HARD TIMES
... realistic but redolent of a man incapable of seeing past his present confines, so much that he can express these thoughts in front of the union during a heated meeting about the strike: “I’m the one single Hand in Bounderby’s mill, o’a’the men theer, as don’t coom in wi’th’proposed reg’latins. I canna’coom in wi’ ‘em. My friends, I doubt their doin’ yo onny good. Licker they’ll do you hurt. (108)” He speaks openly about the union regulations, but most tellingly, he shows his stature as a collapsed figure of impotence because of his discordant marriage: “But ‘t ant so much for that as I stands out. If that were aw, I’d coom in wi’th’rest. But I ha’my reasons – mine, yo see- for being hindered; not oný now, but awlus-awlus- lifelong! (108)” He has lost hope for all eternity, and cannot come to see the efficacy of a labor movement because his solidarity in marriage has failed and his options as a poor working-class man are limited, just as solidarity in a union cannot be without the effect and presence of all its members. We can see, however, that all that comes to be is not at all what we expect from the first book. Gradgrind’s philosophy of fact as “the one thing needful” as he teaches his children Louisa and Tom of the necessity for this scripture-esque life without fancy or imagination, one which does not owe itself to time and its contaminating qualities; instead, one may look and find a little more than what the author is trying to convey to the reader: Dickens allows for the reader to find the one contaminating factor as being reason without fancy and shows this through the metaphor of a ticking mechanical clock – Time . He, however, does not come to realize the self which he has put forward in writing this novel as a contemporary figure is contaminating the ideals brought upon by fancy in the imagining of a better future for the working members of society. It is ironic to see that the author himself is a man- of- reason when it comes to the stifling of the imagination of the working class into blurring the vision for a better future. Dickens does see, however, how the institution of education needs imagination, or more so, how it is harmed by the suppression of it. The children of Gradgrind’s school are not allowed to grow and mature in a natural form, they are stunted, grafted if you will, from developing the essential element to learning, imagination, and instead are taught only reason. The students are told that “Facts alone are wanted in life, Plant nothing else, and root out everything else (5).” Where they are educated, they are not allowed to read fictitious works that may teach them about the dangers of pollution, for example, or moreover, the hazards of an emotionless upbringing such as we see in Hard Times. Instead, we see a “grinding” of factual evidence for the grown-ups to make-believe that they are the fine educators of fact and reason, when in fact, they are only the suppressors of a true and complete educational system. We also see Louisa, who may be called the protagonist of the work, who has been strictly raised in the dogma of her father’s “facts only” regime and an outcome of the “Sowing” of the first book, in dire straits because she has been taught to suppress rather than to cultivate her imagination.. Not only does Louisa’s lack of imagination show in her inability to attach meaning to the idea of love, but it is evident in her lack of emotional expression and connection during the interview with her father wherein Bounderby’s proposal to marry her is being discussed. She asks him over and over about whether love is to be a factor in the marriage, and she is answered solely that “the reply depends so materially…on the sense in which we use the expression,” which means that it is in particular a misnomer, and the question of love is then skirted. This knowledge which she possesses, or lack thereof, is what she has to battle with as she accepts the proposal. The marriage fails because of her lack of emotional knowledge due to the sterile upbringing of her father, and as she compares his upbringing with death, it begins to dawn on him that the philosophy of right and wrong is greater than that of fact over fancy. She tells him: “How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death?” Louisa realizes that without emotion and imagination, her life is comparable to the mindless ticking of a clock, as the clock in her father’s study ironically ticks on throughout the novel. There is a “deadly statistical clock, proving something no doubt – probably, in the main, that the Good Samaritan was a Bad Economist.” This humorous description of the clock again depicts the message Dickens is sending to his readers: that time is deadly both industrially and personally without the natural element of fancy and emotion, passion and imagination. And though he makes a great argument through Louisa’s character for it the non-professional sense, it is ironic to the last that he himself shows a lack of it for a vision for the working class. Irony and the