Charles Dickens Hard Times

© Mukesh Williams 2010

TURNING MEN INTO MACHINES
There is no domestic sweetness in the novel, no lover for Sissy, no wedding bells. Louise escapes her foolish husband Bounderby only by becoming a widow. Though she dreams about future happiness we know it is just wishful thinking. The novel is a dark novel made darker by the bleak landscape of Coketown. Even the familiar landscape of London is missing. Hard Times is a harsh indictment of the relentless industrialization of the nineteenth century made in the name of progress that was making men into machines. In the name of economic growth people were becoming greedier and heartless. Their misguided sense of social welfare and profit was destroying the healthy and natural tenor of English social life. Hard Times is a novel of social transition when values and social life were in ferment.

INDUSTRIALIZATION
Industrialization in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century introduced machine-based production of textiles, iron manufacture and the use of refined coal. Canals, railways, steam power and water wheels greatly expanded trade and profit. Industrialization helped Britain resolve its problem of feeding the population and generating sufficient energy for the nation. As Eric Hobsbawm pointed out industrialization was not just a function of western capitalism but also of British control of world trade through naval supremacy and a concerted foreign policy to make profit overseas. However, the keen desire to realize economic and social progress through industrialization forced people to lose their natural rhythms and become a victim of mechanical rhythms. Trying to become a part of industrial progress most people lost their emotions, humanity and imagination. Both Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby are products of the industrial ethos. Gradgrind tries to bring up his children and pupils through the study of hard facts, while his friend Bounderby exploits the factory workers for his own profit. Both, the children and factory ‘Hands’ of Coketown, lead a life of drudgery.

RATIONALISM AND SELF-INTEREST
Gradgrind further degrades the life of Coketown by his misdirected rationalism and self-interest. He believes that strict rules must govern school and society and compassion and imagination must be rooted out. But in this atmosphere life becomes hard to live. Though he wants his children to be happy and economically well off he fails in his attempt. Lousia gets into an unhappy marriage and ends up loving someone else. She makes her father realize that his method of child rearing was unnatural; it made her unable to integrate herself in society. Tom becomes wayward and gives in to drinking and gambling. He is contemptuously referred to as a whelp and brings discredit to the Gradgrind family. Bounderby lives a life of boastful deceit and is presented as an insincere and ridiculous man—am inflated balloon and an immense soap bubble. Here is a moral fable with Bounderby as an example of a dramatic monster. Dickens does not allow his characters to succeed just to underscore the detrimental effects of utilitarianism and rationalism. He exposes the morally corrupt characters like Bounderby but praises upright people like Stephen Blackpool and kind-hearted Sissy Jupe.

BENTHAMITE UTILITARIANISM
Benthamite utilitarianism argued for “the greatest good for the greatest number of people” but failed to realize it. Though few succeeded most people continued to live in grinding poverty. Dickens felt that there was more to life than just economic success. It was not just to brand the discontented and disenchanted as dregs of society and send them to prison. Bentham believed in moral principles and disciplinary institutions for the betterment of society. He campaigned for the building of Panopticon prison which allowed an observer to observe the prisoners without being noticed. Through this design Bentham wanted to bring about social and legal reform based on the concept of invisible omniscience. Foucault saw the Panopticon as a reflection of nineteenth century rule-based institutions to police the individual. The terrible discourse of state control does not result in human progress or happiness.

FACT VERSUS FANCY
An excessive reliance on facts leads to a disjointed view of the world. Though facts are important they are also a matter of perspective and interpretation. Dickens provides examples to prove his point. Bounderby saw the factory Hands as lazy and too demanding while the factory workers saw themselves as industrious and exploited. Dickens believed that opposing interpretation of facts cannot be synthesized as they are just different perspectives. He went further to explain that “facts” can also be seen as individual “taste.” Therefore fiction had its place even in a mechanized and matter-of –fact society. Even Gradgrind admits that though Sissy has not learnt much about utilitarian facts, she has become “an affectionate, earnest, good young woman” (p. 91). Dickens presents to us a new society guided by a new principle of life guided by mathematical and scientific methodologies. This worldview rooted out everything else—the circus, the imagination, idleness and Sissy Jupe.

