Books - Hard Times

Home > Listing Index > Books > Hard Times

	Books - Hard Times

Hard Times is a novel by Charles Dickens, published in 1854. It is significant for being the shortest of his full novels. The book is one of a number of state-of-the-nation novels published around the same time, another being North and South
by Elizabeth Gaskell, which aimed to highlight the social and economic pressures some people were under. The novel is unusual, in that it is not set in London, as is Dickens' usual wont, but the fictitious Victorian industrial town of Coketown. It has met mixed critical response from a diverse range of critics, such F.R. Leavis, George Bernard Shaw, and Thomas Macaulay. This was usually for Dickens' treatment of Trade unions, and the pessimism about the division between capitalistic millowners and the undervalued workers, after the Industrial Revolution, set in the Victorian era of Britain.

Background and publication

The reasons for writing Hard Times were both commercial and educational. Appertaining to the commercial impetus, sales of Dickens' weekly periodical, Household Words, were dropping. Pertaining to the educational reason, Dickens wished to satirize radical Utilitarians whom Dickens thought (in a letter to Charles Knight) to be 'those who see figures and averages, and nothing else'. He also wished to campaign for reform of working conditions. Dickens had visited factories in Manchester, as early as 1839, and was made aghast and appalled by the environment in which workers toiled. Drawing upon his own childhood experiences, Dickens resolved himself to 'strike the heaviest blow in my power' for those who laboured in horrific conditions.

Prevalence of utilitarianism

One of the targets of Dicken's uncharacteristic mordancy is this novel are Utilitarians. In the novelist's time, this philosophy was a particularly prevalent school of thought, and its main representative was John Stuart Mill. Theoretical Utilitarian ethics hold that self-interest is to what one should appeal. This is expressed in the novel, in Bitzer's response, in the plot untying, to Gradgrind's appeal for compassion. Dickens was appalled by this selfish philosophy, which was combined with materialist laissez-faire capitalism, in the education of some children at the time, and industry. This is because it seemed to create contempt between the millowners and workers, and, in terms of education, it created young adults whose imaginations had been neglected, due to an emphasis on facts.

John Stuart Mill had a similar, rigorous education to the one that Louisa Gradgrind has, which consisted of analytical, logical, mathematical, statistical exercises. In his twenties, Mill had a nervous breakdown, believing his capacity for emotion had been enervated by his father's stringent emphasis on analysis and mathematics in his education. Relating to the book, Louisa herself follows a parallel course, being unable to express herself, and falling into a temporary depression as a result of her desiccating education.

Statistics

The spurious usage of statistics is a subject about which Dickens expresses great anger. It is worth noting that, in his lifetime, Dickens did not decry the wholesale usage of statistics, per se, such as for reformative and sanitary purposes. But Dickens demonstrates how this information can be subjected to perversion and abuse, for purposes of subjugation and creating statistics that are class-biased. Nicholas Coles, an essayist, points out in his work The Politics of Hard Times: Dickens the Novelist versus Dickens the Reformer, that Dickens critique was:

:"against statistics as a form of social knowledge, a way of knowing which necessarily constitutes the object of its knowledge - in this case the working class and their conditions of life - in particular ways and which thereby dictates particular approaches to it. It is statistics as what Michel Foucault would call a disciplinary technology of knowledge, as a mechanism for moral and political surveillance and restraint."

Additionally Dickens also rails against the potentially oppressive use of statistics to justify the distribution of wealth. There is an instance of this in the opening chapters. Asked for the basic principle of Political economics, Sissy, a young student, responds 'To do unto others, as they would do unto me', which is the opposite of the expected answer (self-interest and statistical proof, not compassion). Dickens is implying the feelings of compassion and sympathy override the calculation of percentages and statistics.

Publication

The novel was published as a serial in his weekly publication, Household Words. Sales were highly responsive and encouraging for Dickens who remarked that he was 'Three parts mad, and the fourth delirious, with perpetual rushing at Hard Times '. The novel was serialised, every week, between April 1 and August 12 1854. It sold well, and a complete volume was published in August, totalling 110,000 words. Another related novel, North and South, by Elizabeth Gaskell was also published in this magazine.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Hard Times ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Hard Times; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay