| HARD TIMES Charles Dickens Robert Donald Spector (Intro.) New York: Bantam Books, March 1981 |
Rating: 4.0 High |
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| ISBN-13 978-0-553-21016-3 | ||||
| ISBN 0-553-21016-5 | 280p. | SC | $4.95 | |
Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was born into England's new industrial age. The industrial revolution was in full swing, and his novels and other works chronicle the grimy factory towns it produced in the north of England and the effect those polluted precincts had on the workers perforce employed there.
Dickens published Hard Times in 1854. It tells of class divisions: The nouveau riche, who made their piles on profits from factory output; and the working class they exploit to maintain their incomes and status. An additional element, perhaps reflecting Dickens' view of the Age of Enlightenment, is Mr. Gradgrind, headmaster of a school, who believes facts are everything and suppresses any trace of fancy in his students. He does the same thing with his own children, with disastrous results: His son runs up massive gambling debts and ultimately robs a bank to cover them, framing an innocent working man in the process; his daughter grows up emotionally stunted, endures a loveless marriage until a cad tries to seduce her, cannot respond and loses both husband and prospective lover.
Counterpoint to Mr. Gradgrind and his rigidly no-nonsense world is a traveling troupe of circus performers. They introduce to the tale one Cecilia Jupe. Abandoned by her father, she is taken in by Mr. Gradgrind and attends his school. However, she avoids the stultifying outcome that afflicts his own daughter, becoming a well-rounded adult1 with the strength of character to resolve a number of the crises that occur late in the story.
The moral points of the tale are easy to discern. The first is that unbridled industrialization is bad; the second, that fancy is an essential part of human nature. The parallel is just as easy to discern: for a fulfilling human life, there must be a balance between fact and fancy, work and leisure — as also between industrialization and the natural environment.
I am not familiar with any other of Dickens's works except A Christmas Carol so I cannot easily place Hard Times on a scale among his novels. But I will say it seems one of his darker tales; it definitely does not have a happy ending, but paints a depressing picture of England's rampant industrialism during that period. Although I consider it worth reading, this dark and depressing quality is why I marked it down two notches.
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