The novel "Hard Times" written by Charles Dickens is a reflection of the changing ideas established during his time.
The novel “Hard Times” written by Charles Dickens is a reflection of the changing ideas established during his time. Dickens’ characters essentially are personifications of changing ideas in psychology and political thought. Each one of his characters represents a different principle and its relationship to the general public. Both Stephen Blackpool and Thomas Gradgrind, Jr. for the most part characterize ideas of significant philosophers around the time of Dickens. Stephen Blackpool represents the abused worker, suffering under capitalism as expressed by Karl Marx. Blackpool symbolizes the oppressed working class of the 19th century in Dickens’ novel Hard Times. He is exposed as a sincere, hard-working weaver employed by the factory proprietor and proclaimed “self-made man” Josiah Bounderby. Through the course of the plot, Blackpool is found to have suffered many trials in life together with a matrimony to a drunk and the ill-fated love of a woman he cannot wed. He is even unwanted and disliked by his own class because of his denial to join an union with his fellow factory workers due to his belief that the trade union rebel is a fake prophet. In the end he defends the employees against thoughtless words spoken by Bounderby about them, and ends up losing his occupation for that. Blackpool is Marx’s representation of the fraud of the employee by capitalism. Blackpool is the first wounded of the labor cause. He leads from his beginning a miserable life. “Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said that very life has its roses and thorns; there seemed however, to have been a misadventure of mistake in Stephen’s case, where by somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody else’s thorns in addition to his own.” (Hard Times, pg. 60). Stephen has not known any magnificence in his life. His job is all he has, but that is not his obsession. He describes his place of employment, the mill, as “...always going, and...they never work us any nearer to any distant object-except always death.” (Hard Times, pg. 140). It was something he had begun out of obligation and in the long run it had moved itself into his entire being. After
work every day he feels a sensation “–the sensation of its [his labor] having worked and stopped in his own head” (Hard Times, pg. 61). This idea is the entire base of Marx fashions: the blending of the worker and his work as one until the worker is reduced. Blackpool is the victim of labor in that it entirely forbids him from experiencing what is attractive in life. His labor spoils his roses and gives him thorns instead. In Hard Times the laws of England are fashioned for the rich, not the poor, another way Marx believes capitalism exploits the ...
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work every day he feels a sensation “–the sensation of its [his labor] having worked and stopped in his own head” (Hard Times, pg. 61). This idea is the entire base of Marx fashions: the blending of the worker and his work as one until the worker is reduced. Blackpool is the victim of labor in that it entirely forbids him from experiencing what is attractive in life. His labor spoils his roses and gives him thorns instead. In Hard Times the laws of England are fashioned for the rich, not the poor, another way Marx believes capitalism exploits the poor worker. Blackpool visits Bounderby for help. He has spent a big segment of his life wedded to his not speaking wife but has found another woman he has grown to love. Wanting to liberate himself from the limits holding him to his first wife he asks Bounderby for guidance. Blackpool, on the other hand, is rapidly up to date that getting a divorce involves a large amount of wealth. Due to his insufficient salary Blackpool must live his days married to a drunk and simply connected with a virtuous woman. The divorce laws in England at that time only benefited the rich. The bourgeoisie, the predominate legislative class at that time, made the law in their own concern. They could manage to pay for such fines if needed and therefore saw no reason to lesser the price since it did not profit them at all. In this case, no help was extended to the poor. In the representation of this plan, manual labor equals the employee, Blackpool, and private property equals the wealthy, Bounderby. Private property forms rivalry which obliges those who have to disregard or take benefit of those who have nothing; Everything is bounded by greediness so the worker is cleared out. Helping Blackpool does not profit Bounderby so the worker, Blackpool, is tossed aside. Helping the worker is not in the avaricious self concern of the non worker, according to Marx. The non worker’s intentions consist of only his egotistical desires as a consequence the worker is mistreated by both the non-worker and the laws made by the non-worker. In his exasperation Blackpool cries “...show me the law to help me!” (Hard Times pg. 70). There is no annulment law to aid him. He is merely a worker, a utensil, a “hand”. Throughout the entire story of Hard Times, Blackpool is left alone. Charles Dickens uses this hostility Stephen experiences as an illustration of Marx’s point. Before the story even begins he has been dumped by his companion. He is then discarded by his colleague workers for declining to unite the trade union. Finally, even his profession estranges him as soon as he is fired from his position at the plant and obliged to rearrange to a new town to get a job. In the end he is reduced to a criminal for a crime he did not make in a the community that has at all times hated him. As what he manufactures becomes more and more significant, he and his race are pushed beyond and farther downward. But yet, the employees have no idea of the felonies committed against them. Stephen Blackpool is not bitter against his aggressors even after everything that had happened to him. Even before his death he declares the goodness of