Charles Dickens – Hard Times
Plot:
Thomas Gradgrind runs a school of hard fact in the industrial city of Coketown. He happens to see his children, Louisa and Tom,
peering into a circus in direct opposition to his views on things of fancy. The cause for the offense, suggested by Gradgrind's
friend Josiah Bounderby, a "self-made man" banker and mill owner in Coketown, is that Sissy Jupe, the daughter of one of the
circus folk from Sleary's traveling circus, has been enrolled in Gradgrind's school and is a bad influence. Gradgrind and
Bounderby proceed to visit the girl's father in order to have her removed from school. They find that he has abandoned the girl
and Gradgrind agrees to take her in in the hope of reforming her on the condition that she never mention her former life.
Stephen Blackpool, a power loom weaver in Bounderby's mill, is married to a drunk and asked Bounderby how he can get out of
the marriage to marry Rachael, another worker at the Mill. Bounderby loftily tells him that he married "for better or worse" and
without money cannot be released from the marriage. After his visit to Bounderby he meets an old woman (Mrs. Pegler) in the
street who tells him she comes to Coketown every year with the hope of a chance sighting of Bounderby.
Tom, Louisa, and Sissy finish school, Sissy unsatisfactorily. Tom is apprenticed to Bounderby. Bounderby asked Gradgrind for
Louisa's hand and she reluctantly agrees to marry him in the hope of helping Tom. Sissy remains with Mrs. Gradgrind to help
raise three younger children.
James Harthouse, with a letter of introduction from Gradgrind, now a Member of Parliament, meets Bounderby and becomes a
frequent visitor in the household. Harthouse has hopes of going to Parliament.
Stephen Blackpool refuses to unionize with workers of the mill and is ostracized and later fired from his job. Tom has taken to
gambling and has fallen heavily into debt. Louisa and Tom visit Stephen and Louisa sympathetically offers money to help him
relocate. Tom takes Stephen aside and asks him to loiter around the bank in the evenings before he leaves town on the pretense
of offering work.
The bank is robbed and Blackpool, seen loitering about the bank in the days before the robbery, is suspect. Harthouse falls in
love with Louisa and tries to lure her away from her unhappy marriage to Bounderby. She flees to her father and reveals the
unhappiness she has felt since childhood, he softens as he realizes the mistakes he made in her education. Louisa stays with him,
cared for by Sissy. Bounderby abandons her. Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby's housekeeper, captures Mrs. Pegler and brings her to
Bounderby's house where she is revealed to be Bounderby's loving mother, disproving Bounderby's story of being a self-made
man, abandoned as a child.
Rachael sends word to Blackpool, who has gotten work in another town, telling of the suspicion in the robbery and expects him
to come back to clear his name, but he doesn't show. Rachael and Sissy, walking in the country, come across Stephen's hat near
a deserted mine and realize he has fallen in. They summon help, Stephen is brought out alive but dies on the way back to town.
Before dying he tells Mr. Gradgrind to question his son, Tom, concerning the robbery. Tom, knowing that capture is close at
hand escapes, with the help of Sissy, to a town where Sleary's Circus is performing. Thomas, Sissy, and Louisa meet him there
and, after a last minute attempt by Bitzer to capture him, escapes abroad, with the help of the circus folk, where he later dies in
misery. Thomas Gradgrind abandons his inflexible demands for facts in favor of "Faith, Hope, and Charity".
The structure:
Hard times is divided into 3 sections, called “books” and each book is divided into 3 chapters. The first book, Sowing, shows the
seeds planted by the Gradgrind/Bounderby education: Louisa, Tom and Stephen Blackpool. The second book, Reaping, shows
the harvesting of these seeds: Louisa has an unhappy marriage, Tom is selfish and a uses criminal ways and Stephen rejects
Coketown. The third book, Garnering, gives all the details.
A critique of materialism:
Hard times focuses on the differences between the rich and the poor, the owner and the worker, who were forced to work long
hours for low pay.
So, Hard times critics the “gap” that there is between the rich and the poor and the Materialism of Utilitarism which was basic
for Victorians.
