Hard Times demonstrates the importance of imagination in a persons growth and development
‘Hard Times demonstrates the importance of imagination in a person’s growth and development’
Hard Times tells the tale of the dire consequences an upbringing devoid of fancy can have on its characters’ abilities to develop emotionally. Mr. Gradgrind’s insistence that his children were to be raised on ‘fact alone’ crushes their sympathetic imaginations, and both Louisa and Tom’s stunted emotional growth ultimately leads to their downfall. This is juxtaposed against Sissy, who nurtured her imagination which eventually aids her in her clarity of understanding people. Ultimately, through the fates of the various characters in Hard Times, it is shown that the deprivation of imagination can only inhibit their capacity to reach their full capacity as human beings.
Dickens derisively introduces facts as ‘the one thing needful’, however, it is clear that the ‘sowing’ of ‘facts alone’ without the aid of fancy has a detrimental impact. Louisa Gradgrind is introduced with; ‘...a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow.’ The suppression of this ‘light’ is what eventually gives way to Louisa’s apathy in her response to her marriage to Bounderby; ‘What does it matter?’Gradgrind’s oppressive utilitarianist ideology forces Louisa to submit to the opposite of the embodiment of Victorian femininity; ‘cold, silent and unfeeling’ as a result of her upbringing. While her nature rebels somewhat against this; she has ‘an ardent impulse towards some region where rules were not quite absolute’, the fact that she was the ‘triumph of Gradgrind’s system’ and thus prohibited from engaging in any fanciful activity ultimately leads to her stunted emotional growth and apathy that leads to her eventual breakdown. While, with Sissy’s help, Louisa regains her sense of self, as the novel concludes, she remains unmarried and childless, mostly due to her emotional damage, which further emphasises the effect of Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy.
