My Year With Dickens: Hard Times
Post #2 chronicling my year of reading Charles Dickens's complete novels.
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A couple of weekends ago, while enjoying a few days on vacation, I continued my Year of Dickens by breezing through Hard Times (1854). His tenth novel is by far his shortest, checking in at under 300 pages. After spending about a month with Bleak House’s ~1,000 pages, I was quite glad to get into something that I could finish in just a handful of days.
The book is unique in Dickens’ catalogue not only for its brevity, but also because there are no scenes set in London — the only Dickens’ title for which that’s the case. Instead, our setting is Coketown, a fictional English city that’s forever shrouded in smog from its ever-running factories and machinery.
The Gradgrind family forms the novel’s centerpiece, with Thomas at the head. He’s a schoolmaster with a mind only for rational thought and cold, hard facts. There’s no imagination, no wonder, and no emotion in his existence. His bachelor friend, Josiah Bounderby, follows the same philosophy. Together, they strategize on the best methods to educate children, including Thomas’s own Louisa and Tom.
“Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!”
As the children grow up, this hyper-rational education leads them to fall into some, well, hard times. After realizing the failings of this machine-like mindset, Lousia laments:
“How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, O father, what have you done, with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here!”
Could any message be more relevant today? You can’t spend a moment online without encountering someone who has measured something and needs to share their findings with the world. This many steps, this many hours slept, this many books read, this much revenue growth . . . facts facts facts! We are in an ultra-datafied universe.
Even 170 years ago, my favorite Victorian author knew that a life centered on hard facts did nothing more than turn you into a machine. The very same thing is happening all around us today.
If Bleak House served as a bit of a cautionary tale about being overly Romantic and care-free, Hard Times does the opposite and reminds us that a life devoid of emotion, sentiment, and spirit is no life at all.
Thanks so much for reading!
-Jeremy
Just finished Pickwick Papers. Whew! Long book. This book is pretty remarkable as his first work and the character of Sam Welles is delightful. I’m reading his works in chronological order so will read Oliver Twist next. I’ll get to Hard Times….eventually.
Keep 'em coming! I'm loving this.