explored. The author was perhaps feeling the constraints of writing in installments for a periodical, although he was well used to doing that. This relative brevity, together with the youth of some of the central characters, make this book a good introduction to Dickens for young readers.

There are the large dollops of Victorian melodrama and the reliance on unlikely coincidences that mar much of Dickens's work. Also the usual tendency for characters to become caricatures and to have names that are a little too apt (a teacher called Mr. McChoakumchild?).

The respected critic F.R. Leavis considered "Hard Times" to be Dickens's masterpiece and "only serious work of art". This seems to me wildly wrong, but such an extreme opinion may prompt you to read the book, just so that you can form your own opinion.

I read it because I had just finished "The Jungle" by Upton Sinclair, which deals with the plight of Chicago factory workers, and I wanted to compare the two. Sinclair's book has greater immediacy. It takes you much closer to the suffering of the workers. In the Dickens novel, the mill workers and their plight are distanced; they are relegated to being the background to a family drama, which is what really interests the author. A third, and still greater work, that examines the same themes, is Zola's "Germinal". I recommend all three. Together, they give real insight into the social conditions that led to the proletarian political and revolutionary movements of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Rating:
Summary: A Quite Good Book
Review: A most interesting book, and not the "downer" one might expect from the title. The story begins with the issue of what might happen to children raised in a setting where the non-logical human qualities are repressed. This is blended in with the relationship dynamics of those who own the factories and those who make the factories actually produce something to sell. Further, related issues are added. These various topics are intermingled in a moving story.

Rating:
Summary: Dickens message still relevant.
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Outside his range.
Review: Dickens was a great rhetorician, but not a very deep social thinker. _Hard Times_ is the novel in which he tries to tell us that there are a Whole lot O' Things Wrong with Britain in the nineteenth century. You've got people living in wage slavery! You've got educators who can't raise their own children! You've got amoral, rakish aristocrats! You've got unprincipled politicians and businessmen! When Dickens is taking on each of these subjects individually in his other works, he's wonderful; when he sews up his complaints against them into one big bundle and convinces himself that it's a Social Theory, he's a tiresomely shrill satirist and all of his characters turn as flat as paper before one's very eyes.

This doesn't, of course, mean that the book isn't worth reading - after all, it's Dickens. There are some very sweet and descriptively rich passages about a traveling circus and although one finds it difficult to give a hoot about any of the characters aside from Mr. Gradgrind (who might have been developed much more richly if Dickens had cut down on the windy deploring a little and worked harder to make him seem like less of a cipher) the plot thunders along at the usual absorbingly breathless pace. But if you haven't read _David Copperfield_ or _A Tale of Two Cities_ yet, then for God's sake don't start out with this relatively second-rate effort.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: Hard Times is first and foremost a burning indictment on industrialism and the total reliance on reason without consideration for emotions. It is also a great novel. I didn't get quite the same connection with the characters as in Great Expectations - I can't readily recall their names after a few months - but I know them and can remember vividly the scenes that he painted them in.

Again there are several sub plots which drive the point home and wrap the novel up in such a tight and well thought out way that only Dickens could have written this. The main character, for me, is Louisa, raised under conventional wisdom on only dry facts and reason. As such, she is completely unable to cope with real life. She is married to Bounderby, who owns the local bank while her brother, Tom, works for him. Bounderby claims to been raised in the gutter, abandoned by his parents, and to have raised himself up by his bootstraps. Each character has built for themselves a house of cards which are destined to come tumbling down revealing all the flaws, all the lies and the fundamental errors of their thinking. The only person left unscathed is the abandoned circus girl who, like Biddy in Great Expectations, reminds us that the people we overlook may just be the best ones out of the bunch.

Rating:
Summary: Strong novel, but not as memorable
Review: I read this book later than I read novels such as Great Expecatations and David Copperfield, but I don't remember it as well. Hard Times is a fine novel - short, often miserable (but that's the reason why this novel is so important), but with a good message. It's also an effective satire that actually does have its moments of humor as well as pathos (such as when Stephen Blackpool dies). I do recommend it, but as good as a book it is, it'll never be one of my favorite Dickens novels.

Rating:
Summary: Scathing
Review: In this novel set in industrial revolution era Great Britain, Dickens is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. Unlike some of his other social commentary, where he wraps his point in a gripping, twisting, and entertaining plot, Dickens goes right for the jugular in "Hard Times".

