Charles Dickens and his Novel: "Hard Times"

Birth of Modern Europe

Mr. Meyers

By Charles Cohen

Introduction

Bio

Hard Times as Journalism

Hard Times as a Novel

INTRODUCTION

We can tell that Hard Times is an allegorical novel both because of the message; one which exposes industrial England's flaws pertaining to the treatment of workers by the factory owners and upper class, and by inspecting the author, Charles Dickens, himself. Hard Times, as a novel, is very close to being simply social commentary, except for the fact that the characters with which we empathize are so real, so understandable that it is difficult to say that the novel is just chit-chat commentary. Many politicians and social reformers wrote political addresses in Parliament between the years 1750-1850 to demand reform. Their efforts remained fruitless for a century probably because their pleas were impersonal and too matter-of-fact. Social reformers also were often unsuccessful because they were talking to the wrong people; Parliament was made up of the aristocracy, a group of people who did not want to hear about the treatment of the lower class. The notion of reform challenged their present social position's morals, and was quickly dismissed as unimportant. In fact, the upper class believed that the lower class were lucky that factory owners were opening up so many jobs for them and allowing them to be employed. Dickens is among those of the middle class who were not responding cheerfully to the effects capitalism was having on the lower classes, primarily because Dickens grew up in a lower class family. What set Dickens apart from other reformers was that he had a gift; a gift to create highly empathetic fiction with a message. In Hard Times Dickens asks the people of England to examine the conditions of the lower class. He uses the power of the novel as a way to get inside peoples' head's, and the effect is to spread a powerful message. His message is weaved into a plot that involves characters to which members of every social class are able to relate. Of course, the best way to argue, successfully, a social message is to make it understandable for many people. With characters of every social class, Dickens could not miss; his target audience was every body. Judges, lawyers, politicians, factory workers, all rushed to get their hands on the latest release of Dickens' work, whether it be Hard Times or The Pickwick Papers or any number of the voluminous writings which Dickens published in his lifetime. Hard Times is a perfect blend of journalism and fiction. It is an important book because it strived to grab the upper classes attention and allowed them to understand the plight of the lower classes.

BIO

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England on February 7, 1812. Son of John and Elizabeth Dickens, he grew up in a very busy household being the second of eight children. His father was imprisoned after he moved his family to London for falling too deeply into debt. This forced Charles to get a job at Warren's Blacking Factory labeling bottles, the place that probably engendered a special sympathy in Dickens for child laborers. In his autobiography Dickens comments on this period of his childhood:

It is wonderful to me how I could have been so easily cast away at such an age. It is wonderful to me, that, even after my descent into the poor little drudge I had been since we came to London, no one had compassion on me - a child of singular abilities, quick, eager, delicate, and soon hurt, bodily or mentally - to suggest that something might have been spared, as certainly it might have been, to place me at any common school. Our friends, I take it, were tired out. No one made any sign. My father and mother were quite satisfied. They could hardly have been more so, if I had been twenty years of age, distinguished at a grammar-school, and going to Cambridge.

After Charles' father was released from prison, he received some money from a relative and Dickens was able to attend school again. From 1824 to 1826, Dickens attended Wellington House Academy. After that Dickens studied shorthand in order to become a newspaper parliamentary reporter. He worked from 1828-1830 in the court of Doctors' Commons. He left the Doctors' Commons and wrote for True Sun, Mirror Parliament, and then The Morning Chronicle newspapers, eventually settling down at the latter-mentioned in 1834. The journalistic side of Dickens' writing was nurtured during his time spent at these newspapers, yet it would be the combination of his skills in this field along with his adeptness at writing fiction that would turn Dickens into one of the most sought after writers ever.

Throughout his carrier as a writer/reporter, Dickens spent a lot of his energy empathizing with the lower and middle classes. In his first published work, Sketches by Boz. Illustrative of Everyday Life and Everyday People (February 7, 1836) Dickens presents himself as a reporter who has a lot of sympathy for the lower classes and a proponent of social justice. This particular theme would dominate most of Dickens' work for the rest of his life.

