After my recent re-read of Great Expectations I found myself still hungry for more Dickens and this was the one I chose. It was another re-read, and I also saw a rather good adaptation of it at Theatre Clywd in Wales a few years ago. It happens to be Dickens' shortest completed novel, at only 104, 821 words (you can see all the word lengths here on normblog), so less than a third of the size of most of the others, though that's not why I chose it. It was also the last he finished before his rather shockingly early death. I haven't been reading the biographies though everyone seems to be raving about the latest one by Tomalin, so I can't make any wise remarks on his state of mind at the time, but it did strike me as a deeply tragic novel, with very few, if any, of the splashes of comedy that you find in many of the earlier works.
Hard Times is set in the industrial north of England, in a city Dickens calls Coketown. Wikipedia thinks it is based on Preston, though I've heard Bolton also suggested. Whatever -- it is in fact the only one of Dickens' novels not to be set in London. The point of the setting is to allow Dickens to address the very poor working conditions in the northern factories, and the shockingly uncaring attitude of the capitalist factory owners, who treat their workers appallingly and deal with any attempt to protest as a sign that they want 'to feast on turtle soup and venison, served with a golden spoon'. The bosses come off very badly here as uncaring and morally corrupt, but the unions are portrayed as equally unpleasant and blinkered.
The cast of characters is small -- very much so for Dickens -- and centres around the family of Thomas Gradgrind who, at the start of the novel, is the local schoolmaster. Gradgrind's system, which he imposes on his own children as well as those in the school, is one of pure reason. Facts are Gradgrind's obsession -- 'Now what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of service to them' -- and he firmly suppresses any sign of imagination or the life of the heart. This quotation is how the novel begins, and the rest of the story demonstrates the terrible wrongness of Gradgrind's view and its disastrous effect on his two eldest children, Louisa and Tom. Tom is living proof that his father is mistaken in his belief that Facts will instill a moral sense, and turns very much to the bad, while beautiful Louisa, deeply emotionally confused, obeys her father's wishes and marries the appalling banker Bounderby. Many years her senior, Bounderby is fond of describing his dreadful childhood, his drunken grandmother and his desertion by his mother -- happily, towards the end of the novel, he will be confounded and proved to be a liar. Bounderby's housekeeper, Mrs Sparsit, is a wonderful character -- well born and proud of it, she has slipped down the social scale but has ambitions to marry Bounderby who she nevertheless despises as a 'noodle'. She makes Louisa's life miserable, and takes great delight in always referring to her as Miss Gradgrind, but her attempts to bring her disgrace backfire is a very satisfactory way (for the reader, but definitely not for Mrs S.)
These are the bosses, but the workers also have a part to play. Central to this is the story of Stephen Blackpool, a factory hand. Married at a young age to a woman who turned to drink and makes his life a misery, Stephen is devoted to beautiful, calm Rachel, but cannot marry her because his lack of money makes divorce an impossibility. Stephen must be one of the most unlucky and put-upon characters in English literature -- ostracised by his fellow workers because he refuses to join in a strike, falsely accused of a theft at the bank, he is no sooner on the brink of being vindicated when he falls down a disused mineshaft and dies of his injuries. I literally sobbed the other night when I was reading the account of his death, just as I had when I saw it in the theatre, much to the embarrassment of my teenage son.
This is a novel with very little in the way of a happy ending. Louisa escapes her marriage and returns to her father but will not remarry even after Bounderby's death -- Tom is exiled to America where he dies ignominiously -- Gradgrind sees the folly of his system but also must regret its effect on his children. Only Sissy Jupe, the circus girl adopted by Gradgrind, is allowed a happy marriage and a contented family life. Dickens apparently said he wanted to 'strike the heaviest blow in my power', and you can see what he meant. But for me this is a truly wonderful novel and I loved every minute. Now, what next -- I want still more Dickens but can't decide which. Maybe Dombey and Son, another old favorite?
