Hard Times

Summary

Hard Times, subtitled For These Times, is Dickens's shortest and most concentrated novel, set in Coketown, a smoky northern mill town of red brick, black canals, and identical streets. Thomas Gradgrind, a retired hardware merchant and later a member of Parliament, runs a model school and his own household on a single principle: children must be taught Facts and nothing else. In the opening scene the schoolroom is asked to define a horse; Sissy Jupe, daughter of a circus clown, cannot, while the pale pupil Bitzer recites a perfect list of teeth and hooves. Gradgrind's children, Louisa and Tom, are forbidden to wonder or to enjoy fancy; when he catches them peeping at Sleary's horse-riding circus, he is appalled. Sissy's father abandons her, hoping she will have a better life, and Gradgrind takes her in. His friend Josiah Bounderby, a banker and mill-owner who boasts endlessly that he was born in a ditch and raised himself without help, wants Louisa as his wife. Urged by her father's statistics and by love for her selfish brother, who works in Bounderby's bank, Louisa marries a man thirty years older whom she does not love. In Book the Second the idle, charming politician James Harthouse arrives and sets out to seduce her, watched with spiteful pleasure by Bounderby's housekeeper Mrs. Sparsit. Stephen Blackpool, an honest power-loom weaver bound to a drunken wife whom the law will not let him divorce, refuses to join the union and is dismissed by Bounderby for speaking frankly; cast out by both sides, he leaves town. Tom robs the bank and arranges for suspicion to fall on Stephen. Louisa, nearly yielding to Harthouse, flees instead to her father and collapses at his feet, telling him that his system has left her empty. In Book the Third, Gradgrind's certainty breaks; Sissy sends Harthouse away; Rachael, the mill-hand who loves Stephen, searches for him, and he is found at the bottom of a disused mine shaft, the Old Hell Shaft, and dies after being brought up. Bounderby's mother, Mrs. Pegler, turns out to be a respectable woman who paid for his education, exposing his myth. Tom escapes with the help of Sleary's circus, though Bitzer tries to arrest him by the logic of self-interest, and he later dies abroad. Louisa never remarries, but Sissy's children love her. The novel ran weekly in Household Words from April to August 1854 and was dedicated to Thomas Carlyle.

Plot or Argument

• Book the First: Sowing (Chapters I-VI)

  The Facts schoolroom and Girl Number Twenty; the description of Coketown; Gradgrind catches Louisa and Tom at Sleary's circus; Signor Jupe deserts Sissy, and Gradgrind takes her into his home.

• Book the First: Sowing (Chapters VII-XVI)

  Mrs. Sparsit keeps Bounderby's house; Stephen Blackpool asks Bounderby how he can be free of his drunken wife and is told there is no remedy for a poor man; Rachael prevents the wife from drinking poison; Gradgrind proposes Bounderby's marriage to Louisa with figures, and she accepts.

• Book the Second: Reaping (Chapters I-VI)

  James Harthouse comes to Coketown and studies Louisa; Tom confides his debts; the union orator Slackbridge rouses the hands, Stephen refuses to join and is shunned, then is dismissed by Bounderby; Louisa and Tom visit Stephen's room, and Tom lures him to wait outside the bank.

• Book the Second: Reaping (Chapters VII-XII)

  The bank is robbed and Stephen is suspected; Mrs. Gradgrind dies; Mrs. Sparsit imagines Louisa descending a great staircase toward ruin and follows her through a storm; Louisa goes not to Harthouse but to her father, and falls insensible before him.

• Book the Third: Garnering (Chapters I-VI)

  Sissy dismisses Harthouse; Mrs. Sparsit produces Mrs. Pegler, exposing Bounderby's invented childhood; Rachael and Sissy find Stephen in the Old Hell Shaft, and he dies after asking Gradgrind to clear his name.

• Book the Third: Garnering (Chapters VII-IX)

  Tom hides in Sleary's circus disguised as a comic servant; Bitzer seizes him in the name of self-interest; Sleary contrives his escape abroad; the closing chapter tells the later lives of each character and appeals directly to the reader.

