When was hard times written

Labor relations had been difficult since the beginning of industrialization; a major grievance for the working classes was their lack of political representation. The Reform Bill extended the vote, but the impoverished masses were still without representation. In the s and s, factory workers, ill paid and laboring under terrible conditions in largely unregulated industries, demanded not only better pay and shorter hours but also more effective political representation through such movements as Chartism.

At the same time, the pressures of famine in Ireland which caused massive immigration and economic difficulties at home led the s to be called the "Hungry Forties.

The fiction of the day responded to these concerns in a group of novels, known as "industrial novels" or "Condition-of-England novels," that considered the question of how to resolve the tension between the newly expanded working classes and the owners. Hard Times was written later than the heyday of these novels in the late s, but it considers many of the same thorny social questions, as does Gaskell's North and South , written in Dickens added the subtitle "For These Times" to Hard Times when it appeared in its first bound volume edition, underlining the continuing topicality of the social concerns he addresses in its pages.

Of course, Dickens addresses many social concerns besides the abuses of industrial workers. For instance, education, the status of women, and the punitive divorce laws of the time all come in for consideration. Victorian society was grappling with the question of how to change or reform all of these.

State-run, broad-based education was just beginning to be implemented by , and the form it would take was still subject to some debate. In the end it is Sissy Jupe who emerges as the most balanced character. I haven't read a lot of Dickens in recent times my last was Bleak House in , so was it me, finding this one particularly soapy, or is it the book? Flint mentions that Hard Times was the first book in thirteen years that Dickens wrote as a weekly - rather than a monthly - serial, which may explain that.

My friend Levi Stahl once noted how reading Henry James utilized the higher gears of his brain. I have always relished that sentiment, though I fear Henry James is above my pay grade. It is a different kettle with Dickens, my maudlin thoughts drift to Cassavetes on Capra, a reworking of my already re Where are the graces of my soul?

It is a different kettle with Dickens, my maudlin thoughts drift to Cassavetes on Capra, a reworking of my already repurposed grace. Get behind me, social realism. Hard Times is an interesting collection of set pieces collected in a smelting town with a set of characters which honestly can be seen in Turgenev. The novel doesn't afford an arc much as a series of consequences. It is here where the other evil Scott Walker from Wisconsin finds his nocturnal emission: organized labor chokes the life out of people.

It couldn't be inhaling coal dust or toiling every day bereft of Vitamin C, no, it is collective bargaining and an improper educational system. I should note that the Governor isn't a character in this novel. Only his peculiar sentiment. Siblings are raised in a Spartan pedagogic environment, one which worships facts and retention as opposed to creativity.

The daughter then marries a self made Scott Pruitt, while the wayward son fancies gambling and living above his station. There is no mention of an ostrich jacket.

There is an honest worker. He can't abide by the union and, before Bob's your uncle, he is fingered for a robbery. Life can only aspire to transcend self-interest. It remains but an aspiration. Aug 13, Craig Robb rated it it was ok Shelves: They say no-one reads a book to get to the middle.

Well, for Hard Times, perhaps they should, so disappointing the end turns out to be, this is one of the examples of how literature has improved over the years. It does not, and to say that it does devalues his other work. The book is filled with shal They say no-one reads a book to get to the middle. The book is filled with shallow characters where motivations are left unexplained, where the writing is long and overworked, where the reliance on local dialect is used as a substitute for characterisation, this for me is Dickens at his worst.

There is, underneath all the wrought wordmanship, a worthy tale of the perils of industrialisation but it is too obtusely flanked by peripheral stories that do nothing but divert the attention away from this central tale. A scything edit and a reduction in word count to around 50, would have helped the story shine through but, as it is, it remains as blustery, repetitive overblown, misguided, predictable and boring as old Bounderby himself.

Very disappointing. View all 3 comments. Nov 18, Blair rated it liked it Shelves: , british-classic , dickens. I have mixed feelings about Charles Dickens shortest novel, Hard Times. As for straight up storytelling, I think it falls flat. As a satire, tis a bit heavy-handed and smothers the lively, colorful characters Dickens is so great at creating. One of the characters, Stephen Blackpool, an honest factory worker and man of great integrity, speaks in a vernacular I have mixed feelings about Charles Dickens shortest novel, Hard Times.

