Hard Times

Hard Times By Charles Dickens: 

• Overview: 

Hard Times is a novel written by Charles Dickens , first published in 1854. Set in the fictional industrial town of Coketown during the mid-19th century, the novel explores the social and economic challenges faced by the working class during the Industrial Revolution. The narrative centers around several characters, including Thomas Gradgrind, a strict utilitarian schoolmaster, and his children, Louisa and Tom. The story delves into the consequences of rigid utilitarianism, the exploitation of workers, and the struggle for social justice.

Hard Times is deeply rooted in the socioeconomic transformations of the Industrial Revolution. Dickens uses the novel to critique the dehumanizing effects of industrialization, the harsh conditions of factory labor, and the prevailing utilitarian philosophy that prioritized facts and figures over human emotions. The characters’ experiences reflect the broader social issues of the time, shedding light on the disparities between the wealthy industrialists and the impoverished working class.

Contemporary readers find resonance in Hard Times as it addresses enduring themes such as the consequences of unchecked capitalism and the importance of empathy and compassion. The novel’s exploration of social injustice and its call for a more compassionate society remain relevant in discussions about the intersection of economics, education, and morality.

1. Discuss the theme of 'Utilitarianism' with illustrations from the novel / or / discuss any other theme of your choice.

A Theme Of Utilitarianism In Hard Times By Charles Dickens

In the novel Hard Times, Charles Dickens connives a theme of utilitarianism, along with education and industrialization. Utilitarianism is the belief that something is morally right if it helps a majority of people. It is a principle involving nothing but facts and leaves no room for creativity or imagination. Dickens provides symbolic examples of this utilitarianism in Hard Times by using Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, one of the main characters in the book, who has a hard belief in utilitarianism. Thomas Gradgrind is so into his philosophy of rationality and facts that he has forced this belief into his children’s and as well as his young students. Mr. Josiah Bounderby, Thomas Gradgrind’s best friend, also studies utilitarianism, but he was more interested in power and money than in facts. Dickens uses Cecelia Jupe, daughter of a circus clown, who is the complete opposite of Thomas Gradgrind to provide a great contrast of a utilitarian belief.

• Utilitarianism made for ‘Hard Times’ in Dickens’ England :

Charles Dickens, an author witnessing firsthand the harsh impacts of the industrial revolution, wrote a novel that contains in it some of the themes still present in degrowth discourse today. His novel Hard Times demonstrates the invasion of utilitarianism and its economic implications into human relationships and education. Art is Dickens preferred form of dépense to replace the hegemony of utilitarianism.

Dickens was a staunch anti-utilitarianist. While Dickens was writing Hard Times, Utilitarianism was the prominent philosophy in industrial England, founded by Jeremy Bentham.[1] Utilitarians believed that human actions should be judged based on how much pleasure (sometimes referred to as happiness) or pain they produced for the greatest number of people. Anti-utilitarians, as described in the anthology Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era, believe there is more behind human action than selfish desires for pleasure or aversion to pain. Humans are also driven by social bonds and concerns that go beyond themselves and their immediate communities.

Among other things, Bentham claimed that people would always choose to do what was pleasant and therefore the poor would always claim public assistance rather than work.[2] Bentham’s secretary and disciple, Edwin Chadwick, thus designed England’s Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 to discourage the poor from seeking relief by making it only available in unpleasant workhouses with painful working and housing conditions where there was little food. Dickens was already criticizing the conditions in workhouses in his journalism and fiction. Dickens’ most famous character, Oliver Twist, is born and lives in meager conditions in a workhouse during his childhood.

Hard Times is Dickens’ most biting fictional critique of these moral principles and their consequences. The central utilitarian character in Hard Times is Thomas Gradgrind, a school board superintendent and father who forces the children under his mandate to memorize facts and statistics. The children are encouraged to maximize utility through their actions by basing their decisions on selfish, cold calculation. In turn, the children are punished for enjoying artistic entertainment such as storybooks about fairies and watching circus performers. With lives dominated by facts and void of art, the children are frustrated and discontented. Gradgrind’s children ultimately grow to find that the utilitarian system of ethics fails them when they are confronted with the complexity of justice and emotions.

Gradgrind first finds his antithesis in Sissy, a girl at his school who is adopted by the Gradgrinds when her circus-performer father abandons her. Sissy is of another world, that of the circus that is governed by art and emotion, which contrasts with Gradgrind’s school and upper-class home, governed by facts, logic and selfishness. Sissy fails, both at school and at home, to comply with the mathematical rationalizations of utilitarianism because she is empathetic and imaginative.

