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3.33 AVERAGE
3.33 AVERAGE
I’ve been getting into Dickens over the last few years and was excited about a suggestion to read Hard Times the way it was originally published, in weekly instalments. I’m not sure if it’s the way I read it but I reckon even if I’d read it straight through, that Hard Times would easily be the weakest Dickens I have read.
As I’ve been getting into Dickens, one of the qualities that I most enjoy about him is his exuberance. I picture him sitting at his desk and having a delightful time and it’s an enthusiasm and joy that I find transmitted through his novels. Hard Times feels more like work than play. There are still the skills, some characters are memorably delineated, Coketown is clearly evoked, the plot is a bit shonky but more on that in a bit. Part of the problem is the format, Dickens was more likely to write in monthly instalments rather than weekly and it means the book comes out two chapters at a time. If Dickens lets of the reigns and has fun in one chapter, he needs to baldly telegraph the action in the next chapter to keep the book vaguely on track.
The book starts well, in the school of the wonderfully excessively named teacher, Mr M’Choakumchild who is showing off to one of its backers, Mr Gradgrind. The school sees its primary function as filling the children with knowledge and reducing any imaginative or unhelpfully non-factual tendencies in the children.
“Bring to me”, says M'Choakumchild, “yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it shall never wonder.” (‘it’)
In possibly the only really famous scene in the book, the teacher asks one child, Sissy, to define a horse. We find out later that Sissy lives at a circus and knows horses very well bu unable to answer sufficiently, another child called Bitzer gives an answer that is accurate but ultimately contentless and is congratulated for this knowledge. This central conflict between dry fact and more engaging and emotional based learning is something that very much interests me. I’ve been working in a primary school for over ten years and was around for the introduction of the new ‘Gove’ curriculum. This was a huge reform of the curriculum which unironically pivoted to a very similar position as M’Choakumchild, with arbitrary goals such as teaching all five year olds the names of ten trees (and the word deciduous). Unfortunately, we never return to this classroom.
Instead, we follow two of Mr Gradgrind’s children, Louisa and Tom, with Sissy entering as a domestic angel in the last third. I never quite grasped how many children Gradgrind had, though in chapter three there were twins winningly called Adam-Smith and Malthus, who we never met again.
Mr Gradgrind is ruled by the ‘tyranny of facts’ but is actually a rather weak character, in thrall to the odious Mr Bounderby. We know he’s a bad person, he frequently refers to himself in the third person. He’s created a myth around himself that he is in the position of power and influence that he is (he owns textile factories) because of his own hard work. To really emphasise the extent of his self-propelled rise, he finds it necessary to constantly remind those around him of how poor his background is. He disparages Gradgrind’s relatively easy rise, and keeps around a widow of upper class background just so he can remind her of how she’s fallen to be dependent on a former-pauper such as himself. Like many who have convinced themselves that they have risen by hard work, he regards those poorer than him as lazy people deserving of their poverty. Whenever the genuine needs of his workers arises, he dismisses it as them wanting ‘mocha coffee and a silver spoon’, rather like those people who said young people can’t buy houses because they eat too many avocados. He also marries Louisa, despite the fact that he’s thirty years older than him and doesn’t like him. She does it to help her brother Tom.
Tom was an interesting character, often referred to as ‘the whelp’, his education has lead him to view people as tools, so he uses his sister to get Bounderby’s protection without ever seeing the strain on her. He eventually even robs a bank and attempts to frame it on someone else. This bank robbery is one of many almost-plots that aren’t given space to properly grow or pay off.
Stephen Blackpool, is a character in a whole host or rushed and undeveloped plots. One the factory hands and given an unfortunate ‘Northern’ dialect, he’s trapped in a loveless marriage, which Bounderby could help him with but won’t - though that plot doesn’t particularly go anywhere. He’s also trapped between the rabble rousing unionists and the factory owner, with both sides being portrayed as bad as the other - though that plot doesn’t go anywhere either. He’s the man framed for the bank robbery but is robbed of the drama of unfair imprisonment by falling down an abandoned mine-shaft. His last words berate the conditions for miners, though he was never one and it’s never brought up again.
