Hard Times
Revision
Charles Dickens
1812-1870
Serialization
• Weekly in ‘Household Words’ to include
‘the light of Fancy which is inherent in the
human breast.’
• ‘ a mere two penny journal, was to be
found on every table and in every room, in
the palace and the cottage.’ Percy
Fitzgerald.
Household Words
• Whilst Hard Times was the weekly serial, the
magazine contained articles on divorce,
industrialisation, the circus, education political
economy etc.
• The effect was to blur the difference between the
fiction of Hard Times and the journalistic pieces.
Also when Hard Times was all fact- Stephen and
the trade union section, Dickens put in articles on
the circus.
School
• The teachers at the school are Mr and Mrs
M’Choakumchild – not Mr Gradgrind; he is
a business man visiting the school to which
he is apparently the patron.
• The children at the school are all
numbered – based on a famous school in
Manchester.
• We meet Sissy and Bitzer here.
Context
• Set in 1854 at the height of the Industrial
Revolution
• Urbanisation
• Poverty, poor sanitary conditions, disease e.g.
cholera, typhoid, smallpox, long working hours,
dangerous working conditions- One newborn
child in six died, and half the children which
survived died of whooping cough or diphtheria in
Manchester in 1840.
Context
Society had changed from where the home
was a site of production by woman (food,
clothes etc). In the nineteenth century it
became a site of consumption alone.
Working class women were forced to work
outside the home to support their families
which created terrible pressures on
mothers.
Context
• Dedicated to Thomas Carlyle, author of
The French Revolution
• Carlyle thought industrialisation was
dehumanising the working classes.
• Like Dickens, he was anti-industrial
because he disapproved of its effect in
social levelling.
Utilitarianism
• Jeremy Bentham (ethical hedonist) greatest
good for the greatest number
• Felicific calculus-algorithm for calculating the
degree or amount of pleasure that a specific
action is likely to cause.
• Gradgrind is the voice of this political philosophy
– Carlyle called them ‘steam engine intellects’.
• Dickens’ target is the utilitarianism of John Stuart
Mill, Political Economy (1849)-Most influential
economics book of the Victorian Period
Dickens’ Attack on
Utilitarianism
• Dickens attacks the use of statistics and
enquiries to determine policy.
• Dickens’ attack is surprising in that ‘we are
invited to also condemn the kind of thinking
and the methods of enquiry and legislation
which in fact promoted a large measure of
social and industrial reform.’ Raymond
Williams (Cambridge University)
Dickens’ attack
• So his attack on industrialisation and
utilitarianism is not simply about reform, it’s
about ‘individual persons against the
system.’ Williams.
• His philosophy is put into the mouth of
Sleary, ‘ People can’t alwath be a learning
or a working.. They must be amused.’
Themes
Industrialisation vs. nature
Utilitarianism and the working of Parliament
Fact vs fancy
Education
The self made man
Women
Families
Money and Commerce
Dickens’ philosophy
• He uses Sissy Jupe to show his philosophy in
action.
• The schoolroom contrast of Sissy Jupe and
Bitzer is a contrast between the education,
practical but often inarticulate, which is gained by
living and doing, and the education , highly
articulated, which is gained by systemization and
abstraction…The instinctive, unintellectual,
unorganised life is the ground here of genuine
feeling, and of all good relationships.’ Williams.
Dickens’ Style
• Earlier works exaggerated larger than life
characters who do not change – they just
are.
• After Martin Chuzzlewit we see characters
who are changed by circumstance the plot
does not simply move them along it makes
some of them into different people.
Mini-Saga
• Write the plot of Hard Times in no more
than 50 words.
The Mill and the
Bank
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Mr Bounderby
Mrs Pegler
Mrs Sparsit
Lady Scadgers
Gradgrind Family
Mr and Mrs Gradgrind
Louisa
Tom
Adam Smith
Malthus
Jane
Sleary’s Horse-Riding
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Signior Jupe
Sissy
EWB Childers
Master Kidderminster
The Factory
• Stephen Blackpool – a hand
• Rachael – a hand
• Slackbridge-the political agitator and trade
unionist
Assessment
Objectives
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terminology and accurate writing
understanding of text and genre
form, structure, language
other readers’ opinions
context in which texts are written and
understood.
Disraeli
• Later, in 1854, Benjamin Disraeli, Prime
Minister (1874-1880), characterised the
state of relations between Britain’s rich and
poor in his novel Sybil:
‘Two nations: between whom there is no
intercourse and no sympathy; who are as
ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts
and feelings, as if they were dwellers
in..different planets.’
Women
• Maxine Berg-Professor of History,
University of Warwick
Women counted in the high productivity
industries, making up over half of the
workers in the textile industry. Although
most women worked in domestic service,
women could earn higher wages in
factories and be more independent.
John Ruskin
• Whilst a conservative like Carlyle, Ruskin,
too, was against industrialisation and
voiced the opinions that workers were
now worse off than medieval serfs
because ‘they have no pleasure in the
work by which they make their bread
…and feel their souls withering within
them.’
Characterization
• “The emphasis was helped by the
speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts
of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep
the wind from its shining surface, all
covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum
pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse
room for the hard facts stored inside.”
(Hard Times, Chapter One)
• “The emphasis was helped by the
speaker’s mouth which was wide, thin and
hard set. The emphasis was helped by the
speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry,
and dictatorial.”
Some Devices
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Repetition
Exaggeration
Physiognomy
Simile and metaphor
Tricolon
Syntactic paralleling
Synecdoche (part for the whole) ‘hands’
Dialogue
Some characters more
real than others?
• Louisa
• Gradgrind
• Tom
‘Flat’ Characters
• Mrs Gradgrind
• Mrs Sparsit
• Mrs Blackpool
Characters as
vehicles for ideas
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Stephen – the Hand
Gradgrind-the Utilitarian
Sleary – to voice Dickens’ philosophy
Bounderby – the myth of self made man
Louisa – the victim of education without the
wisdom of the heart
• Sissy – loving, imaginative
Setting
• Coketown based on Preston/ Manchester but it is
a construct a vehicle for ideas just as the
characters are.
• We meet very few Hands – we never get a feel
for what it is they make or how they live. Dickens
relies heavily on authorial comment and symbol
to express the poor working conditions e.g. the
black ladder, the serpents of smoke etc. Also,
Bounderby’s workforce would be about 40% - we
never get any idea of this.
Coketown
• Why does Dickens make Coketown exotic
with the elephants and the painted face of
a savage? Is it simply that the can’t resist?
What is the effect on you the reader?
Horse - riding
• Outside of the world of Coketown it is set
up as Other. Untidy domestic
arrangements, dysfunctional family which
is the only ‘family’ in Hard Times capable
of loving kindness.
Narrative voice
• Third person omniscient narrator
• However, the viewpoint of that voice shifts
from neutral description,' The clashing and
banging band attached to the horse-riding
…was in full bray.’
• To intrusive, ‘let us strike the key again
before pursuing the tune.’
Narrative Voice
• To taking on the opinions of characters in
the novel, ‘Stephen made a bow. Not a
servile one - these Hands will never do
that.
Irony - don’t get
caught out
• I entertain the weak idea that the English
worker is one of the hardest working in the
world. (paraphrase)
Finally…
• Look on Portal for this PowerPoint and
past questions
• Look on www.victorianweb.org