Like Bentham, the school teaches that nations are thriving when they are maximizing utility by achieving pleasure for the majority. When Sissy is told by a teacher about a city where only 25 of one million inhabitants were starving, she comments, “it must be just as hard upon those who were starved.” She is asked by the teacher if a nation with “fifty millions of money” is a prosperous nation. In a response that reflects the concerns of degrowthers with income inequality, she says she couldn’t know whether it is a prosperous or thriving nation, “unless I knew who had got the money, and whether any of it was mine… but that was not in the figures at all.”

Dickens’ ultimate message is to show the value of imagination, art, and human connection in a place dominated by fact and rationality. When Tom Gradgrind’s children, Louisa and Tom face hardship because they followed their father’s utilitarian thinking, it is ultimately Sissy who will be the one who pilots change in the imaginary of the Gradgrinds. Sissy is a magnetic storyteller, someone who can light the spark in the minds of others that illuminates a new vision of the world. That vision might be a fantastic one of fairies and other forest spirits, or of a different, more compassionate future. We see this in Sissy’s undying hope that her father might still come back home to her one day. She has faith in a better tomorrow that is based on love, not material improvement.

But the jewel that any environmentalist would surely appreciate is the passage in which Dickens describes the fictional town of Coketown, the setting of Hard Times, for its air, water and noise pollution from its industrial activities. The description resembles that of modern China’s ‘cancer villages.’

Dickens would probably have agreed with the passage in Degrowth: A Vocabulary for a New Era stating that “a more solid path towards anti-utilitarianism and degrowth might be built, on the one hand, by integrating the theoretical stream opened by Bataille with his notion of dépense, and by a wider look on the numerous and unnoticed anti-utilitarianist experiences in society.” Dickens was in fact outlining these anti-utilitarianist experiences in his humanistic stories, and honoring art as the form of dépense that can lift humanity out of the dregs of productivism.

• Hard Times' themes :

1. Surveillance and Knowledge

One of Dickens's major themes centers on the idea of surveillance and knowledge. As is the case in other novels by the author, there are characters who spend time keeping secrets and hiding their history and there is another set of characters who devote themselves to researching, analyzing and listening in on the lives of others. Mrs. Sparsit and Mr. Gradgrind are both masters of surveillance but Sparsit is more gossipy while Gradgrind is more scientific. Another operator to consider is James Harthouse who devotes himself to the task of understanding and "knowing" Louisa. From all three of these characters we get the idea that knowledge of another person is a form of mastery and power over them. Besides Louisa, Josiah Bounderby is another victim of surveillance. Without knowing what she has done, Mrs. Sparsit manages to uncover the secret of Bounderby's upbringing and his foul lies about being a self-made man.

2."Fancy" vs. "Fact"

The opposition between "fancy" and "fact" is illustrated from the earliest pages of the novel. Clearly, the Gradgrind school opposes fancy, imaginative literature and "wondering." Instead, they encourage the pursuit of "hard fact" and statistics through scientific investigation and logical deduction. But the Gradgrinds are so merciless and thorough in their education that they manage to kill the souls of their pupils. Sissy Jupe and the members of Sleary's circus company stand as a contrast, arguing that "the people must be amused." Life cannot be exclusively devoted to labor.

3. Fidelity

The theme of fidelity touches upon the conflicts of personal interest, honesty and loyalty that occur throughout the novel. Certainly, characters like Josiah Bounderby and James Harthouse seem to be regularly dishonest while Louisa Gradgrind and Sissy Jupe hold fast to their obligations and beliefs. In Louisa's case, her fidelity is exemplified in her refusal to violate her marital vows despite her displeasure with her husband. Sissy's exemplifies fidelity in her devotion to the Gradgrind family and perhaps even more remarkably, in her steadfast belief that her father is going to return for her seeking "the nine oils" that she has preserved for him.

4. Escape

The theme of escape really underscores the difference between the lives of the wealthy and the lives of the poor. In Stephen Blackpool, we find a decent man who seeks to escape from his failed marriage but he cannot even escape into his dreams for peace. On the other hand, we find Tom Gradgrind who indulges in gambling, alcohol and smoking as "escapes" from his humdrum existence. And after he commits a crime, his father helps him to escape through Liverpool. Again, Louisa Gradgrind desires a similar escape from the grind of the Gradgrind system, though she resorts to imagined pictures in the fire rather than a life of petty crime. Finally, "Jem" Harthouse rounds out the options available to the nobility. With all of his life dedicated to leisure, even his work assignment is a sort of past-time from which he easily escapes when the situation has lost its luster.

References:  

“Hard Times by Charles Dickens.” GradeSaver, www.gradesaver.com/hard-times/study-guide/themes. Accessed 13 June 2025.

“Hard Times – Dickens.” Simple Lines Degrowth, 20 Feb. 2018, https://simplelinesdegrowth.wordpress.com/2018/02/20/hard-times-dickens/. Accessed 13 June 2025.

“Hard Times: Full Book Summary.” SparkNotes, https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/hardtimes/. Accessed 13 June 2025.

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