Hard Times Charles Dickens

👇 ‫المقدمة‬
Dickens was a social reformer who was concerned with the treatment of the lower
class from the working class. Dickens is remembered as one of the few writers who is
most important and influential from the nineteenth century. During the Victorian Era,
the age saw the birth and spread of socialism. The Victorian Era was characterized by
rapid change, some of which was made by Charles Dickens..

Charles Dickens’ novels are usually set in the backdrop of the industrial age and Hard
Times is no exception. Dickens presents “a criticism of the ‘Hard Facts’ philosophy
and of the society which he believed increasingly to be operating on the principles of
that philosophy”. He puts forward the fictional setting of Coketown as a living factory
that epitomizes the satanic industrialism.

.In Hard Times novel, Dickens emphasizes the Utilitarian education, the arrogance of
the middle and upper class, and the industrial revolution and the monotony of life
whereby a society wants you to be a robot. Every character gets into difficulty in this
novel. There aren’t emotions and imaginary. The most important thing is facts. There
is a conflict between facts and imaginary. Gradgrind claims that education should be
solely useful and well-grounded, allowing no place for visionary. Gradgrind grow up
his children, Louisa and Tom, without emotions and imaginary. By way of improving
the intelligence of children and teaching them to think, education is making useful
truths. A student says that ‘I want facts sir! What I want is facts, sir!’ There is no
creativity in education, just scientific truths. Dickens reveals damaging effects of
utilitarianism via the characters of Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby.

Book one Chapter one

‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone

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are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else.
‫الجواب‬
Mr. Gradgrind opens Hard Times with this famous address to the class at his school. His
words outline his philosophy of educating children: facts are more important than all else, as
they are key to understanding the world and achieving success in it. This philosophy,
rejected by Dickens, dismisses emotional understanding, analysis, and creative thinking, as
it presents factual analysis as the answer to everything.

The description of Mr. Gradgrind

His square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found
commodious cellarage in two dark caves… the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry,
and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s hair, which bristled on the skirts
of his bald head… square coat, square legs, square shoulders.
Chapter 2

How did Thomas Gradgrind introduce himself?

A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle
that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for
anything over . With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his
pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature.

His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he
were cut, he would bleed white.

"Say, good M’Choakumchild. When from thy burning store, thou shalt fill each jar brim
full by and by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy

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lurking within–or sometimes only maim or distort him!"
‫الجواب‬
M'Choakumchild's teaching methods are compared to Morgiana's in the story of Ali Baba in
the Arabian Nights. Morgiana was Ali Baba's servant, who, in search of the forty thieves,
looked into a large collection of jars. Discovering that all but one contained a thief, she boiled
oil from the remaining jar and filled the others with the scalding liquid to kill the men inside.
Dickens uses the allusion to scold M'Choakumchild. Beware! says Dickens. You may think
you're only killing the imagination- the "fancy"- of these children, but instead you're harming
them in more serious ways. As you will see, it's a warning that Gradgrind would do well to
heed. McChoakumchild draws a parallel to Morgiana in two ways: he is fervent in his efforts
to search any "fancy" that his students may possess, and he does his best to remove and
destroy such "fancy", as he views it as a threat to his idealized version of society.

Chapter 4

The description of Mr. Bounderby 👇

Mr. Bounderby, a "bounder" is British slang for an ill-bred, pushy person. He was a rich man:
banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not.

Chapter 5

The description of Coketown :

Bounderby and Gradgrind pass through Coketown on their way to find the Jupes. Coketown
is the dystopian reality Dickens hopes England can avoid. Through it, he criticizes the
abuses of industrialism, from the long hours of the workers who are dehumanized into little
more than machines to the dehumanizing effects on Gradgrind's children of their facts
education.Coketown is a depressing and ugly town, full of harsh noises and foul smells. The
red bricks of the building have been blackened by smoke that pours like "interminable
serpents" from smoke chimneys. All of the buildings are similar, and the huge steam engine
moves up and down "like the head of an elephant." Dickens makes a point of using the word
“inseparable” to explain how essential the factories were to the city. Coketown did not merely
contain factories, it was itself a factory. By comparing the entire city to a factory that was
becoming mechanized, Dickens is suggesting that the components of the city, the people,
were becoming mechanized as well.
It is a town in which all of the buildings are so much alike that one cannot distinguish the jail
from the infirmary without reading the names of the two inscribed above the doors. It is a
town blackened by the "serpent-like" smoke that billows endlessly into the air from the
factory chimneys and settles in the lungs of the workers, a town with a black canal and a
river that runs purple with industrial waste. It is a town inhabited by people who are merely
existing and not living for they are like machines. By describing the actions of Coketown
workers as monotonous and repetitive, Dickens calls to mind the involuntary movements of
machines. The repetition of the word “same” within the passage emphasizes the repetition
that occurs within Coketown and the factories.

Chapter 6

What do the names of the new characters symbolize? What does the circus stand for?
And why does Charles Dickens focus on the usage of fables and nursery rhymes?

