Hard Times by Charles Dickens offers a broadside against the inhumanity of England’s rapid industrialization in the middle of the 19th century. The setting is Coketown, where everything is grimy and black, chimneys spew clouds of smoke, working people are reduced to “Hands”, and those with means are proud of their accomplishments and indifferent to the brutal lives of those beneath their social standing.
Thomas Gradgrind is an educator and MP whose philosophy of life depends only on the accumulation of facts and their use in everyday decision-making. His friend Josiah Bounderby is the “self-made man”, a banker who seizes every opportunity to boast about his up-from-the-gutter achievements in life—a boast which, in the course of the novel, is shown to be false. Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby’s charge, is an erstwhile aristocrat fallen on hard times whose busybody ways will create three crises as the story unfolds.
Gradgrind’s son Tom is a clinging incompetent, who, as he matures becomes increasingly pathetic and given to gambling. Gradgrind’s daughter Louisa is the perfect student and child who does whatever her father teaches by his “philosophy”, even to the point of marrying the ghastly Bounderby.
The “hard times” of this story weigh on the reader throughout the book. People working themselves to weariness and death, attracted by the idea of a union but unable to realize the promise of it. Their private lives are of no concern to the Bounderbys and Gradgrinds of Coketown.
But the real theme of Hard Times is the hardness of heart which comes with uncaring industrialism, misguided education, and the pursuit of riches. Only late in the novel, after a crisis in Louisa’s life and the death of an innocent “Hand”, does Gradgrind realize the folly of his philos-ophy and begin to acquire a true heart. This comes out toward his daughter, whom he cherishes and shelters, as well as his son, Tom, whom he helps to escape the justice threatened by Bounderby for a robbery at his bank.
The book begins and ends in the context of a traveling circus, where, at the end, the owner of the circus, Mr. Sleary, explains the lesson of love learned from the loyalty of a dog. We may all be merely dogs when times are hard, but we must not excuse any hardness of heart nor allow it to keep us from loving others.Hard Times is beautifully and powerfully written. Dicken’s is especially good at dialog in this book. He brings out all the characters so that each is unique—especially Louisa, her adopted sister, Sissy, Rachel, and Stephen Blackpool a falsely accused “Hand” and tragic figure.
Dickens challenges readers to examine themselves. Are we contributing to the hard times of others by our hardness of heart or our misguided view of life?