It is proper to assume that because of Dickens' childhood and social standing he developed a distinct interest in commenting on the social ills of industrial England. He had the gift to touch people of all social classes, even the upper class, who tried desperately not to hear the pleas for change from the lower classes but could not ignore Dickens' captivating tales with messages that touched their hearts. In his novel, Hard Times, Dickens communicates a message that asks his contemporaries to see the error of their ways; basing children's lives solely on fact can procure dreadful repercussions. Specifically, these are the raising of a generation of people who are devoid of compassion for lower class people who must suffer because of it. One can hear Dickens' pleas for social reform quite clearly, but what is most interesting is how he conveys his message through character to which it is easy to relate. His characters cross all social distinction and must have been recognizable by people of all social classes who read this novel. Understandably, anyone who got his or her hands on Dickens' highly coveted material was probably able to associate someone in their lives to a character in the novel.

Hard Times as Journalism

The journalistic aspect of Hard Times hidden under the plot of a novel and is not easily revealed. By examining Dickens' characters though, we can begin to understand exactly what kind of political message Dickens is expressing. Dickens creates characters of every class distinction, allowing all different types of readers to appreciate the dilemma of Industrial England.

Stephen Blackpool is a character to which the lower and middle classes can relate. He has hard luck, and seems to face a new form of it every day. He is a worker in Josiah Bounderby's factory, and like many of the people of the time in England, he is forced to work in horrible conditions. Blackpool is different from most of the workers in England because he refuses to be a part of the workers union. He feels that the union leader, Slackbridge, is an unfair and manipulative person who seeks only personal gain. Dickens creates Stephen Blackpool to expose and exaggerate the suffering, which the lower class people had to endure. It is entirely likely that people of the upper class, after reading about and empathizing with Stephen Blackpool, would feel a desire to change the living standard of the working class. Dickens' Hard Times is journalistic in this aspect by exposing to, and bringing to the attention of, a large number of people the truth about a certain problem. This is similar to what a photojournalist does when he/she exposes the problems in Colombia or the Middle East and publishes it in Time Magazine. Exposing a significant problem in order to spread awareness of that problem is exactly what Dickens does in Hard Times.

Hard Times as a Novel

What makes Hard Times effective as a reactionary piece of literature is that it is a novel. This notion will allow us to understand how the public received his ideas. Hard Times, written late in Dickens' career, was released after he had become a world-renowned novelist. He was the most sought after writer of his time. With each release of his latest work, there was a big stir in London; everybody would be waiting to read what Dickens had concocted next. As a result of this acclaim, Dickens' Hard Times was one of his most widely read works when first released.

Dickens is a writer first and foremost. He creates worlds based on reality and forms them to present his message. We can see in his characterization of Josiah Bounderby and Thomas Gradgrind how Dickens creates empathetical caricatures whose purposes are to both present and exaggerate (because the problems deserve immediate attention) problems with society. The relationship that exists between Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby is strictly business and dedicated to working within the confines of promoting a world based on fact. The reader notices how agreeable the relationship between these two characters is and how they wish to grind out the human-ess of their human resources (Gradgrind with his children, Bounderby with his factory workers). Bounderby eventually marries Gradgrind's daughter Lisa, a gesture of total trust and loyalty on Gradgrind's part. Their relationship seems to be one that will last the rest of their lives until Bounderby finds himself alone after Gradgrind realizes the error of his dedication-to-fact ways.

Dickens argues a larger, more epistemological cause in his novel. He asks the reader to acknowledge what society is doing to the children. Dickens clearly disagrees with the grinding out of the imagination and the implanting of a purely skeptical and fact based education into the children. This is an exaggerated and fantastic notion, but its purpose is to magnify all the ills of society by reflecting them on to what will happen to the children if the people continue to promote this capitalist/industrialist world. This is one way Dickens blends his cause into a novel. The people who read this when it came out would have to empathies with the children and initiate change. He completes his point by having the novel end in the opposite place it started, that is, it starts at the Gradgrind School and ends at the circus. The significance of this is that Louisa and Tom are punished in the beginning of the novel for attending the circus and having urges to wonder. In the end, they are all at the circus; Tom is a thief and a liar, and Louisa's left despising the fact that she cannot wonder. The circus people who agree to smuggle him away from the authorities help Tom Gradgrind. Dickens uses this ironic predicament to show the reader exactly where this lack of imagination, purely fact, way of living leads people. Thomas Gradgrind realizes the error of his ways and Bounderby, who cannot believe that Gradgrind would admit that this is the wrong way to live ends up in the gutter where he said he had started.