GENIAL DECK

HARD TIMESCharles Dickens

Charles Dickens

• Charles Dickens was born at Portsmouth on 7 february 1812.
• In 1815, when he was 3 years old, his family moved to London and later in Chatham, Kent. Here he receives his first education.
• He had an unhappy childhood since Jhon Dickens, his father, went to prison for debts and Charles had to work in a factory at the age of twelve. During this days of suffering he found the inspiration for the plots of his stories.
• Most of his life is told in his 3 autobiographical works: Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Dorrit. Their protagonist became the symbols of a dark and bitter childhood spent in factories.
• Other work includes Bleak House, Hard times and Great Expectations, dealing with social issues, such as the conditions of the poor and the working class.
• Another important topic is his criticism of the top role of money in the Victorian materialistic society.
• He had a busy life as a magazine editor.
• He spent years of travelling round griving readings of his own work.
• Dickens attacks one or more social evils: debtor's prisons, workhouse, repressive education and conformism masked by religion and justice.

Characters

First book: SOWING

Third book: GARNERING

Second book: REAPING

Thomas Gradgrind

James Harthouse

Lady Pegler

Lady Sparsit

Bitzer

Louisa and Tom Grandgrind

Cecilia Jupe (Sissy)

Slearly

Josiah Buonderby

Stephen Blackpool

• Hard Times is set in Coketown (coal town), a fictional place named for its gray appearance. Here lives Thomas Gradgrind whose life is centered on rationalist philosophy. Father of five children, he raises the two eldest, Louisa and Tom according to this rigid lifestyle that leaves no room for imagination. He establishes a school which is also attended by Cecilia (Sissy) Jupe, daughter of Slearly.
• Gradgrind, one day, sees Louisa and Tom while spying inside the circus: after having taken them away in a fit of rage, he heads with his friend Josiah Bounderby towards the Slearly inn with the intention of speaking with him and report that Sissy can no longer attend his school as she negatively influences the behavior of the other pupils with her strange ideas.
• On the way to the inn, they come across Sissy, who accompanies them, but, not finding her father at home, she runs to look for him towards the circus.
• Meanwhile, two Slearly's artists inform Gradgrind and Bounderby that Sissy's father has abandoned her in the belief that his daughter would have a better life without him; so Gradgrind informs Sissy that if she wants to stay in school she must leave the circus and she accepts.
• At the same time Gradgrind's two sons confront each other about how unhappy and dissatisfied they are.
• In the tenth chapter Dickens opens a digression on factory workers, called "the hands": the tale focuses on the story of Stephen Blackpool. A worker married to an alcoholic who returned one day after running away. The next day Stephen asks Bounderby (Gradgrind's friend) how to end his marriage so he can marry Rachael, a factory worker. Blackpool tells him that annulling the wedding is impossible as the procedure is expensive for a workman.
• The story come back to Gradgrind's and first book ends with Gradgrind asking Louisa to marry Bounderby. The man does not understand the feelings of his daughter, increasingly disconnected and apathetic, so much so that she accepts the proposal.

PLOT: sowing

• The events narrated in the second part of "hard times", take place two years after the wedding of Bounderby and Louisa.
• Mr James Harthouse sends Bounderby a letter of introduction, written to him by Tom Gradgrind, who has become a Member of Parliament. Bounderby meets the man and invites him to dinner and it is here that Harthouse notices the melancholy Louisa.
• Tom also arrives at his brother-in-law's house and takes a liking to Harthouse.
• Stephen Blackpool, who works at the Bounderby factory, during a union meeting, is isolated from the other workers for his different ideas and is then sacked.
• That same night, Louisa and Tom sneak to Blackpool's house to help him: Louisa offers them money.
• Two days later the bank is robbed and the prime suspect is Stephen Blackpool.
• Mrs. Sparsit notices the closeness of Harthouse and Louisa and decides to find out if the two are having an affair.
• The second book of Hard Times closes with Louisa going to her father to blame him for her current depression caused by her unhappy childhood.