THE FEMININE PRINCIPLE
The Victorian society gave great importance to the feminine principle which was seen as kind-hearted, morally untainted and psychologically receptive. It was believed that women by and large were able to resist the dehumanizing aspects of industrialization more than men. In the novel Rachael’s gentleness and fortitude gives strength to Stephen. His monotonous factory life is lighted up by her presence. She is therefore called a guiding angel. Sissy brings love and kindness into Gradgrind’s family restoring those human qualities in Louisa which had been lost by her father’s misguided training.

NATURAL RHYTHMS VERSUS CLOCK TIME
It is possible to see the rhythms of the seasons placed against the calibration of time measured by mechanical clocks. Both Gradgrind and denizens of Coketown measure time through the “deadly statistical clock.” Dickens suggests that time in the industrial city is both mechanical and monotonous—“Time went on in Coketown like its own machinery” (p. 90). In Coketown both machinery and its movement marks its own time. Dickens however divided the novel along agricultural rhythms governed by the changing seasons—the three books of Hard Times are called “Sowing,” “Reaping” and “Garnering—referring to the process of planting and harvesting and laboring. The “varying seasons” bring their rhythms. Even the “wilderness of smoke and brick” in Coketown cannot prevent the change of seasons. Seasons come naturally breaking the monotony of life in Coketown. Even Gradgrind feels that Sissy carries a primordial rhythm of life that she has inherited from her forefathers. Even if she has not learnt all the utilitarian facts she has grown into “an affectionate, earnest, good young woman” (p. 91).

SMOULDERING SERPENTS
The smoke above Coketown hangs as poisonous serpents blinding Bounderby and people like him to their own moral and social responsibility to society. Instead of recognizing his greed, Bounderby sees the smoke serpents as indications that the factory is manufacturing goods for profit. Dickens uses the smoke to show the inability of Bounderby to recognize his inhumanity and the grinding poverty of the factory workers. In a biblical sense smoldering serpents could be seen as something sinister and evil that industrial progress had brought about.

INDUSTRIAL UNREST
Though the novel has an industrial agitator in Slackbridge who exhorts people to rise against the oppressors, there are no industrial strikes or labor unrest. The novel does not present any confrontationist politics between labor union and the management. The action is never intense but only critical and evaluative. We only see the factories floating like “fairy palaces” pushing their steam engine pistons “monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.” This melancholy madness is more important as sentiment and emotion than the actual presentation of common industrial issues such as poor working conditions, unemployment and child labor. Blackpool though he is represented as an honest workman is not “particularly intelligent” and dislikes all shades of opinions.

Class Notes on Charles Dickens' Hard Times

Dickens’ Hard Times


© Mukesh Williams 2010



SERIOUSNESS AND ENTERTAINMENT
Though Dickens was a great entertainer he was not included in F R Leavis’s The Great Tradition of the English novel as he lacked seriousness something that Henry James and Joseph Conrad possessed. However Leavis felt that Hard Times has complete seriousness that could excite the adult mind. Leavis praised the novel’s tight story, clear symbolism, moral values, sharp dialogue, natural style and convincing denouement. Hard Times was seen as a great moral fable that captured the writer’s moral vision.

LIFE OF FACTS
“I want facts sir! What I want is facts, sir!” the teacher’s voice booms in chapter one. It is a classroom scene where only the voice of the teacher echoes. The one word that comes out of the lesson is ‘facts’ and next ‘reason.’ The voice of the teacher is imperial and authoritative. Dickens is ironic here. He presents the school as a model school in which Bitzer is the best student defining a horse clinically and dispassionately. There is no heart or creativity in education, just dry scientific facts.

INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
Dickens was born in 1812 and was a product of the Industrial Revolution, a revolution that saw the rise of factories in England between 1770 and 1840. Dickens was rather poor, had no proper education and worked in a blacking factory. All this made him unhappy. He worked hard to educate himself and write novels to make a decent living. Dickens, like Gradgrind, had no time for idle fancy.

COKETOWN
The people of Coketown have no life at all, as people of Great Expectations do. We feel that characters in Hard Times have no energy at all. Dickens knew London better than Coketown but he could still bring out the listlessness of the townsfolk in Coketown. Dickens shows the dehumanizing aspects of industrialization in urban Victorian society but does not show details of the environment. English factories were destroying the bucolic landscape and the economic power that was arising from them was changing the social order making some wealthy while leaving others rather poor. The soot-coated, black and savage Coketown gives the feeling of repetitiveness, monotony and drudgery. Both its streets and inhabitants have lost their uniqueness and they look alike. The repeated use of the word “same” and the phrase “like one another” reveals both the monotony of Coketown and the drudgery of its inhabitants. Everything in the redbrick Coketown is “severely workful” and the idea of sameness extends to the eighteen churches of different “religious persuasions,” the jail, infirmary, town hall, school and cemetery. The blasting furnaces of Coketown make it hot as hell; the gas-filled air makes people feel asphyxiated.

SOCIAL CRITICISM
Social criticism saw the novel as a novel of “passionate revolt” where there were no villains or heroes, but only oppressors and victims. And the culprit, if there was one, was industry. Socialists saw the machine as a symbol of oppression when controlled by money-making capitalists. Dickens has lost his good humor. His tone becomes quite serious. Cecilia Jupe and Louisa are serious and suffering characters. Though humble and natural, Sissy is predictably bookish. Louisa is tragic.

THEMATIC BALANCE IN THE NOVEL
The novel ends in a thematic balance. The novel begins with the childhood of the mind and ends with the childhood of the body. Dickens begins the story with reason and hard facts and ends it with fancy and imagination. He believes that both machine and social graces should make life beautiful and worth living. The loss of balance in society was undoubtedly lamentable.

VICTORIAN UTILITARIANISM
Dickens brings out the negative effects of Victorian Utilitarianism are seen in the characters of Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby. The practical utilitarianism of Gradgrind and the egotism of Bounderby destroy the creative spirit and fellow feeling. Utilitarianism was a philosophy based on a minimalist view of man that understood human nature in terms of economic relations alone. Though riddled with self-contradictions it was responsible in some measure for reforms in administration, sanitation and education. Utilitarianism, though inspired by the theory of laissez faire came to represent a streamlined civil service and centralized governance. It was difficult to reconcile the Benthamite idea of general happiness of a political and legal kind with Adam Smith’s self-harmonizing economic principle of laissez-faire (minimum intervention from the law). Dickens seemed to be both a victim and chronicler of such a contradictory response to utilitarianism in Hard Times, both in his treatment of the theme of education and trade unionism.


RESTRUCTURING EDUCATION
Dickens wanted to restructure education and do away with unqualified teachers in schools. He strongly felt the need to provide training to teachers. As such, he introduced Mr. M’Choakumchild, fresh from a training college, accompanied by his wife, about to deliver his first classroom lecture. Though the satire, both in the choice of the name and presentation of character, seems inescapable, M’Choakumchild is after all a representative of a new school ideology. His Scottish-sounding name obviously refers to the importation of trained Scottish teachers in English schools. Obviously M’Choakumchild knows too much in a somewhat conceited way. He bores and confuses his simple-minded but ignorant students. Through M’Choakumchild, Dickens expressed some of the popular criticism against training schools of the time. Dickens wanted training schools to instruct teachers in teaching methodology and develop their intellect, not just impart some erudite scholarship.

