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3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
funny
hopeful
reflective
sad
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Just how hard were "Hard Times" compared to, say, today. In Dickens novel, factories in the Midlands of England belched hot, black smoke from their furnaces. Employees were just so many "hands." Capital was expanding the workforce in cities, and the countryside was being depopulated by weak grain prices and the growing opportunities in the cities.
If anything, industrial England was a place of hope. And the 19th century saw an incredible expansion of knowledge about the natural world.
While the smokestack industries may have left us much as they have left England, technology and innovation offer us tremendous hope as well. Knowledge is exploding today very much as it was a century and a half ago. Yet the urbanization continues on a scale that is now global, forging cities as large as counties in China and Africa.
For people in today's cities life can be many times as hard as it was in those Dickensian times.
What Charles Dickens found hard about those times were the hearts of capitalists, the cold steel machinery, the workplace, and what was left for the poor at the end of the day.
Thomas Gradgrind, Dickens protagonist in this novel, runs a school for children (including his own) to stuff them full of facts. No room for wonder. No room for mystery or the imagination. He sets in motion the merciless engines of fate that will consume the happiness of his children.
Today the times for the middle class are no harder than they were in Dickens' times. If anything the modernization of medicine and nutrition, the modernization of the workplace and public insurance makes life longer, safer, and less contingent.
If anything, industrial England was a place of hope. And the 19th century saw an incredible expansion of knowledge about the natural world.
While the smokestack industries may have left us much as they have left England, technology and innovation offer us tremendous hope as well. Knowledge is exploding today very much as it was a century and a half ago. Yet the urbanization continues on a scale that is now global, forging cities as large as counties in China and Africa.
For people in today's cities life can be many times as hard as it was in those Dickensian times.
What Charles Dickens found hard about those times were the hearts of capitalists, the cold steel machinery, the workplace, and what was left for the poor at the end of the day.
Thomas Gradgrind, Dickens protagonist in this novel, runs a school for children (including his own) to stuff them full of facts. No room for wonder. No room for mystery or the imagination. He sets in motion the merciless engines of fate that will consume the happiness of his children.
Today the times for the middle class are no harder than they were in Dickens' times. If anything the modernization of medicine and nutrition, the modernization of the workplace and public insurance makes life longer, safer, and less contingent.
2016 review:
I really enjoyed reading this book, which only partly expected. I have owned 19 of Dickens' novels for a few years, but I've never actually read (mostly because the editions I own are over 100 years old and I'm afraid of damaging them). I know, I know, I should have read them before. This is therefore the first novel I actually read (of Dickens) and I must say it has made me all the more anxious to read his other novels as well (especially Tale of Two Cities, which TMI/TID fans will understand).
I feel like this story shows how Dickens is trying to tell his audience not to let society and other things destroy their imagination. At the ending of the book he states: "ever careful that they should have a childhood of the mind no less than a childhood of the body, as knowing it to be even a more beautiful thing." (p. 327). This supports how I feel about this book. Truly can't wait to read his other works.
I really enjoyed reading this book, which only partly expected. I have owned 19 of Dickens' novels for a few years, but I've never actually read (mostly because the editions I own are over 100 years old and I'm afraid of damaging them). I know, I know, I should have read them before. This is therefore the first novel I actually read (of Dickens) and I must say it has made me all the more anxious to read his other novels as well (especially Tale of Two Cities, which TMI/TID fans will understand).
I feel like this story shows how Dickens is trying to tell his audience not to let society and other things destroy their imagination. At the ending of the book he states: "ever careful that they should have a childhood of the mind no less than a childhood of the body, as knowing it to be even a more beautiful thing." (p. 327). This supports how I feel about this book. Truly can't wait to read his other works.
Read for: Victorian Novel
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challenging
dark
emotional
funny
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
A flawed work by Dickens' standards, with plenty of contrivance and obvious artifice. Still, an engrossing picture of regional, industrial revolution Britain, and a familiar nineteenth century vehicle of a novel detailing a family's travails. Also includes a limp whodunnit.
reflective
sad
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
N/A