Just how hard were "Hard Times" compared to, say, today. In Dickens novel, factories in the Midlands of England belched hot, black smoke from their furnaces. Employees were just so many "hands." Capital was expanding the workforce in cities, and the countryside was being depopulated by weak grain prices and the growing opportunities in the cities.

If anything, industrial England was a place of hope. And the 19th century saw an incredible expansion of knowledge about the natural world.

While the smokestack industries may have left us much as they have left England, technology and innovation offer us tremendous hope as well. Knowledge is exploding today very much as it was a century and a half ago. Yet the urbanization continues on a scale that is now global, forging cities as large as counties in China and Africa.

For people in today's cities life can be many times as hard as it was in those Dickensian times.

What Charles Dickens found hard about those times were the hearts of capitalists, the cold steel machinery, the workplace, and what was left for the poor at the end of the day.

Thomas Gradgrind, Dickens protagonist in this novel, runs a school for children (including his own) to stuff them full of facts. No room for wonder. No room for mystery or the imagination. He sets in motion the merciless engines of fate that will consume the happiness of his children.

Today the times for the middle class are no harder than they were in Dickens' times. If anything the modernization of medicine and nutrition, the modernization of the workplace and public insurance makes life longer, safer, and less contingent. ( )

At the outset of this novel, we know that Dickens is going to pit reason against emotion, fact against feeling, and that reason and fact are going to come up short. In a world without sympathy, compassion or warmth, Louisa and Tom Gradgrind are raised. They have everything they might want in terms of money and position, but nothing else; their contrast is Sissy Jupe, a circus child who has the love of both her father and the circus family, but is steeped in poverty.

In true Dickens style, there are several side stories, one of which is the star-crossed love story of Rachael and Stephen, a sweet and dedicated pair, who bear their misfortunes with grace and acceptance. Theirs is unselfish love, which contrasts sharply with the love of Louisa for her brother, Tom, and his selfish abuse of her love for his own gain, and the loveless and unnatural marriage of Louisa with her father’s friend, Bounderby.

As always, Dickens tackles the evils of the day with some humor, in the person of Mr. Sleary, and a taste of villainy, in the form of Mrs. Sparsit. He addresses the rise of unions, and in a world where such ideas were radical, he paints them in a more favorable light than might be expected. But, most effectively, he tackles the educational system that puts everything above the individual child. While Gradgrind is not a cruel man, like Mr. Squeers who runs the school in Nicholas Nickleby, he is just as misguided and damaging to his charges. Bitzer, a minor character who serves an important part in the plot, emerges as a perfect example of the kind of empty shell that can be made of a child who is given nothing to draw on but self-interest.

I did not enjoy Hard Times as much as I have enjoyed other Dickens novels, but I did find it a worthwhile read and as always, there are characters here that will be long remembered. My next Dickens will be Little Dorrit, and I have heard that it is among his best efforts.
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To be re-read.

I love this book. While the beginning is absolutely hilarious, the story is poignant. It's about a fact-filled, mechanical society (Industrial Age Britain), which fails without wonder and imagination to lift the human spirit. It's fun to read, yet it touches the heart. ( )

Great book. I loved the ending. I laughed and cried through the whole book. The characters are wonderful and you really want to know what is going to happen to them. ( )