One of the characters, Stephen Blackpool, an honest factory worker and man of great integrity, speaks in a vernacular that is difficult to read at times, requiring extra effort. Mr Sleary, the lisping circus proprietor is almost as challenging to read. An overly simplistic view? But I imagine quite popular with his readership back in the day. All of this would be fine if the story could rise above it, but none of the threads of the narrative went in any direction I wanted them to go and led to an unsatisfying result.

Which ultimately makes for an unsatisfying read. I ain't be dissing Dickens though; my rating is probably more a reflection of how it compares to some of his other novels which I just loved more. Feb 27, Sara rated it really liked it Shelves: victorian , 19th-century-literature , catching-up-classics. At the outset of this novel, we know that Dickens is going to pit reason against emotion, fact against feeling, and that reason and fact are going to come up short. In a world without sympathy, compassion or warmth, Louisa and Tom Gradgrind are raised.

They have everything they might want in terms of money and position, but nothing else; their contrast is Sissy Jupe, a circus child who has the love of both her father and the circus family, but is steeped in poverty. In true Dickens style, there At the outset of this novel, we know that Dickens is going to pit reason against emotion, fact against feeling, and that reason and fact are going to come up short.

In true Dickens style, there are several side stories, one of which is the star-crossed love story of Rachael and Stephen, a sweet and dedicated pair, who bear their misfortunes with grace and acceptance.

As always, Dickens tackles the evils of the day with some humor, in the person of Mr. Sleary, and a taste of villainy, in the form of Mrs. He addresses the rise of unions, and in a world where such ideas were radical, he paints them in a more favorable light than might be expected.

But, most effectively, he tackles the educational system that puts everything above the individual child. While Gradgrind is not a cruel man, like Mr. Squeers who runs the school in Nicholas Nickleby, he is just as misguided and damaging to his charges. Bitzer, a minor character who serves an important part in the plot, emerges as a perfect example of the kind of empty shell that can be made of a child who is given nothing to draw on but self-interest.

I did not enjoy Hard Times as much as I have enjoyed other Dickens novels, but I did find it a worthwhile read and as always, there are characters here that will be long remembered. My next Dickens will be Little Dorrit, and I have heard that it is among his best efforts. This novel actually really surprised me. Many reviews on Goodreads liken the title to the reading experience, one of pushing through long details and descriptions. Actually, this book has done the opposite for me.

My reading of Victorian books has been few and far between. Middlemarch was a great novel, one which I am glad I read, and I recently bought a book Dickens Collection in an attempt to get some more of his under my belt.

I admit, I picked it because it was short, and I wanted something to kickstart my Dickens reading again. I wasn't disappointed. A social criticsm on how basing our lives on facts are numbing and remove the humanity within us, Hard Times is Dickens' critique of Utilitarianism. Mr Gradgrind teaches his children, and his students, the importance of facts and how life should be based around them.

Living like that, Louisa decides to marry her fathers friend, Mr Bounderby, to aid her brother, Tom, in maintaining his job. Simulateously, you have the story of Stephen Blackpool, a working-class factory worker who is haunted by his drunken wife. Employed by Mr Bounderby, his only happiness in life is visits from his friend, Rachael. When fired, Stephen is helped by Louisa, and moves away. Tom, however, incriminates him as a thief, instead taking the money for his debts and drinking.

Louisa and Tom act in very different ways to their factual upbringing. Louisa strives to maintain her strict life, ignoring all fancys and emotions until Mr Harthouse arrives. Tom, however, descends into drinking and depression, a fall that is beautifully depicted by Dickens. While not as content-full as A Tale of Two Cities, the depth of Dickens' characters made the novel very enjoyable to read.

It has definitely encouraged me to further my readings into Dickens. Aug 02, Julian Worker rated it it was amazing. I never thought I'd enjoy a Charles Dickens novel so much I believe Coketown is based on Manchester.

If it is, then it's interesting that the mills that inspired Dickens to write Hard Times might have been the same ones that influenced Friedrich Engels to write The Condition of the Working Class in England in Written in , Hard Times shows Dickens is concerned with the way in which industrialisation de-humanises people.