Hazards of a Lack of Fancy In a novel such as Hard Times by Charles Dickens, there exists a primordial sense of irony within the content and the structure of the work. Written about the industrialization of England in the 19th century in general and the mechanization of human beings as a cause of the industry and the educational system in particular, contrasting are the three structural titles of the books – “Sowing”, “Reaping”, and “Garnering”, suggesting a natural, if agricultural, progression of time, setting and character development. However, the reality as presented in the novel shows an unnatural time development through a mechanized sense of time, a stifled education system, and an unequal and suppressive ethic for the working class, with the owners of the wealth satisfied with their philosophy deeming that everything can be boiled down to fact and statistics, at the absence of pity and compassion and in the abundance of their lazy wealth. Dickens has prepared for the novel reader a work which not only prepossesses its irony but allows for a clearer perspective of the dangers of the unnatural course of mankind in the 19th century. The setting is Coketown, essentially a privatized industrial town owned by several rich capitalists, whose streets are filled with identical looking buildings made of red brick, colored with pollution from the black smoke that escapes in droves from the factory chimney-tops. The pollution present in the novel is present to show the reader that one should be mindful of the dangers of environmental damage, as it affects both the physical and mental health of all persons. He does this by describing the town as a place where “Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in (51)” in the chapter where he introduces the working society. It is no subtle warning to the testimony of the environmental danger that began with the industrial revolution. The factories that produce the pollution are employed by underpaid, over-worked men and women who are amongst the daily grinding of machines in an unhealthy and unsafe work environment. Described is Stephen Blackpool, the worker’s spokesman in the novel, “bent over his loom…where [he] worked, to the crashing smashing, tearing piece of mechanism at which he laboured. (56)” One element of the Sowing of Book 1 is to prepare for the advances of the growing strain on the labor movement and the eventual attempt at strike because of the unfair and difficult working conditions. As well is the unnatural work environment which Dickens explains as a widespread affair of “Art,” or manmade industry in the quote: “Art will consign Nature to oblivion (56).” It is a testimony to the grinding nature of industry in the work-factories, contrasting with the natural progress of the seasons and harvest, made evident by the titles of the books. Outside of the factories is not much better, where the members of the factories live, as there are “streets upon streets, which had come into existence piecemeal, every piece in a violent hurry for some one man’s purpose, and the whole an unnatural family, shouldering, and trampling, and pressing one another to death (52).” We see a natural outcome of unnatural circumstance; the ongoing chemical contamination of the minds of the working class, so unnatural that it brings them to live slums only to live and die, if meager and dissipated lives. As we are introduced to the character of Stephen Blackpool, we see a bent man who cannot learn to live outside of the structure he has learned in the factory. Tame and lifeless, he lives for one thing, an imaginary life with the goddess of goodness, co-worker and love of his life, a woman by the name of Rachael, who he sees on occasion of his house-ridden house-wife’s home-coming, who comes home only for the purpose of having one. The structure which we see presented most evidently in the novel is that of Time, an endless machine which grinds not only on the working class poor but the imaginations of the young ones who live in the structure of the city of Coketown, so much that Stephen, worthwhile and loving, cannot look forward to a more formidable future neither personally or professionally. Personally, he is confined to his marriage with a hazardous, drunken madwoman, who will remain nameless throughout the novel, and cannot escape by means of divorce because, as Mr. Bounderby, one of Coketown’s most industrious and successful merchants puts it, “It’s not for you at all. It costs money. It costs a mint of money (60).” This allows for two things to be shown: Firstly, for the unequal social structure of the working class as compared to the upper classes, who can afford options in their personal lives because of their wealth, unduly owed to them by workers such as Blackpool, and secondly, the stagnant nature and inescapability of the lives of many of the working class poor. Professionally, we see in Stephen an inability to hope for a better work environment, and a sense that conducting a strike as unionized workers will come to nothing but harm. It i...