Pegasus is a winged horse in Greek mythology, usually depicted as a white stallion, the
name of Pegasus is close to the word pege, meaning ‘spring’, Pegasus thus symbolically
combines water with air: springs and wings both suggest creativity and elevation. It is a is a
symbol of fancy and wonder. In Hard Times, Pegasus is associated with the circus people,
who embody values that are quite different from those of Gradgrind and Bounderby. Sleary's
circus people live at an inn called the Pegasus's Arms. The inn has a picture of Pegasus on
its sign-board which Gradgrind and Bounderby couldn’t see clearly. The circus horses create
a sense of wonder in the audience, allowing them to escape the horrors of the "hard facts"
world served up to them by people likeGradgrind andBounderby. Gradgrind assumes that
because the value of the circus cannot be calculated, the circus has no value. For Gradgrind
and Bounderby the circus is bad (Dickens 14). That is, it produces nothing useful for them
and so they assume that it does no work. This view Dickens specifically rejects. He
consistently describes the circus as a something good. It is the heart of the novel. However,
Circus life is also brutal. It requires balms and oils and broken bones and occasionally drives
a man to abandon his daughter. When Sissy leaves the circus to live with Gradgrind, Sleary
says to her, “You’ll make your fortune, I hope, and none of our poor folkth will ever trouble
you” (Dickens 34). This says that Sissy has a better chance in the life that Gradgrind can
give her than she would have had in the circus. Gradgrind and Coketown do not recognize
the emotions inside the circus but view them as fancy, nothing serious or factual about them.

Chapter 10

"It is said that every life has its roses and thorns; there seemed, however, to have
been a misadventure or mistake in Stephen’s case, whereby 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"

Mark 15:17 - “They dressed Him up in purple, and after twisting a crown of thorns,
they put it on Him.”
What do the thorns symbolize?

Stephen Blackpool does not have good luck on his side he has twice as much thorns, thorns
being the mistakes in life and he has no roses, roses being the correct decisions in life. So
what Dickens is saying whatever this man does it will be the wrong decision to make.
Stephen could not be described as a clever person as he is not and intelligent man he barley
can make a speech but Dickens calls him a man of perfect integrity, integrity means truth or
honesty so is what Dickens is calling Stephen is he is an honest man. Stephen is not only
deprived of the pleasure of the roses, he also has a double suffering of thorns; this has
distinct echoes of Jesus’ crown of thorns. In the Bible, The soldiers who beat Jesus wrapped
him in a purple robe and placed a crown of thorns upon his head. They gave Jesus a crown
of thorns to mock him because Jesus spoke openly to Pilate that he was a king, but his
kingdom was not of this world. The crown of thorns that was being used as a way to hurt and
mock Jesus, has instead become a powerful reminder of exactly who Jesus is and what he
went through. In the same sense here for Stephan, life/ society/ social class/ being a Hand
have deprived him of the roses and they have given him only thorns, always on his head to
remind him of how life will always despair and crush him because of its cruelty. He is a man
who deserves joy and well-being yet he never received them. Stephen is the victim of a
double tragedy: not only is he mistreated in his working life by Bounderby, but his private life
is poisoned by the marriage in which he is trapped. The thorns serve as a reminder from the
harshness of society. Stephen Blackpool's name is significant in the story "Hard Times"
because he is a man who does not seem to get out of falling victim of the muck of society,
even though he is a good man.

Chapter 11

How does Mr. Bounderby treat his workers? What does he call them?

"When a man tells me anything about imaginative qualities, I always tell that man,
whoever he is, that I know what he means. He means turtle-soup and venison, with a

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gold spoon."
‫السؤال واالقتباس جوابه نفس الشرح‬
Turtle soup and venison are expensive and specialized food items, the gold spoon a far
better tool than the steel or wooden spoons workers likely use. The metaphor describes a
physical representation that allows Mr. Bounderby to explain the sense of entitlement he
gives to his factory hands. While the workers may wish for better food and living conditions,
the workers do not have aspirations to the extent Mr. Bounderby claims. They just want
shorter working hours, safer conditions, and better pay. Yet Mr. Bounderby uses this
exaggerated metaphor as a means of denying his workers any improvements at all because
he thinks they want too much. The way that Bounderby treats the workers defines them as
replaceable objects. He refers to the factory workers as a large group, rather than
individuals. Bounderby believes that he is above the workers of the factory and treats them
poorly because of this. Bounderby refuses to acknowledge that the factory workers are
people of value, but instead separates them from himself. By calling the workers “hands”
Dickens illustrates how the factory workers are only seen as a part of the machine, only a
part of the system, rather than individuals.
Chapter 12
It was not the touch he needed most at such a moment - the touch that could calm the
wild waters of his soul, as the uplifted hand of the sublimest love and patience could
abate the raging of the sea.

This is a reference to Jesus's miracle of calming the seas. One day, The disciples follow him
into a boat as they cross the sea. When a storm arises, the disciples plead for the Lord to
save them. Jesus first reproves them for their little faith and then rebukes and silences the
winds. So here, it is saying that the hand that touched his shoulder was not the hand that
could save him the way Jesus saved or calmed the sea with his hands.

👇‫تعاريف‬
Grimalkin- A name given to a cat, an old female cat. It is applied to a jealous or imperious
old woman. During the early modern period, the name grimalkin – and cats in general –
became associated with the devil and witchcraft. Women tried as witches in the 16th
centuries were often accused of having a familiar, frequently a grimalkin. It is also believed
that Satan would send a devil in the form of a cat to a certain place to spread bad feelings in
it. Hence, the cat here is a gothic element.

Pegasus is a winged horse in Greek mythology, usually depicted as a white stallion, the
name of Pegasus is close to the word pege, meaning ‘spring’, Pegasus thus symbolically
combines water with air: springs and wings both suggest creativity and elevation.