If you follow me on social media, you’ll have seen that I chose a mini chunkster to accompany me on my travels this summer. I always plan to visit my Aged Parent and also the Offspring at this time of year, and usually take a Big Book to read on trains (I posted about my trip here). This year I shared several larger options I was considering, but eventually plumped for “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens. By his standards it’s short – under 300 pages – but I had heard good things about it (though I’m struggling to remember whose blog it was on!) Anyway, I chose to take it with me and it turned out to be a perfect (and quite essential) read.
“Hard Times” is set in the fictional Northern location of Coketown, and it opens in uncompromising fashion with the harsh School Board Superintendant, Thomas Gradgrind, laying out his credo. He is a man of Fact, insisting that life can be reduced down to nothing more than knowledge of these. There is no room for romance, fancy or joy in his life, and as well as enforcing this way of thinking on the schools he oversees, he also inflicts on his family. His daughter Louisa, son Tom and three younger ones are all force fed facts, until they are perfect little Gradgrind scholars and heirs.
Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. You only knew the town was there, because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter: a dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed nothing but masses of darkness—Coketown in the distance was suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen.
Coketown itself is a grim industrial place, where the divide between the haves and have-nots is extreme. The rich employers control all, and a fine example of this is Josiah Bounderby, a friend and business associate of Gradgrind, who owns the bank and mills and therefore has power over most of the inhabitants of the town. An arrogant and cruel man, full of boasts about his humble origins, he personifies Coketown.
The existence of the Gradgrind children really is grim, yet they still have feelings and emotions, all of which have been supressed. Into their lives comes Sissy Jupe, daughter of a circus performer who has abandoned her and run away, leaving her in the care of Gradgrind’s school. The family take her in and give her a chance, but she is not one for learning and ends up caring for the invalid Mrs. Gradgrind. Interestingly, Louisa and Tom are caught spying on the circus, having slipped out to take a look, and it’s clear that the forcing of facts on them only buries their feelings, but does not eradicate them.
Amongst the working people, the major characters are Stephen Blackpool and Rachael, both of whom work at Bounderby’s mills. The pair love each other, but Stephen has a drunken, estranged wife who appears from time to time, and unlike the rich, he cannot divorce her. These two seem to be the voice of sanity and reason throughout the book.
So life goes on in Coketown. Louisa comes of age and is married off to Bounderby, 30 years her senior; young Tom turns to gambling and drinking, working in Bounderby’s bank, and is dead set to go to the bad; the Bounderby marriage is a loveless one (of course!) and Louisa is wooed by a young rake, James Harthouse, and spied on by Bounderby’s housekeeper, Mrs. Sparsit. Will she succumb and fall to ruin as well? Will Stephen and Rachael have any future? What is Tom really up to? And who is the mysterious old woman who keeps turning up and watching from a distance? These are just a few of the elements which kept me actually gripped by the book from beginning to end!
This being Dickens, of course, the writing is superb. His imagery is like no one else’s and the visual metaphors he uses are stunning. I’m thinking here particularly of his use of a spiralling staircase, hidden in the mind of Mrs Sparsit, where she follows a character’s winding moral descent to doom – quite unforgettable. And as always, Dickens’ names are so suggestive, capturing the nature of the characters in a quirky nomenclature (for example, the schoolteacher Mr M’Choakumchild!) It’s usually quite easy to tell who’s good and who’s bad in a Dickens novel, though here a lot of his characters are not black and white, and he does introduce plenty of nuance in many of them.
“Hard Times” is definitely a novel with many messages, not least that we cannot live by facts alone and need to allow our fancies to roam free. Much of the book is about childhood, a subject recurring often in Dickens’ work, and few people get inside the heads of children so well, I feel. Young Sissy, with her loyalty to her father, is heartbreaking; the Gradgrind siblings, with facts banged into them, have lost the chance to be young and playful; and some of Sissy’s fellow pupils will grow up stunted, with warped morals, because of their teaching, and this will affect many lives.