Bounderby treats people as numbers and Gradgr I never thought I'd enjoy a Charles Dickens novel so much Bounderby treats people as numbers and Gradgrind suffocates his children with a warped education.

This book covers the Victorian period where there was a shift in power away from the aristocracy towards the hard-nosed industrialists who were making fortunes from people's misery.

In a Muddle This is probably where Dickens found himself to some extent when sales of his periodical Household Words were falling and he started publishing his new novel Hard Times on its pages in order to improve sales figures.

Apart from that, Dickens must In a Muddle This is probably where Dickens found himself to some extent when sales of his periodical Household Words were falling and he started publishing his new novel Hard Times on its pages in order to improve sales figures. Apart from that, Dickens must have had great ambitions with regard to the message of his novel, and the enemy he was attacking was indeed a powerful and a sprawling one — the philosophy of utilitarianism, which, in a vulgarized form, found its way into everyday life, changing production patterns, public welfare and the school system.

So Dickens had a lot to say, but all in all little weekly space to do this — and he had to tell a story into the bargain. Now, what are these ideas? You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir! Gradgrind is the proponent of this kind of uninspired, narrow-minded schooling, and not only is one of the teachers of his school most tellingly named Mr.

Another example of Mr. Gradgrind can be seen as a type and a caricature that is artistically justified. His sudden change and redemption at the end of the second part of the novel is, in comparison, more difficult to stomach and quite unbelievable. Bounderby and Gradgrind now walked, was a triumph of fact; it had no greater taint of fancy in it than Mrs.

Gradgrind herself. Let us strike the key-note, Coketown, before pursuing our tune. It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.

It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.

Josiah Bounderby is one of the factory-owners in Coketown, and he likes to present himself as a self-made man who had no advantages in life but owes it all to himself. Yet, little does it surprise us because Mr. Bounderby blows his own horn too unscrupulously, Mr. What I did you can do.

Bounderby, Mr. Gradgrind, his family, Mrs. Sparsit and also Mr. Harthouse as — usually morally flawed — representatives of the higher classes, there are only Stephen Blackpool and Rachael as fully-fledged characters with a working-class background.

That is exactly what they are not, they are not even representatives of the working class because for some reason Stephen Blackpool has taken a vow never to join a trade union, and thus he is shunned by his fellow-workers, who remain a faceless mass on the pages of this novel.

This might have invited Victorian readers to spill many a morally edifying tear over his lot without being too much afraid of him, but to modern readers less given to sentimentality, Stephen is one of the major flaws of the novel, not only because he is clumsily worked into the plot — which is already clumsy in its own right in many ways — but also because he is such a meek lamb.

It is strange that after Dombey and Son , David Copperfield and his masterpiece Bleak House Dickens should have written a book like Hard Times but one might really put this down to the unusual circumstances in which Dickens was writing. It is not as bad as The Old Curiosity Shop but in my opinion it is the weakest of his later novels. Of course, being a Dickens novel, it is still head and shoulders above much other Victorian and non-Victorian writing.

Dec 27, Alan rated it really liked it. I taught this novel many times--oh, a dozen--because it's the shortest Dickens, fits into a college course easier than Nicholas Nickleby, my favorite, which I only taught once. Likewise with War and Peace only once because it took mostly the whole semester. Hard Times is excellent on education, only Nicholas surpassing it--and perhaps Tom Sawyer, on American and Church education. Gradgrind, the businessman who sets the tone of M'Choakumchild's school, disapproves of his daughter Louisa's reading I taught this novel many times--oh, a dozen--because it's the shortest Dickens, fits into a college course easier than Nicholas Nickleby, my favorite, which I only taught once.

Gradgrind says, "Never wonder. Dickens cites the suspicion against novels, running back to Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women, though I think in her book she says women should read what men do, not the novels they waste time on.

Besides a great dog story, there's the amusement of the circus-owner's lisp, Sleary. He says, about circuses and novels, "People mutht be amuthed. They can't alwayth be a leaarning" , Norton critical M'Choakumchild is no Wackford Squeers; maybe Gradgrind is closer, but more narrow and limited, and after all, Hard Times involves public education, which nobody in the 19C expected much from except possibly in the U.