In this novel he lashes out against the dehumanization of our children through "education", as well as the still very real gulf between the well to do and impoverished. Even the names of his characters are none-too-subtle jabs. The local teacher, Professor Gradgrind, seeks not to educate or enlighten, but to hammer home facts and turn his children into automatons. His counterpart in the business arena is Bounderby, a blustering, egomaniacal, and ultimately vacuous man. Their countermeasure is a young orphan girl named Sissy Jupe. She is a lovable character that embodies compassion and humanity, but is very nearly broken by the their overbearing influence.

This is not a "fun" book to read, and if you're looking to be entertained in traditional Dickens fashion I strongly reccomend looking elsewhere (i.e. David Copperfield). The novel is relatively straightforward and simple of plot, and his scathing social commentary cannot be missed. The most compelling reason to read "Hard Times" though is the fact that the same mentality criticized here is still very much in existence today, and this makes the novel just as relevant for the 21st century as it was when first penned.

Rating:
Summary: Time Were Hard--And Dickens Shows How & Why
Review: It is unfortunate that HARD TIMES by Charles Dickens is not usually read outside the classroom. It is an unforgettable glimpse of an age that did not prize the worth of the individual over a collective society--sort of like today's emphasis on the same. What stamps HARD TIMES as the classic that it is is Dickens' continual focus on the rights of the individual and his championing of anti-child labor laws. In an age that routinely crushed individuals in the grinding gears of a society that was hell-bent on automating the factory system, it was only lone voices like Charles Dickens who, in his novels, cried out to stop the madness. In HARD TIMES, Dickens takes a savagely satirical poke at a then popular system of thought: utilitarianism, a philosophy which saw men and children as interchangeable cogs in a machine that demanded that all facets of life and output be reduced to facts, numbers, and quantifiable data. Thomas Gradgrind opens the novel by insisting that the students in his school be just like Officer Joe Friday from "Dragnet" fame: give me the facts, and only the facts. Those who can deliver advance. Those who cannot get routinely squashed flat. Josiah Bounderby is the villain as he represents the ultimate in a selfishness and fact-centeredness way of life. As typical of Dickens, there is a vast assortment of subplots that he manages to tie neatly together by the closing pages. What stamps HARD TIMES as relevant in this or any future age is Dickens' insistance that, regardless of technological advances, the individual will always matter. HARD TIMES says this as well as any other book.

Rating:
Summary: Dickens Had a Hard Time Writing This
Review: Readers should always remember that while reading. Instead of the usual monthly periodical installments with room to spare, "Hard Times" was done in weekly installments with a very limited space allotment, for the newspaper "Household Words." Dickens found the combined pressure of time and space nearly intolerable, given the breadth and depth of his vision for needed social reform. One can only imagine how much better, fuller, and more satisfying this book would have been -- in plot, character-development, dramatic impact -- if Dickens had written it as 900 pages over two years, rather than 300 pages in five months.

Rating:
Summary: Dickens.....not at his best, but still....Dickens
Review: The fact that Dickens wrote "Hard Times" in weekly installments, more than probably means that there was a time and space constraint. It must not be a coincidence then that this is among his shortest novels. I suppose this is why at times, his characters wind up being caricaturesque, and not as complex and real as some of his other very memorable characters. By the same token, some of his subplots do not fit in to the main plot the way they do in most, if not all, of his other works.

Dickens is trying to explore and provide us with a picture of the effects of utilitarianism on different types of human characters, and in my opinion he does a good job, but only as far as individuals go. We can see the impact of the post romantic victorian social system on all of the novel's characters, and this makes the book interesting. The downside, however, is that when Dickens tries to extrapolate and paint a picture of the social struggle going on, he falls quite short. He tries to oversimplify too much, and in my opinion, fails at that.

The "nothing but Facts" system psychologically castrates most of the main characters in the book. In one way or another, they all have their share of "Hard Times", and this can surely be attributed to a dehumanizing system, where people are statistics or simply gears within the machine which represents the newly industrialized world.

It is no surprise that there are absolutely no happy people in this novel. This is definitely not one happy book, but overall it's really worth reading. If what you're looking for is a book that easy to read and to understand, and a page-turner, just stay away--read John Grisham instead ;-). If you want to read Dickens, this is more that probably not his best, but it's still good.