PLOT: reaping

• Bounderby informed of the relationship between Louisa and Harthouse decides to join his wife. Although Gradgrind tries to calm him down, he gives Louisa an ultimatum: if she wants to save the marriage, she will have to return to him at twelve o'clock the following day.
• The story between the two ends and James leave Coketown.
• The story continues with Sparsit who takes Mrs Pegler to the Bounderby house convinced she is Stephen Blackpool's accomplice in the robbery. Pegler reveals that she is Bounderby's mother, humiliating him in public.
• Stephen Blackpool, who in the meantime had left Coketown to look for a job under an assumed name, on his way back to the city falls into a well and is found by Sissy and Rachael.
• On his deathbed he asks Gradgrind to clear him of the theft, removing suspicions about him and moving them towards his two eldest sons.
• Tom, who meanwhile is hiding at the circus of Slearly in another city confesses to the robbery. The man manages to escape from Bitzer who wants to report him to obtain the bounty on the robber.
• Bounderby, after losing his fortune dies following a heart attack, Tom dies in remorse, Louisa, while she grows old without ever remarrying and Gradgrind abandons his ideas.
• The only happy ending is Sissy who has children of her own and leads a happy life.

PLOT: garnering

meaning

Hard Times analyzes the differences between rich and poor who have to work hard for very little wages; characters are used to highlight this difference by criticizing materialism. Dickens' goal is to make clear that the 1800s transformed the men in machines forgetting their emotions, to the point of treating the worker just like a machine.

Structure and language

Problema

Hard times is divided into 3 books, which are themselves divided into chapters. The style used is characterized by:

third person narration

use of irony

omniscent narrator

especially in description of the characters.

Message delivered

Dickens is not satisfied by industrialization, which he considers a retrograde step because of the destruction of environment thai it brings. In this novel Dickens describes Coketown, an imaginary industrial town. He accuses 1. Social and economical system 2. Factory owners 3. The mentality: in fact the Victorians were proud of industrialization’s effects and they were satisfied by their progress

Hard Times moral is to show the danger to treat men like machines by arguing that without imagination life is unbearable

His way of doing and his vision of the world inflect the utilitarian logic that governs English society in this phase of industrial change.

Thomas is the father of 5 children, but only raises the two eldest following the rigid lifestyle of rationalist philosophy, and on the basis of it he founds a school.

Louisa and Tom represents the negative consequences of the rigorous way in which Gradarind applies rationality to life and to the people around him. In fact, Louisa's life crashes just when she completely abandons the fantasy to which she had managed to remain linked also thanks to Cecilia.

She is a widow who took care of the Bounderby household

Bitzer is one of the successes produced by Gradgrind’s rationalistic system of education. Initially a bully at Gradgrind’s school, Bitzer later becomes an employee and a spy at Bounderby’s bank.

Buonderby, among the characters in Hard Times, is the most negative one. Through him, Dickens, attacks the rich and their utilitarian mentality and therefore to pay little attention to people's feelings and their living conditions, a widespread problem in the industrial society of which the author speaks.

She is Buonderby's mother,unbeknownst as such to all except herself and Bounderby. Mrs. Pegler makes an annual visit to Coketown in order to admire her son's prosperity from a safe distance. Mrs. Pegler's appearance uncovers the hoax that her son Bounderby has been attesting throughout the story, which is that he is a self-made man who was abandoned as a child.

Blackpool is humble and honest worker, the positive values ​​he embodies manage to give him justice only at the end of Hard Times, shortly before his death

A sophisticated and manipulative young London gentleman who comes to Coketown to enter politics.

In his constant search for a new form of amusement, Harthouse quickly becomes attracted to Louisa and resolves to seduce her.

This character represents one of the main messages of Hard Times: imagination and creativity prevail over rationality and rigor. Sissy in fact personifies the imagination, thanks to which she manages to solve problems and go beyond the cold reality.

He is Cecilia's father, a horse tamer and circus veterinarian, who therefore lives in a very different environment from Gradgrid's ideal one