Bounderby: “If Mr. Bounderby had ever know’d me right-if he had ever known me at all-he wouldn’t have took offense with me. He wouldn’t have suspected me.” (Hard Times, pg. 268). The propaganda of the non-worker had convinced him of its supremacy and reduced Blackpool to an uncomplicated believer. Blackpool is robbed of all: his love, his job, his status and eventually his life; all of it was taken for the entrepreneurial economy. Blackpool is everything Marx saw as having been ruined by work and entrepreneurship. Tom is the son of Thomas Gradgrind, Sr., a factual man only interested with pure facts. Therefore, Tom is brought up in a utilitarian environment: taught never to question, doubt facts or consider any kind of fancy. In the novel Hard Times he is part of the middle class and only has love for one human being, his sister, Louisa. His sister’s husband employs him in the bank but Tom interests himself more with revolt since he is finally away from the truthful background of his youth. Thus Tom enters into betting and drink. Unfortunately for him, his bets never earn him any cash and he finds himself frequently asking his sister for aid. Her attachment to her brother forces her to provide him what he asks until he has simply taken too much. In need of money, he stages a bank robbery and places the guilt on the honest Blackpool. Eventually found out, he is forced into banish where he repents and asks his sister for forgiveness. The discipline of fact Tom was associated with at an early age limited most of the natural instincts common to children and teenagers. Once he has the opening to enter the real world, he revolts due to his discontent with his education: “..when I go to live with old Bounderby I’ll have my revenge...I mean I’ll enjoy myself a little and go about and hear something. I’ll recompense myself for the way in which I have been brought up.” (Hard Times, pg. 49). He has by no means been given the chance to express himself in more than fact, so for him, happiness means the completion of those opportunities; he sees happiness in everything that did not engage his bringing up Harthouse, an admirer of Louisa in the novel Hard Times, identifies this need Tom experiences and expresses it to Louisa. “...he [Tom] has not been fortunate in his training. Bred at a disadvantage towards the society in which he has a part to play, he rushes these extremes for himself from opposite extremes that have long been forced upon him.” (Hard Times, pg. 161). Tom’s education is poor and its lack causes him to completely wander from his school of thought. He does it suddenly and powerfully with every purpose of wandering away as far as possible from it. His education of fact was poor for the real world and unfortunately he did not have the skills to handle with reality. For Tom, his pursuit of happiness was forced upon him by his father. He, however understands the disease in his means of education and thus embraces both these ways. While under the employment of Bounderby he moves toward gambling and drink. Once in conversation with Louisa, she mentions she has not seen him in awhile. He replies, “Why I have been otherwise engaged Loo, in the evenings.” (Hard Times, pg. 88), implying he spends a good deal of his time with alcohol and gambling. Harthouse also notices this and tells Louisa he believes Tom to be falling into trouble (Hard Times, pg. 160). Alcohol was Tom’s way out of the misery of reality. As is the movement in society, one falls until it is not possible to fall any longer. After robbing the bank he worked for and placing the blame on Blackpool, Tom’s super-ego, or conscience steps forward. After his rebellion, he experiences guilt for the destruction he caused. Tom commits his crime but is not even able to plead guilty to it to the one he loves most, Louisa. Thus his guilt is left to his super-ego which tortures him. He also feels guilty because he knows it would hurt Louisa and possible cause her to lose the love she had for him if she found out. After the crime is committed and he lies to his sister, “...the wretched boy [Tom]...threw himself upon his pillow again–tearing his hair, morosely crying, grudgingly loving her [Louisa], hatefully but impenitently spurring himself, and no less hatefully and unprofitably spurring all the good in the world.” (Hard Times, pg. 179) Tom is eventually found out and he feels the remorse. Tom finally realizes his mistakes which come from a egocentric view of society and how he could make use of it to make himself happy. However, much less to the credit of young Tom, he falls into the pattern of civilization. He is only able to realize his mistakes once he has lost everything. His conscience only displays itself once his end is eminent. In his dissolved state, Tom does plead to Louisa for her forgiveness. On the last page where Dickens’ recounts the fates of all the characters, he portrays Tom as “A lonely brother, many thousands of miles away, writing, on paper blotted with tears, that her [Louisa’s] words had too soon come true, and that all the treasures in the world would be cheaply bartered for a sight of her dear face?” (Hard Times, pg. 277). She receives a letter later saying, “he died in hospital, of fever, such a day, and died in penitence and love of you, his last word being your name.” Dickens uses Hard Times to express his dissatisfaction with society. Freud and Marx are not satisfied either with the present conditions facing them and their culture. Dickens embraces similar ideas of Marx and personifies them through his two characters, Blackpool and Tom Gradgrind. Blackpool’s personality, struggles and relationships with others represent Marx’s concept of the oppressed worker while Tom’s symbolize our need to rebel and our battles with guilt. Each individual is a product of his time. Marx and Dickens are products of their times as well in that they have a distrust of the current traditions; this pessimism is depicted in their lives’ works. And in the end, we realize, art and literature express the chaos of their era.
