As Thomas Gradgrind raises his children he stresses facts over imagination and function over feelings, creating an opposition between the Utalitarian concepts of Fact and Fancy:
“Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder.” (Ch.8)
“You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. (…) You must use, ‘ said the gentleman, ‘for all these purposes, combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.” (Ch.2)
The author demonstrates the extreme negative effects of a solely factual education in Mr. Gradgrind’s children, Louisa and Tom, and also in Bitzer, his student. Louisa is portrayed as the emotionally destructive influence of the above mentioned. She is shown as “not impulsive, you are not romantic, you are accustomed to view everything from the strong dispassionate ground of reason and calculation.” (Ch.15)
This is viewed as very positive in Mr. Gradgrind’s eyes but Dickens wants the reader to realise that this type of education is very wrong. He reinforces this idea by showing the emotional battle Louisa is experiencing:
“There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in the girl: yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which brightened its expression. Not with the brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager, doubtful flashes, which had something painful in them, analogous to the changes on a blind face groping its way.” (Ch.3)
Due to her upbringing, the passionate, a vital side of her cannot grow, because she cannot express it as she doesn’t know how to, concluding that the extreme use of Fact does not allow the proper development of the human soul and mind. Louisa says so herself in the book, knowing what damage this education has done to her:
“I am so proud and so hardened, so confused and troubled, so resentful and unjust to everyone and myself, that everything is stormy, dark, and wicked to me.” (Ch.1 Book the Third)
This extremely powerful quote shows absolutely all the possible detrimental effects it has on a person, all converged into one person, which in itself heightens the pity and sympathy.
Tom is another example of the damages of Factual education. Dickens portrays him as a selfish, proud, self-centred and morally corrupt man:
“Here Tom came lounging in, and stared at the two with a coolness not particularly savouring of interest in anything but himself.” (Ch.9).
Dickens creates him in such a way so as to make the reader dislike him considerably. The object of this is to show how this type of education creates a “bad” kind of person. However, Dickens portrays Sissy, the representation of Fancy in the book, in an extremely positive way. He creates a character which is full of life and emotion:
“(…) irradiated Sissy…whereas the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper more lustruous colour from the sun.” (Ch.2)
The reader feels instant affection and sympathy for this character because she is one of the only characters with whom the reader can relate to. Dickens uses Sissy for this because she represents Fancy. He is associating a likeable character with the idea he supports so the reader will see that Fancy is positive in a person.
Furthermore, the author wanted to illustrate a cruel harmful effect of the industrial revolution upon humanity in general but more importantly on the working class, portraying this through the description of Coketown. It is extremely negative:
“It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.”(Ch.5)
Dickens creates an image of Hell through the black and red colours. This subsequently reflects on the working conditions of the Hands, who have to live in such conditions, namely Hell. Even the river, a natural phenomenon is turned bad by industrialisation: “It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill smelling dye”(Ch.5). There is a strong sensation of dirt, grime and disease that has probably spread to the workers.
The Industrial Revolution appeared to be a positive phenomenon, but it also had a negative impact on society as it created a quick population boost in the cities leading to an increase of slum communities. This change had terrible effects upon the living standards of the masses. The rich and poor become more separated, the masters do not personally acquaint anymore with the workers as evidenced in Hard Times, where the labourers are also called the “Hands”, which confirms the indifference of the capitalists towards their employees. Dickens’ novels expose the slums and filth of London and its surroundings by realistically depicting the corruption of its society.
“In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in; at the heart of the labyrinth of narrow courts upon courts, and close streets uponstreets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece in aviolent hurry for some one man’s purpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one another to death; in the last close nook of this great exhausted receiver, where the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught, were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes, as though every house put out a sign of the kind of people who might be expected to be born in it; among the multitude of Coketown, generically called ‘the Hands, ‘ - a race who would have found more favour with some people, if Providence had seen fit to make them
only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs.” (Ch.10)
Conclusion
Noted as one of the most famous authors of the Victorian Era, Charles Dickens began writings as serialized works which were published in magazines. Unlike most series authors of the time, Dickens wrote a new episode every week, instead of the entire story beforehand. His work has never gone out of print, and his characters have become some of the most iconic troughout English Literature.
Dickens’s goal was to demonstrate the consequences of the Industrial Revolution combined with the mechanization of society, suggesting that without compassion and imagination, life would be insufferable.
Like the novels that preceded it—notably Dombey and Son and Bleak House—Hard Times is concerned with industrial society, focusing upon characters not as human types but as products of the industrial age. Throughout the novel there is a tense, oppressive atmosphere informed by the utilitarian ethic; English life is no longer natural and whole but lived according to a toxic theory which allows the rich and powerful to exercise their will upon their employees and upon nature itself. The industrial city of Coketown is soiled into colorlessness, masked in smoke and the incessant stench rising from its many chimneys. The characters, with the exception of Sissy Jupe and members of the circus troupe, act less like human beings than like automata, programmed to respond to life and to each other by standards of measurable expediency alone. Freedom, humor, and art are symbolized by the circus performers; in glimpses of them, Dickens contrasts the life of imagination with the life of utility.
Wiam El Mahny
Catarina Teles
Literatura Inglesa
LCE 2º Ano
Docente: Helena Costa