Review on "Hard Times" by Charles Dickens. Review on Hard Times - Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens is one of the most well known of all Victorian writers. His work strikes fear in the hearts of students because of his reputation for writing slow-paced novels in archaic language. However, if students are given a choice of Dickens novels, Hard Times(1854) would be a great choice for writing a review on. Because it was written for serial publication, the chapters are short and the pace is fairly rapid. This is one of the most uplifting of Dickens’s novels. This book is certainly different from all the other books by Charles Dickens as it has no particular central character. Well all the other novels by Dickens have a strong connection with London but this story depicts Coketown and Coketown only, a typical red-brick industrial city of the north.

Hard Times is a very tragic and wonderfully described story of human oppression. Perhaps one of the main reasons Hard Times by Charles Dickens is so good is that it sticks to one central plot with a few well-chosen subplots rather than multiple complicated sub-plots. The main plot is the story of Thomas Gradgrind and his family. All the secondary plots in Hard Times feed into this main story, and either support Facts and the business of Mr. Bounderby or undermine Facts and lead to the redemption of the Gradgrind family. The end of the novel finds the Gradgrind family living a life that includes simplicity and Fancy. The problem of the education of the poor, and of children particularly, engaged his attention.

Along with its focus on the evils of the industrial system, education is a major theme of Hard Times. Hard Times sold well, significantly boosting the circulation of the weekly magazine (founded and edited by Dickens himself), in which it first appeared. The critical reception was mixed. Dickens’ accounts of industrial life and his satirical treatment of political economists were attacked by critics with a stake in the debate; the popular journalist and adherent of laissez-faire economics Harriet Martineau. The city 'Coketown' is so prevalent an image in the novel that it almost becomes a character. It draws on the experience that Dickens had on visits to Manchester and Preston (Northern English Industrial centres) where he was moved by what he saw. His description of Coketow is a mixture of the reality of life in an industrial city in Northern England. The novel centers around the Gradgrind family and some of their friends (and not-so-friends).

The children are raised adhering to facts while living in a society that worships the machines their town runs on. Their father dismisses anything fanciful and imaginative. As the novel progresses, relationships are made and broken, and the characters come to the realization that there is much more to life than just the facts. MY VIEWS The book Hard Times starts with the description of the fictitious industrial town, Coketown, as a place strewn with machines, puffing chimneys fixed everywhere as far as your eyes can see, buildings seemed to be alike, rivers polluted with chemicals and waste released by the industries which was set up all over the place due to the coming up of industrial revolution. Though they were paid low wages they worked longer hours for the entrepreneurs as job vacancy was less. Workers working in these industries were succumbed to the working sector only. The workers seem to be the hand tools of the machines. In other words the machines had dominated the town. These workers had no identity other than TOOLS of the machines. Dickens aimed the arrow of criticism not just on the greed of capitalists but also the ideas that reduced human beings into simpler instruments of production. Well this is a wonderfully described plot. The ending is neither happy nor very sad. It points out the social backdrops of the then times, where harsh regimes were enforced by the likes of Josiah Bounderby, the pompous self-made man and Mr.Gradgrind, the censorious disciplinarian. Well the tragic lives of Stephen, Rachael, Louisa and even Sissy are described very well. This book is a must-read for all according to me.

I have heard that in some debating clubs there is a rule that the members may discuss anything except religion and politics. I cannot imagine what they do discuss; but it is quite evident that they have ruled out the only two subjects which are either important or amusing. The thing is a part of a certain modern tendency to avoid things because they lead to warmth; whereas, obviously, we ought, even in a social sense, to seek those things specially. The warmth of the discussion is as much a part of hospitality as the warmth of the fire. And it is singularly suggestive that in English literature the two things have died together. The very people who would blame Dickens for his sentimental hospitality are the very people who would also blame him for his narrow political conviction. The very people who would mock him for his narrow radicalism are those who would mock him for his broad fireside. Real conviction and real charity are much nearer than people suppose. Dickens was capable of loving all men; but he refused to love all opinions.

The modern humanitarian can love all opinions, but he cannot love all men; he seems, sometimes, in the ecstasy of his humanitarianism, even to hate them all. He can love all opinions, including the opinion that men are unlovable.