Characters

• Thomas Gradgrind, educator and father

  A man of Facts who raises his children by calculation and learns too late what he has denied them.

• Louisa Gradgrind, protagonist

  Gradgrind's eldest daughter, trained never to wonder, who marries Bounderby without love.

• Tom Gradgrind, Louisa's brother

  A sulky, self-pitying youth who uses his sister's love, robs Bounderby's bank, and frames Stephen.

• Sissy Jupe, circus child taken in by Gradgrind

  The daughter of a clown, poor at Facts but rich in sympathy, who quietly heals the Gradgrind household.

• Josiah Bounderby, banker and mill-owner

  A loud self-made man of Coketown whose story of being born in a ditch is a lie.

• Stephen Blackpool, power-loom weaver

  An honest hand trapped by an unhappy marriage and rejected by both masters and union.

• Rachael, mill-hand

  Stephen's patient friend, whose goodness keeps him from despair.

• James Harthouse, tempter

  A bored young gentleman who takes up politics and tries to seduce Louisa for amusement.

• Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby's housekeeper

  A proud widow of aristocratic connections who spies on Louisa and hopes for her fall.

• Bitzer, model pupil

  Gradgrind's star scholar, later a bank porter, who acts by pure self-interest.

• Mr. Sleary, circus proprietor

  The lisping, brandy-drinking master of the horse-riding, whose kindness rescues Tom.

• Mrs. Pegler, Bounderby's mother

  A modest old woman who secretly visits Coketown to see the son who disowned her.

Lessons

• Facts are not enough

  Gradgrind is not a villain; he loves his children and sincerely believes that reason alone will make them happy. His system produces a daughter who cannot name her own feelings and a son who robs his employer. Dickens argues that the heart and the imagination must be educated along with the mind.

  • What does Gradgrind think a good education is, and what does he leave out?
  • Why can Sissy not define a horse, though she has lived among horses all her life?
  • What does Louisa mean when she asks her father where the graces of her soul have gone?

• People are not numbers

  Gradgrind proposes Louisa's marriage by citing statistics about the ages of husbands and wives. Bitzer reasons that everything is a bargain. The novel shows that calculation cannot measure love, loyalty, or mercy.

  • How does Gradgrind use figures in the marriage proposal scene, and what does Louisa ask him in return?
  • Why does Bitzer refuse to let Tom go, and how does Gradgrind's own teaching return against him?
  • Is there anything in your own life that cannot be counted?

• The worth of play

  Sleary's circus people are poor and unschooled, yet they are generous and loyal to one another. Sleary argues that people must be amused because they cannot always be learning or working. Dickens defends recreation and fancy as human needs, not luxuries.

  • Why does Gradgrind fear the circus?
  • What does Sleary believe about the love among his people and their animals?

• Integrity under pressure

  Stephen Blackpool refuses to join the union because of a promise he has made, and refuses to spy on his fellow workers for Bounderby. Both sides reject him. His story shows a man keeping his conscience when it costs him everything.

  • Why does Stephen keep calling his situation a muddle?
  • Was Stephen right to keep his promise even though it cost him his work and friends?

Context

Hard Times responds to the factory towns of northern England and to the philosophy often summed up as utilitarianism or political economy: the ideas, associated with Jeremy Bentham and with economists in the line of Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, that public policy should aim at measurable usefulness and that wages and trade follow natural laws. Supporters saw these ideas as a rational path to prosperity and reform; critics such as Thomas Carlyle, to whom the book is dedicated, believed they reduced human beings to calculations. The schoolroom scenes reflect debates about training teachers in fact-heavy methods, and the Stephen Blackpool plot touches on trade unions and on divorce law, which in 1854 was available only through a private Act of Parliament.

Composition

Dickens wrote the novel to raise the sales of his weekly Household Words, where it ran from 1 April to 12 August 1854; it was then published in one volume. In January 1854 he visited Preston, Lancashire, where cotton workers were locked out during a long dispute over wages, and Coketown draws on such towns without naming one. The weekly format forced him into short chapters and a compressed plot, quite unlike his usual monthly numbers.