Hard Times also sums up industrialized work such as Mancastrian loom-workers and repairmen who built the factories in the city where I taught, Fall River, MA. So it provided a good 19C summary of Fall River's mills and mill-workers. One of my paper suggestions invited college students often women in their 20's to compare their own education, and their criticisms of it, with those here.

Hard Times opens with the usual Dickens comic brio and sabre-toothed satire. Bounderby—surely the progenitor of this Monty Python sketch. As the novel moves into its second half, the melodramatic and laboured Steven Blackpool narrative distracts from the more poignant story of circus orphan Sissy and the Gradgrinds.

Too much time is devoted to Mrs Sparsit, a bland fallen lady at the mercy of Bounderby, not enough to Sissy. Sleary, or the hysterical in the wrong way fate of Stephen. Feb 21, Dave Schaafsma rated it really liked it Shelves: fictionth-century , education , class. Hard Times is what they now call The Great Depression, about which Studs Terkel wrote his monumental work of oral history.

So Hard Times by Charles Dickens is a book about working class northern England, but of it he said, "My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else. Performance-based development, they call it, performance being exclusively determined by student scores on standardized tests.

Forty teeth, namely twenty-four grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth. In fact, fact is the only knowledge that matters to Gradgrind. Facts, not feelings. The Common Core privileges argument over story, nonfiction over fiction and poetry, and Dickens saw it already happening years ago in this book. Love is not part of the necessary vocabulary of the Gradgrind family or school.

But this fact-based approach also leads to societal consequences where the bottom line matters more than humans. The last thirty years in economic and political philosophy is correctly assumed to be guided in part by the brutal ideology of Ayn Rand, but a century before her it is Dickens in ?! Why don't you go and do it? Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase.

Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter.

What a good book! Sure Dickens can be preachy and sentimental as he rails on social practices he finds dehumanizing. But he also can be fun; are there sillier names for teachers than Gradgrind and--this is the best--Chokumchild?! Mar 17, Rosemary Atwell rated it really liked it. The influence of Thomas Carlyle and other critics of the Industrial Revolution can be felt throughout this work - a sober fable of the effects of dehumanisation and material values of the Victorian merchant classes, and didactically lampooned in the characters of Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby.

Their victims - Gradgrind's family, Stephen Blackpool, Rachel and the foppish Jem Harthouse, provide a supporting cast of typical Dickens characters and allow the author to alert his readers to the The influence of Thomas Carlyle and other critics of the Industrial Revolution can be felt throughout this work - a sober fable of the effects of dehumanisation and material values of the Victorian merchant classes, and didactically lampooned in the characters of Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby.

Their victims - Gradgrind's family, Stephen Blackpool, Rachel and the foppish Jem Harthouse, provide a supporting cast of typical Dickens characters and allow the author to alert his readers to the dangers of embracing a world in which imagination and wonder are crushed beneath mechanisation and the relentless march of progress.

Hard times, indeed. But with a little bit of help from the genius of great authors, we manage. My year in books closes very appropriately, with a masterpiece from Charles Dickens.

May 29, midnightfaerie rated it really liked it Shelves: classics. I'm not even sure where to start with this book. First of all, Hard Times is one of the shorter, and lesser known of the Dickens novels. At only around four hundred pages, it almost seems like a novella compared to his other tomes of one thousand pages or more. The book has some interesting characters. We have Thomas Gradgrind, the obstinate disciplinarian, who raises his children to use their head and facts in all things and to never "wonder" because that will lead to flights of fancy which can I'm not even sure where to start with this book.

We have Thomas Gradgrind, the obstinate disciplinarian, who raises his children to use their head and facts in all things and to never "wonder" because that will lead to flights of fancy which can only lead you astray. He is to be taken down a piece at a time, so that his contrition at the end of the novel allows us to forgive him and admire him in his role of one of our lead characters.

We have a Mr. Bounderby, a friend of Gradgrind, who also adheres to the Philosophy is Fact principle, but more out of slogans than anything else. A detestable man, he is self-made and self-serving, raising himself to a social status that is hypocritical and not altogether of pure fact.