The sensation is that Dickens is throwing bits of plot about, hoping something sticks. The most interesting character is probably Mrs Sparsit, the widow kept by Mr Bounderby. She both hates and him and desperately seeks his approval, calling his portrait a ‘nitwit’ but also going out of her way to make others look bad in Bounderby’s eyes so she looks better. Ultimately, he’s her ticket to an easier life and she needs to keep him happy even as she despises the man. The man thing she does is stirs problems in Louisa and Bounderby’s marriage, something that has some pay off but also seems somewhat underdone.
In many ways this book feels like Dickens running somewhat on empty, however he followed this up with Little Dorrit (which is my next Dickens) and Tale of Two Cities - so he gets his mojo back.
As I’ve been getting into Dickens, one of the qualities that I most enjoy about him is his exuberance. I picture him sitting at his desk and having a delightful time and it’s an enthusiasm and joy that I find transmitted through his novels. Hard Times feels more like work than play. There are still the skills, some characters are memorably delineated, Coketown is clearly evoked, the plot is a bit shonky but more on that in a bit. Part of the problem is the format, Dickens was more likely to write in monthly instalments rather than weekly and it means the book comes out two chapters at a time. If Dickens lets of the reigns and has fun in one chapter, he needs to baldly telegraph the action in the next chapter to keep the book vaguely on track.
The book starts well, in the school of the wonderfully excessively named teacher, Mr M’Choakumchild who is showing off to one of its backers, Mr Gradgrind. The school sees its primary function as filling the children with knowledge and reducing any imaginative or unhelpfully non-factual tendencies in the children.
“Bring to me”, says M'Choakumchild, “yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it shall never wonder.” (‘it’)
In possibly the only really famous scene in the book, the teacher asks one child, Sissy, to define a horse. We find out later that Sissy lives at a circus and knows horses very well bu unable to answer sufficiently, another child called Bitzer gives an answer that is accurate but ultimately contentless and is congratulated for this knowledge. This central conflict between dry fact and more engaging and emotional based learning is something that very much interests me. I’ve been working in a primary school for over ten years and was around for the introduction of the new ‘Gove’ curriculum. This was a huge reform of the curriculum which unironically pivoted to a very similar position as M’Choakumchild, with arbitrary goals such as teaching all five year olds the names of ten trees (and the word deciduous). Unfortunately, we never return to this classroom.
Instead, we follow two of Mr Gradgrind’s children, Louisa and Tom, with Sissy entering as a domestic angel in the last third. I never quite grasped how many children Gradgrind had, though in chapter three there were twins winningly called Adam-Smith and Malthus, who we never met again.
Mr Gradgrind is ruled by the ‘tyranny of facts’ but is actually a rather weak character, in thrall to the odious Mr Bounderby. We know he’s a bad person, he frequently refers to himself in the third person. He’s created a myth around himself that he is in the position of power and influence that he is (he owns textile factories) because of his own hard work. To really emphasise the extent of his self-propelled rise, he finds it necessary to constantly remind those around him of how poor his background is. He disparages Gradgrind’s relatively easy rise, and keeps around a widow of upper class background just so he can remind her of how she’s fallen to be dependent on a former-pauper such as himself. Like many who have convinced themselves that they have risen by hard work, he regards those poorer than him as lazy people deserving of their poverty. Whenever the genuine needs of his workers arises, he dismisses it as them wanting ‘mocha coffee and a silver spoon’, rather like those people who said young people can’t buy houses because they eat too many avocados. He also marries Louisa, despite the fact that he’s thirty years older than him and doesn’t like him. She does it to help her brother Tom.
Tom was an interesting character, often referred to as ‘the whelp’, his education has lead him to view people as tools, so he uses his sister to get Bounderby’s protection without ever seeing the strain on her. He eventually even robs a bank and attempts to frame it on someone else. This bank robbery is one of many almost-plots that aren’t given space to properly grow or pay off.