Reception

Reviewers were divided. Some, like the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay in his journal, judged it harshly, while John Ruskin praised it in a note to Unto This Last (1860) as in several respects the greatest Dickens had written. In the twentieth century F. R. Leavis, in The Great Tradition (1948), called it a moral fable and made it the one Dickens novel he admitted to his great tradition, prompting long debate about whether its satire of industry and political economy is fair. Economists and historians have answered that the factory system also raised living standards; the novel remains a central text in discussions of education and of the industrial city.

Comparisons

• utilitarianism

  Mill's 1861 essay defends the greatest-happiness principle and insists that higher pleasures of intellect and feeling count, an answer in part to the kind of narrow calculation Dickens satirizes in Gradgrind.

• bleak-house

  Written just before Hard Times, Bleak House attacks a slow, wasteful institution in Chancery, whereas Hard Times attacks a brisk, efficient philosophy; both make a neglected poor man's death the moral center.

• oliver-twist

  Mr. Bumble's workhouse board and Gradgrind's model school both claim to improve the poor by system; Oliver and Sissy both survive by a goodness the systems cannot account for.

• a-christmas-carol

  Scrooge's talk of decreasing the surplus population and Gradgrind's statistics both apply cold economic reasoning to human needs, and both men are changed by a crisis that shows them what they have missed.

• the-wealth-of-nations

  Smith's account of the division of labor and self-interest underlies the political economy of Coketown, though Smith himself also wrote of the dulling effect of repetitive work on the laborer's mind.

• great-expectations

  Bounderby's invented story of rising from a ditch and Pip's shame at his humble origins both explore false ideas of self-made gentility.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The book titles Sowing, Reaping and Garnering, and how each harvest follows from Gradgrind's teaching.
• Every scene in which Louisa looks into the fire, and what she says she sees there.
• The contrast between Sleary's circus and Gradgrind's Stone Lodge, especially in Book the First, Chapter VI and Book the Third, Chapter VII.
• Mrs. Sparsit's imagined staircase in Book the Second, Chapter X, and who actually descends it.
• Bitzer's argument when he seizes Tom in Book the Third, Chapter VIII, and why Gradgrind cannot answer it.

Key terms and names

Coketown

Dickens's invented northern mill town of red brick and smoke, where the whole story takes place.

Facts

Gradgrind's single educational principle, always capitalized, by which children are taught definitions and figures and forbidden fancy.

Girl number twenty

Sissy Jupe's designation in the schoolroom, where pupils are numbered rather than named.

The Hands

The mill-workers of Coketown, whom the narrator says the town's masters would rather have had without minds or hearts.

Sleary's Horse-riding

The traveling circus where Sissy's father performs; a world of fancy, loyalty, and kindness that Gradgrind distrusts.

Old Hell Shaft

An abandoned, unfenced mine shaft outside Coketown into which Stephen Blackpool falls.

Political economy

The science of wealth and trade that Gradgrind treats as a complete guide to life; Bitzer has learned it perfectly.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What happens in the schoolroom when Gradgrind asks Girl number twenty to define a horse?
2. Comprehension Why does Louisa agree to marry Bounderby, and what does she ask her father during the proposal?
3. Comprehension How does Tom make Stephen Blackpool look guilty of the bank robbery?
4. Interpretation Why does Dickens make Sissy, who fails at Facts, the one who restores the Gradgrind family?
5. Interpretation Stephen is rejected by both Bounderby and the union. What does his word muddle say about the world of Coketown?
6. Interpretation Bitzer turns Gradgrind's own principles against him. Is Bitzer the novel's real villain or simply its most successful pupil?
7. Big Question What should a good education form in a person besides knowledge?
8. Big Question Is it possible to make wise decisions about people using only numbers and self-interest?

Faith Connections

• 1 Corinthians 13:1-3 (Scripture)

  Paul says that knowledge without charity is nothing. Gradgrind's household has all knowledge and no charity until Sissy brings it in.

• Matthew 18:1-5 (Scripture)

  Jesus sets a child in the midst of the disciples as a pattern for the kingdom. Gradgrind treats children as vessels for Facts; the novel insists, like the Gospel, that a child's wonder is something to receive, not to root out.

