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Innocence Lost
Sep 17, 2010 11:05 PM 5582 Views

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I had read a few of Charles Dickens’ works as a child, some of them as abridgments and can barely draw relevant comparisons between those and ‘Hard Times’ the simple reason being a failing memory, which refuses to trace the nuances and key aspects that capture the average child’s understanding. Having read ‘Bleak House’ over ten years ago what I find compelling between the two texts is the attack on systemic evils that pervaded the time.


What Dickens most strikingly draws into focus in ‘Hard Times’ is the total negligence of the Victorian society towards the sustenance of childhood innocence, a subsequent offshoot of attaching too much of significance on propriety and accuracy, which very clearly robs innocence and places an impasse on the natural proclivity to spontaneity, the character of Sissy Jupe being the primary focus. Derided for her lack of sophistication and her attachment to the peculiarities that associate her with her particular station in the social strata, she is forced into a lifestyle, which precludes her from the enjoyment of the ordinary pleasures of life that her hitherto lifestyle had accorded.



The noxious omnipresence of Coketown is a significant character, which looms over and provides as a symbol for the dismal life and existence of the myriad human characters regardless of their station in life. “Even the coming sun made but a pale waste in the sky, like a sad sea.”


Starting out with a minor character, Mrs Sparsit cuts a rather sorry figure. The house she occupies emanates with eeriness, which is palpable to even a visitor (James Harthouse) who qualifies the place as “black” and furthermore tacitly brings to the fore everything that was wrong with the Victorian society. “ In a word, he was so horribly bored by existing circumstances, that he forgot to go in for boredom in the manner prescribed by the authorities.”



Bounderby personifies all the malaise that had depleted the very fabric of the Victorian world. As a character he is quite appaling being devoid of the natural human sympathies of sensitivity and closeness that forge human ties to immeasurable depths. This is rather evident in his discussions with Thomas Gradgrind particularly in relation to the latter’s daughter, Louisa. Gradgrind’s concern for his daughter is scorned by Bounderby as “sentimental humbug.” The latter’s wife, Louisa, the very antithesis to him is detached in almost every possible way. She harbours tacit scorn towards her husband, which triggers off her lack of interest in her surroundings. The apathy and the fact that there’s nothing in her house that marks her presence shadows an appalling loom, which is even more so magnified by the very fact that here’s a woman who is intellectually well-equipped and all her worth is sucked into nothingness by the all-pervasive debilitating influence of the Victorian malaise. Harthouse’s references to Thomas Gradgrind as a “machine”, Tom as a “whelp” and Bounderby as a “bear” only magnify this sense. The only person in whose presence she enlivens is her brother Tom.



Stephen Blackpool emerges as the only glimmer of hope who strives for a better life and an enlightening means to abseil the Victorian scale and set foot on a newer terrain. In spite of having lost his job Blackpool’s love for Rachael and his zest for life keeps him on his toes. “Fortnet or misfortnet, a man can but try; there’s nowt to be done wi’out tryin’ – ’cept laying down and dying.” His love for his lady is the only signifier of remote optimism. As he left Coketown, he could hear whisperings from afar, which seemed to dawn on him the realization “that he left a true and loving heart behind.”



Stephen Blackpool succumbs to his death thus meeting the readers’ worst fears leaving behind a lonesome Rachael solitary. Bounderby on the other hand is castigated by the author to the abyss of repugnance, which is made very obvious in the choice of words “…swelling like an immense soap-bubble, without its beauty.”



Circumstances play key factors, which introduce the element of irony. Gradgrind a foremost proponent of reason in the novel appeals not to it but sentiment when it’s his son’s neck hanging in the balance. His heartfelt appeals to Bitzer in order to exhibit leniency towards Tom when the latter is apprehended in the case of fraud is stark, to say the least.



In summation, “Bleak House” ends on a romantic note but this novel refuses to adopt that delusive path. A flawed society is so right to its very core and there’s no salvation but there’s hope at the horizon, which we all know is nothing beyond mere illusion.




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