Stephen Blackpool, is a character in a whole host or rushed and undeveloped plots. One the factory hands and given an unfortunate ‘Northern’ dialect, he’s trapped in a loveless marriage, which Bounderby could help him with but won’t - though that plot doesn’t particularly go anywhere. He’s also trapped between the rabble rousing unionists and the factory owner, with both sides being portrayed as bad as the other - though that plot doesn’t go anywhere either. He’s the man framed for the bank robbery but is robbed of the drama of unfair imprisonment by falling down an abandoned mine-shaft. His last words berate the conditions for miners, though he was never one and it’s never brought up again.
The sensation is that Dickens is throwing bits of plot about, hoping something sticks. The most interesting character is probably Mrs Sparsit, the widow kept by Mr Bounderby. She both hates and him and desperately seeks his approval, calling his portrait a ‘nitwit’ but also going out of her way to make others look bad in Bounderby’s eyes so she looks better. Ultimately, he’s her ticket to an easier life and she needs to keep him happy even as she despises the man. The man thing she does is stirs problems in Louisa and Bounderby’s marriage, something that has some pay off but also seems somewhat underdone.
In many ways this book feels like Dickens running somewhat on empty, however he followed this up with Little Dorrit (which is my next Dickens) and Tale of Two Cities - so he gets his mojo back.
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
challenging
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Marketing on point cause this book was indeed a hard time
challenging
emotional
tense
slow-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
This was okay. I like Charles Dickens enough, and the story wasn't too bad in actuality. I like how he used a lot of his own personal experience with the workforce in Victorian England and put it into the book. You could tell he was informed on the topic and I enjoyed that. I also enjoyed the idea that if everything is fact-fact-fact all the time we lose sight of some more important things like imagination and love. I think Dickens makes a clear point that we are human, therefore we are meant to dream, love, hope, risk, and fail. I like this theme a lot. The drawing of attention to the idea that creativity and feelings can be more vital than facts and algorithms.
However, I just got bored at times. It is most likely the old English and the Victorian time frame for sure. I just find myself getting bored. I feel like more than half of the book could have been taken out. But I do understand to that during this time books were written a chapter at a time. Each chapter was published in a paper and people read them week by week, so it makes a little sense that in modern day most of the nonsense parts would have been cut.
But truly the only reason I gave this a lower rating is simply because I don't mesh very well with Victorian Literature. In terms of it being Victorian, I actually thought it was a better than some of the other novels of this time.
However, I just got bored at times. It is most likely the old English and the Victorian time frame for sure. I just find myself getting bored. I feel like more than half of the book could have been taken out. But I do understand to that during this time books were written a chapter at a time. Each chapter was published in a paper and people read them week by week, so it makes a little sense that in modern day most of the nonsense parts would have been cut.
But truly the only reason I gave this a lower rating is simply because I don't mesh very well with Victorian Literature. In terms of it being Victorian, I actually thought it was a better than some of the other novels of this time.
There are such great reviews here already that I'll keep it short. I very much enjoyed reading this classic, though it took me a bit to really get into it. I loved (or loved to hate) every single character presented. I also felt a lot of satisfaction in where the characters each ended up and in the various character arcs.
I listened to audiobook narrated by Peter Batchelor and would give the narration four stars as well. It didn't blow me away, but there weren't many times I was bothered by the way he read it either.
I listened to audiobook narrated by Peter Batchelor and would give the narration four stars as well. It didn't blow me away, but there weren't many times I was bothered by the way he read it either.
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
emotional
funny
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
When I read the back cover, I thought "Wow! This is going to be phenomenal!". Then I read it. I vow to stop judging books by the synopsis presented on the back covers. The beginning was very good, I'll grant it that. But then the circus vanished until the very end of the story, and "Sissy" Jupe became just a little blotch on the page here and there. And those two things were the ones that the beginning of the story made me believe were the principal scenario and character respectively. I'm very disappointed. Even the end was so soft! I kept expecting it to bounce back, but it never did.