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF PARENTS
Hard Times develops the conventional theme of nineteenth century fiction that it was the responsibility of parents to get their sons into a financially rewarding profession and their daughters into a financially secure marriage. Till they got comfortably married, education for women was seen as developing skills to protect themselves against the greedy instincts of men. Gradgrind is no different from a typical Victorian father who has the welfare of his daughter at heart. Though it hurts Dickens’ sensibility, just as it does ours, Gradgrind finds no trouble with the idea of marriage as a financial transaction. He understands that her middle-class daughter needs money to set up an establishment. It is, therefore, commonsense to look for a man of means like Bounderby.

MARRIAGE AND POWER RELATIONS
Tom Gradgrind, more than his father, sees Louisa’s marriage to Bounderby as strengthening of “power relationships” between the two families apart from providing a good financial deal to his sister. Tom employs a mercenary approach. He views matrimonial alliance as economic advantage or exploitation. And he is not wrong in doing so.

POSTCOLONIAL CRITICISM
Edward W. Said in his book Culture and Imperialism argues that the English novel in the nineteenth century continues the narrative of a stable British empire and its imperial policy. The novelist, insofar as he believes in the general idea of free trade, sees outlying colonies available for convenient use in developing themes of “immigration, fortune, or exile.” It is only later that the Empire becomes the main subject in writers such as Kipling, Haggard, Doyle and Conrad. Fictional discourse about the Empire is also accompanied by discourses in ethnography, administration, economics and historiography. Furthermore, belief in liberal individualism and free trade were hard to reconcile with the maintenance of a vast colonial empire overseas. In Hard Times Dickens is alive to the debate of unionism, utilitarian education and worker’s predicament. Apparently the novel reveals the inherent tensions, ideological conflict and the muddled intellectual position of the author.

DECONSTRUCTIVE CRITICISM
The conflict between facts and imagination is also played out along ideological lines. The opposing values of utilitarianism in schools and traditional humanism of the circus are played between utilitarians and emotivists. Gradgrind employs metaphorical language to control others. He believes in equivalencies while the circus folks see language as dialogue to empower others. A tension exists between metaphorical language of domination and broken language of dialogue.

NEW HISTORICISM
New Historicists, such as Catherine Gallagher, situate the text in the English industrial society and analyze Dickens’ attempt to suggest social cohesion through an intricate process of linking cooperative family life to competitive public life. Dickens attacks the unhealthy link between money and morality. And yet his novels reveal the unwillingness of the family to participate in larger social issues of the day. Dickens’ withdrawal into middle-class family values of self-discipline, responsibility, domesticity, self-sacrifice and dedication seemed at times to work against the idea of individual freedom. Critics have pointed out this lapse in Dickens’ writing, and, more seriously, have condemned him for his lack of enthusiasm at resolving his own ambiguous position vis-à-vis these issues.

FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM
The single hard fact about Hard Times is that it is a male-dominated and patriarchal novel. Obviously, this gives rise to the issue of gender and opens up related issues of,

A. the way Victorian society was constituted,
B. the way people saw themselves and constructed the other, and
C. the way sexual politics controlled women in private and public life.

Dickens explores feminine discourses such as female affection and sympathy much to the chagrin of his male-dominated critics such as George Henry Lewes (George Eliot’s companion). Dickens reveals a linguistic structure that attempts to control literature and more especially the entry of women in public life. Dickens also challenges the power structure of male-dominated Victorian society by presenting the world through female terms and conditions. Though speaking as a male and from the outside, Dickens speaks against the controllers of power thereby enhancing his position as a novelist. Feminist literary criticism, originating in the 1960’s out of the feminist movement demanding equal rights for woman, had gained strength and popularity in subsequent decades. It presupposed that, by and large, most cultures tend to be patriarchal if not outright misogynist. Feminist critics commonly agreed that concepts of gender tend to determine aspects of masculinity and femininity in any given culture. Therefore, unlike human sex, which is anatomical or biological, concept of gender has a social construction. They tended to agree with Simone de Beauvoir that “One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman.”