• Luke 10:25-37 (Scripture)

  When the lawyer asks who his neighbor is, Jesus answers with a story, not a definition. Sleary's people and Rachael act as neighbors, while Bitzer calculates.

• John Stuart Mill, Autobiography (1873), Chapter V (Great Conversation)

  Mill, raised by his father on analysis and political economy, describes falling at twenty into a dejection that only poetry, especially Wordsworth, relieved. His real story reads like a sympathetic version of Louisa's.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Gradgrind's system holds that human beings are reasoning animals who should be educated by Facts and governed by self-interest. Yet the children raised on it become a woman who cannot love and a son who robs and lies, while Sissy, who never learns the system, becomes the source of healing. Therefore an education that ignores the heart and imagination fails even by its own standard of usefulness.

Rhetorical device: anaphora. The description of Coketown in Book the First, Chapter V repeats It was a town of and the word same, so that the sentences themselves sound as monotonous as the streets they describe.

Debate: Resolved: that Thomas Gradgrind is more to be pitied than blamed.

Memory Work

NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.

People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a working, they an’t made for it.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Trace the image of the fire that Louisa watches from Book the First to Book the Third, and argue what it represents in her inner life.

Comparison with Utilitarianism: Mill argues that some pleasures are higher than others and that a good life includes feeling and imagination. Would Mill's utilitarianism have saved Louisa, or is Dickens's quarrel with any philosophy of usefulness?

Medical Lens

Hard Times is less a medical novel than a study of what an education without feeling does to the inner life, and that makes it interesting to psychiatry. Louisa's flatness, her inability to name her emotions, and her collapse in her father's study are presented as the fruit of a system, not as an illness; modern readers sometimes compare her to descriptions of emotional numbing or depression, but that is an interpretive reading. A close parallel outside fiction is John Stuart Mill's account, in his Autobiography (1873), of the mental crisis he suffered at twenty after an education in analysis and political economy, which he found relieved by poetry. Mrs. Gradgrind is a portrait of chronic invalidism in a woman who has given up claiming her own experience, and her deathbed answer about pain is one of the most quoted lines in the book. Elsewhere the novel touches on alcoholism in Stephen's wife, a bottle of poison at her bedside that Rachael removes, the smoke and dyed river of Coketown that later readers connect with industrial public health, and Stephen's fatal fall into an unfenced disused mine shaft.

• Book the First, Chapter XIII

  Rachael nurses Stephen's drunken wife through the night; Stephen watches in a half-dream as his wife reaches toward the bottle marked poison, and Rachael wakes and takes it from her.

  Alcohol Pharmacology Poisons Nursing Caregiving
• Book the First, Chapter V

  Description of Coketown's smoke, black canal, and river running purple with dye.

  Public Health Sanitation
• Book the Second, Chapter IX

  The death of Mrs. Gradgrind, too vague to say whether she is in pain.

  Death Dying Pain
• Book the Second, Chapter XII

  Louisa's confession to her father of an empty inner life and her collapse at his feet.

  Melancholia Depression
• Book the Third, Chapter VI

  Stephen is drawn up from the Old Hell Shaft, badly injured, and dies after speaking of the many lives the old pits have taken.

  Death Dying Pain

Creative Prompts

• Classroom

  Hold a Gradgrind lesson for ten minutes, allowing only definitions and figures, then ask Sissy's question: what was missing?

• Essay

  Compare Bitzer and Sissy Jupe as products of the same school. What does each learn, and why?

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation between Gradgrind and Sleary on the night Tom escapes, in your own words, letting each man defend his philosophy.

• Fiction

  Write Rachael's account of the search for Stephen across the fields outside Coketown.

Further Reading

• The Great Tradition, F. R. Leavis

  Includes the influential chapter reading Hard Times as a moral fable.

• Autobiography, John Stuart Mill

  Chapter V describes Mill's mental crisis after his strict analytical education.

• Unto This Last, John Ruskin

  Ruskin's essays against political economy, with his note praising Hard Times.

• Charles Dickens: A Life, Claire Tomalin