Hard Times

1
Hard Times

• By Charles Dickens
• (1854)

2
Overview

• Summary
• Characterizations
• Historical Context
• Authors biography

3
Summary

• ? novel divided into 3 sections
• Sowing, Reaping, Garnering
• - first seeds are planted
• - second reaping the results
• - third restoring equilibrium
• BOOK 1 Sowing
• - setting Coketown
• - Thomas Gradgrind, a teacher, who is a man of
  facts and calculations
• - never allows his children Louisa (16) and Tom
  to show emotions

4

• - Sissy Jupe, one of Gradgrinds pupils, whom he
  does not approve of, since her imaginative ideas
  may propagate in class ? he takes over her
  education
• - The workers the Hands
• One of them is the impoverished Stephen
  Blackpool.
• He is unhappily married and moreover in love
  with Rachael.
• - visits Josiah Bounderby he is a manufacturer
  and millowner and describes himself as a
  self-made man
• - Bounderby does not agree to divorce
• - His proposal of marriage to Louisa, who is 30
  years younger! She passively accepts out of
  reason.

5

• ? Book 2 Reaping
• - introduction to James Harthouse, a wealthy
  sophisticate from London, who wants to begin a
  political career as a disciple of T. Gradgrind.
• - the Hands intend to form a union. Stephen
  refuses to join and is chased out. Bounderby
  dismisses him, because Stephen refuses to spy on
  the Hands.
• - one night Stephen waits outside Bounderbys
  bank for the financial help Tom had promised ? in
  vain
• After that Stephen leaves Coketown to look for
  work
• ? the bank is robbed and Stephen suspected
• - Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderbys housekeeper witnesses
  Harthouse declaring his love for Louisa. Unable
  to deal with the situation she flees to her
  fathers.

6

• ?Book 3 Garnering
• - Stephen has heard of the accusations and on
  walking back to Coketown he falls into a mining
  pit called Old Hell Shaft ? shortly after this
  he dies in the arms of Rachael
• - Tom robbed the bank ? leaves England out of
  shame
• - The final chapter of the novel details the
  fates of the characters
• ? Mrs. Sparsit forbidden to see Bounderby as
  she unwillingly unmasks him as a liar
• ? Bounderby dies after 5 years alone in
  Coketowns streets
• ? Gradgrind helping the poor
• ? Sissy marries and founds a loving family
• ? Louisa learns how to feel sympathy

7
Characterizations

• Thomas Gradgrind
• - teacher and member of Parliament
• (social and financial success)
• - philosophy of calculation, rational
  self-interest
• - embodies the spirit of the Industrial
  Revolution ?treating people like machines
• - Gratitude is to be abolished
• - his childrens problems teach him to feel love
  and sorrow. They are making his facts and
  figures subservient to Faith, Hope and Charity
  (p.266)
• - Dickens suggests that without compassion and
  imagination life would be unbearable.

8

• Josiah Bounderby
• - entrepreneur, who is very much interested in
  money and power. Gradgrinds best friend
• - vain, self-interested hypocrite, authoritarian
  character, capitalist, rational
• - Myth From rags to riches (p.12)
• - invented story of his childhood to impress his
  listeners by his self-discipline
• - represents the possibility of social mobility
• Hands are impoverished because they lack my
  ambitions.
• - wealth determines who holds the most power
• - Dickens calls into question the myth of social
  mobility. Need of charity and compassion of
  wealthier individuals.

9

• Louisa Gradgrind
• - silent, shy, seemingly unfeeling ? can only
  state facts about her surroundings
• - Louisa learns to express her feelings under
  Sissys guidance
• Stephen Blackpool
• - working class victim
• - finds himself amidst a labor dispute that
  illustrates the strained relations between rich
  and poor
• - Dickens suggests that industrialization
  threatens to compromise the employees and
  employers moral integrity
• - dies for Toms crime ? poetic justice?

10

• Mrs. Sparsit
• - Secretly despises her vulgar employer Bounderby
• - unmasks him unwillingly and his lies by finding
  his mother
• - character selfish, dishonest, sly ? embodies
  negative character traits
• - once a member of the aristocratic elite
• - imagines Louisa running down a staircase into a
  dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom
  (p.181)
• - staircase represents the way down from virtue
  to shame...

11
Historical context

• ? Industrialization in England(18th century)
• change from agrarian economy to one dominated by
  industry
• technological progress
• - development of factory system
• - speeded communication and transportation
• - new inventions (e.g. steam engine or spinning
  jenny)
• - mechanization
• - increase in productivity
• social concerns
• - status of women
• - divorce laws
• - urbanization
• - social division ? discrepancy
• - education

12

• Labor relations
• - difficulties between employer and employee
• - working class
• ? grievances
• ? degrading conditions
• ? lack of political representaion
• - trade unions were fored to help advance
  interests of the working people
• - strike actions began - leading to less working
  force
• - exploitation of employees in order to increase
  own profit

13
Charles Dickens(1812-1870)

• - born on Feb. 7 1812 in Portsmouth
• - son of a clerk in the Navy Pay-Office
• - no happy childhood
• ? Fathers debts
• ?1824 father in prison and Dickens being sent
  to work in a blacking warehouse gt traumatic
• - married to Catherine Hogarth until 1858
• - died in 1870 buried in the Poets Corner at
  Westminster Abbey
• Works
• - Oliver Twist (1837)
• - Nicolas Nickleby (1839)
• - Hard Times (1854)
• - Great Expectations (1860)
• - A Christmas Carol (1843)