A review by isobelline
Hard Times by Charles Dickens

dark reflective sad medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

The shortest Dickens

Hard Times is a novel that is, as the French would put it, à part. It's about three times shorter than the average Dickens novel, there is less filler, the plot is more contained. It is so different, in fact, that it doesn't even get the traditional preface from Charley D.

The book's characters are also a bit different from Dickens' other creations - and I have a couple of things to say about that. Dickens' novels have no shortage of morally reprehensible people of all shapes and sizes, but they were always caricatures, exaggerated characters who have a lot in common with people you can meet in real life but are a bit too out there to seem real. Bad people in Hard Times are realistically terrible - especially Tom Gradgrind

(an irresponsible moocher who feels entitled to everything and exploits his sister's love and pity towards him)

and Josiah Bounderby

(a skeevy old man who marries a young girl he's been ogling since she was a child and who constantly lies about how hard his childhood was)

. Gradgrind Sr. is basically one of those people who love "destroying the libs with facts and logic", and even a fairly positive character like Stephen Blackpool has an utterly chilling scene when he

does nothing to stop his hated wife from drinking poison

. I believe these characters in their terribleness and I really appreciate that, even though I think that Dickens is at his best when he does grotesque.

There aren't a lot of good people in Hard Times. The best we get is Sissy Jupe and she is a borderline manic pixie dream girl (I know this term is overused, but seriously, she exists solely to make the Gradgrinds believe in the power of love and imagination, the subplot with her missing father went absolutely nowhere). The other good people in this novel are Stephen and Rachel, an almost Dostoevskian couple who never get their happy ending.

I'm starting to notice several patterns in Dickens' works: he doesn't have a lot of faith in the education system - most of the schools in his novels are truly terrifying places; he also is not a fan of any radical social change - we saw that most clearly in Barnaby Rudge and this idea returns in this novel with the character of Slackbridge. Marriage is also something that he's skeptical about and that most evident in Hard Times, where every marriage is a trap (perhaps, he's so pessimistic about it in this novel because his own marriage was failing at the time).

All in all, it's not one of his best, but it is something new and special. And for that I am thankful.