It’s also a book which explores morality, and where we can expect to find it. Bounderby certainly lives up to his name, being a vile braggart who deserves a comeuppance; and Mrs Sparsit, with her nasty airs and graces, and snooping ways, is someone you really want to see brought down several pegs. Few of the ruling classes have any redeeming factors, but many of the working class do. Both Stephen and Rachael are noble characters who always do the right thing; they will suffer during the story, suffering injustices, but still will stay on the side of good. They were quite heartbreaking too.
As for Mr Sleary and his circus folk, they were a treat. They bookend the story, really, bringing Sissy into the picture at the start, and playing an important part in the last few chapters which were really gripping and such a treat – I read these all in a rush and ended up going back to read them all over again because it was so good. Dickens’ humour shone through here, as well as plenty of pathos, and it was a wonderful climax to a really gripping story. The circus people are again morally sound, repaying kindness shown to them and standing by others in need.
There is, inevitably, a political angle to “Hard Times” and I believe Dickens has been criticised for taking a slightly woolly stand on things. He’s critical of Bounderby and co, with their cruel treatment and exploitation of their workers; yet he satirises the trades union man, Slackbridge, who is trying to rouse the workers to fight for their rights. Interestingly, he identifies some characteristics of the movement which are still criticised nowadays, so maybe he was more astute than he was given credit for. Nevertheless, his solution seems to be one where the bosses treat their workers fairly but nothing else changes, and as we know that’s not really a practical one… However, he does identify the cruelty and maltreatment which workers experience, the hard conditions and the grinding poverty; and his empathy for those suffering is clear to see.
In gauging fathomless deeps with his little mean excise-rod, and in staggering over the universe with his rusty stiff-legged compasses, he had meant to do great things. Within the limits of his short tether he had tumbled about, annihilating the flowers of existence with greater singleness of purpose than many of the blatant personages whose company he kept.
And his empathy extends to those of all classes; his portrayal of Louisa Gradgrind and her thwarted life is a moving one, and her plight is one which will stay with me. Crushed from childhood, allowed no fancy or fun, her love is all funnelled into her adoration of her unworthy brother, Tom. Uncomfortably early in the book, I sensed that Bounderby had other intentions for her than that of a family friend, and that became clear when he approached her father for her hand in marriage; it felt as though she’d almost been groomed for this for some years, and it was really unpleasant. Louisa’s emotions have been warped, and she marries Bounderby to help her brother, who selfishly cares nothing about it. There is a scene where Louisa is talking to her father about the proposal which is almost a cri de coeur – it goes unrecognised, and it is not until much later in the book that the pair come to a better understanding of each other.
“What do I know, Father,” said Louisa in her quiet manner, “of tastes and fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part of my nature in which such light things might have been nourished? What escape have I had from problems that could be demonstrated, and realities that could be grasped?” As she said it, she unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon a solid object, and slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or ash.
Whatever the morals and themes in the book, with Dickens you always get a cracking good story and “Hard Times” is certainly that. At under 300 pages, you could argue that it’s Dickens-lite, and it’s less scary to approach than some of his chunkster works. But it still has his wonderful characterisation, his brilliant writing, his humour, his anger and all the entertainment and joy you get from reading one of his books. I’ve tried not to give too much detail of the plot, because much of the delight of the story is not knowing what will come next; but I hope I’ve conveyed just how brilliant this book is and just how much I loved it.
Checking through my Dickens books (and I have a lovely set of his novels which Mr. K gave me many moons ago), I realised that not only had I read the ones I’ve read decades ago, I also have many unread. So I’m going to try to stop being intimidated by chunksters and get on with reading more Dickens (and indeed other chunky books – look out for more pictures of these coming soon!) “Hard Times” was the perfect travelling companion while I was training round the Midlands recently, and I’m just so glad Dickens existed to create these wonderful characters and their stories!
Kaggsy's Bookish Ramblings 