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"HARD TIMES."

Discusses novel's social message; labor, inter-class tensions, setting, characters.

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Charles Dickens' Hard Times is a novel with a social message which the author brings to life through character and setting. Dickens was a social reformer who was particularly concerned about the plight of the poor, prison conditions, and the changes taking place in working conditions in his time. The Industrial Revolution had altered Britain and altered the relationship between workers and their work. The town depicted by Dickens, Coketown, is a representation of the sort of world that was coming into being because the Industrial Revolution centered entirely on promoting the economy through increased profits while ignoring the human element that makes the whole thing operate. Coketown is an example of what results when society ignores the consequences of change--it is a dark and dirty place where ignorance prevails and any human happiness is

By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder" (4 ). When Louisa, hisdaughter, was younger, she had started a conversation with her brother bysaying to him, "I wonder," and her father had interrupted: "Louisa, neverwonder!" Dickens comments: Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. In Coketown, the owners think only in terms of adding andsubtracting, profit and loss. The samenessof the brick on the buildings is carried through in others ways so that theobserver cannot tell from the outside what function a building serves,whether it is a school or a jail or an infirmary. The use of the word "savage" shows thatDickens sees places like Coketown as throwbacks to a less civilized age.The description also speaks to our own age and shows that Dickens found inthe industrialized city problems we encounter today, problems withpollution and dehumanization. In this novel, social class is important, as it was in England in thelast century, and class is used as a defining issue to determine not justwhat place people occupy now but what possibilities are and are not open tothem. It had a black canal in it, anda river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildingfull of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long,and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down,like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness" (18). The brutal lives of the workers are contrasted with the livesof aristocrats such as Mrs. Sparsit, a pretentious woman with nounderstanding at all of the realities of life outside her protected socialclass. London: Macmillan Education, 1983. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. The society pictured by Dickens in this novel is a society that isstrangling itself in pollution, inter-class tensions, and greed. Bounderby represents the newly-emerged industrialist class, and theportrait of him is especially harsh, for he is cruel, pompous, and selfish,as well as self-centered. Charles Dickens' Hard Times is a novel with a social message whichthe author brings to life through character and setting. Coketown is a "town of machinery and tallchimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselvesfor ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. Dickens uses the setting of Coketown as an ever-present backgroundfor the action, and always the characters are seen as affected by living inthis milieu. Dickens describes the region: "It was a town of red brick, orof brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it;but, as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like thepainted face of a savage" (17-18). The members of the upper class,such as the industrialists in the novel, have a different view, seeing theworking class as an exploitable mass that is necessary and that has to bemaintained for the support of industry. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them (1).Gradgrind raises his own children with the same attitude. The head of the school is Mr. Gradgrind, and he has particularantipathy toward anything that he believes excites the imagination. Dickens was asocial reformer who was particularly concerned about the plight of thepoor, prison conditions, and the changes taking place in working conditionsin his time. Members of the working class are members of the working classforever for the most part, though Dickens shows the belief that thissituation could be changed with education. Work CitedDickens, Charles, Hard Times. Thenovel speaks to America today, a place that has shown more compassion forthe working class but that still has labor tensions that need to beaddressed and alleviated for the benefit of all. Never wonder. He is tolerated by the upper classes because he has money, but heis vindictive toward them and takes this out on Mrs. Sparsit in a sadisticway. He represents those who maintain the system andwho profit from it. He has no incentive to change the conditions of theworkers and no will of his own to do so, for he cares only for what he canget out of them in the way of work and not at all for their problems orlives. The Industrial Revolution had altered Britain and altered therelationship between workers and their work. Dickens is not calling in this novelfor the elimination of industry but for cleaning it up so that Coketownwould be a very different sort of place. The town depicted by Dickens,Coketown, is a representation of the sort of world that was coming intobeing because the Industrial Revolution centered entirely on promoting theeconomy through increased profits while ignoring the human element thatmakes the whole thing operate. Facts alone are wanted in life. Thestreets are seen as all the same, and the people were all alike as well.Every years is the same as the last, and life never changes. He is thus at odds with both the upper and lower classes even thoughboth are to a degree dependent upon him. The workers have leaders who also showlittle understanding and whoa re willing to look out for themselves first.Stephen Blackpool is a worker who could be a great leader under othercircumstances, but in this society, he has little chance of showing histrue worth. Coketownis only one town, but it is representative of the economic structure ofEngland at the time and shows how the Industrial Revolution had left in itswake a changed system that benefited a few and enslaved the many. Coketown is an example of what results whensociety ignores the consequences of change--it is a dark and dirty placewhere ignorance prevails and any human happiness is stamped out by thesheer sameness of the surroundings. The image Dickens creates of education in England at the time is oneshowing that it has been structured to keep the lower class in its place,offering only as much as knowledge as the worker needs to do his job and nomore. He isdescribed as a man of realities, a man of fact and calculation, and hestarts the novel with a call for facts and noting but facts: Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts.

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