Whereas Thomas Gradgrind believes what he is preaching, Mr. Bounderby uses it only a means to an end or for a statement of self. And we have Stephen Blackpool, Dickens typical representation of the lower classes, sporting integrity and morals, enduring the everyday toil of working poverty, while he is victimized by his fellow workers and employer.

The lowly servant brought down by the system. Damn the man. Then we have some female characters such as Sissy, the young woman Gradgrind takes in when her father abandons her, and Mrs. Sparsit, who is ever wiping the brown from her nose where Bounderby is concerned, or contrarily, calling his portrait a "Noodle", when he's not around. I've mentioned before some criticism about Dicken's novels that I've read dealing with the insipid nature of Dickens female characters.

While this is often true, in this novel I found the opposite in our female lead, Louisa, Thomas's beloved daughter. While raised in the same way as her brother, Tom "the Whelp", instead of masking indifference to their families rule and wallowing in self-pity and gambling like Tom does, Louisa's intelligence is displayed in the fact pun intended , that she realizes from the beginning that something essential is missing from her life.

She is drawn to the circus as a child, although severely reprimanded by her father, and recognizes an integrity and warmth in Sissy which she herself doesn't have. She gives into a loveless marriage with Mr. Bounderby, hoping that in some way it might help her brother get out of his careless ways, or at the very least, help pay for them.

She shows strength, courage, and amenability when none other exist during times of duress. There are many more characters as there often are, as lovely and as detailed as these, however, these were some of the main ones.

And once again, we see how Dickens' writing serves to develop the ramifications of public issues for individual lives. He shows us that the consequences for individual men and women matter most in a social system. He also reiterates his main theme over and over again in showing us that a simple life, adhering to the Philosophy of Fact, strips us of our sympathy, leaves us empty, and is a basic misconception of human nature.

Like I mentioned earlier, Gradgrind is brought to his knees at the end of the novel in realization of what he's done to his children, showing us the irony of his ideas.

Louisa is finally brought light in Gradgrind's eyes, when another man, other than her husband proposes a love-filled affair, something her husband could never fathom.

She breaks down in despair and runs to her father, finally telling him everything she's really felt all these years, and this is only the beginning of Gradgrind's downfall. Her brother, Tom, falls too, but he has learned nothing but selfishness from his upbringing and tries to find satisfaction in pursuing his own selfish interests to no avail.

When he resorts to desperate means to fill the gap, everything falls apart and Gradgrind finally realizes what he's done to his children. Blackpool, our somewhat hero, or at least stable character of the story, is hurrying home from another town to clear his name of something he's been wrongly accused of when he falls into Old Hell Shaft, a big hole.

An appropriate allegory, he is destroyed by this big black hole in nature and left by the uncaring industrialists that have plagued him from the beginning. Besides the underlying themes, I also found this novel suspenseful and highly entertaining. Although Mr.

Sleary's lisp was difficult to understand at times I found myself reading some of his lines out loud, much to my detriment, but to the merriment of my husband , it still was one of my favorite Dicken's novel thus far. Even though Dickens can be sometimes predictable, I still wasn't sure how the tale would end.

Aldrich also believes that students do not write enough. Writing is like any other skill, and takes practice to get better. He taught the students a work of fiction and they did not believe him or his stories. They continue to do their worst as the teacher continues to live in his fantasy world where he makes up the history in which he wants to teach.

He continues to live in a world in which he makes up so he can pretend that he is helping them. Open Document. Essay Sample Check Writing Quality. Schools were dark places. It was almost as if happiness was not allowed in schools. Everything was about facts. Nothing other than the facts was taught, or even mentioned at school. Apparently, nothing else mattered. Dickens saw the problem in the way children were being educated, and wanted to fix that.

The teacher humiliates a young student named Sissy. Thomas Gradgrind, the teacher, repeatedly tells his class that fact is all that matters.

Imagination is useless. Dickens makes his problems with the education system very obvious in this part of the novel.

It is the small details, however, that really tell the reader what the purpose of the novel is. These acute details, such as the names of the characters, dialogue or statements between characters, and descriptions of the setting, are what can tell the reader exactly what Dickens thinks about the system. The names of the two men, the dialogue between Mr. Gradgrind and Sissy, and the bland, grey description of the classroom make the mood of the story very dark and cold, which is exactly what Dickens wants.

First of all, th