Ellie Goldrick

Charles Dickens’s Hard Times depicts the bustling city of Coketown and how this new realm of industry is creeping into the everyday lives of its inhabitants.  Dickens’s satire mocks this newfound utilitarianism, and glorifies characters such as the hard working Stephen Blackpool or the slow but imaginative Sissy Jupe.  These characters exhibit individuality and passion in one way or another, yet are ruled by the likes of Mr. Bounderby and Thomas Gradgrind.  Gradgrind, however, in his quest for rationality and constant drilling of facts, complicates his initial persona of a hard-nosed educator who believes poetry is a waste of time (21).  His philosophy of education revolves around factual information: “Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts…You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts” (7).  This constant drilling of “Facts” has such a great emphasis, and mirrors the industrial world.  As a machine or worker moves tediously to complete material goods, a student monotonously memorizes facts to gain knowledge.  Gradgrind’s education is all about repetition, and ultimately prepares his students for a life of labor in Coketown.  Gradgrind, however, complicates his rationality in his discussion of marriage with his daughter Louisa, who is set to marry Mr. Bounderby.  Louisa questions her father about this proposal, asking, “‘do you ask me to love Mr. Bounderby?’”  (94).  Gradgrind cannot answer her and is “extremely discomfited” by her inquiries of love (94).  His hesitation complicates his view on rationality: If Mr. Bounderby is a practical match, what should love matter?  Gradgrind is certainly not a patron for passion, so is his uncertainty merely an attempt to formulate his logic about the match?  Or is it his daughter’s happiness that flusters him, causing him to see problems with his own ideology?

Professor's Reply: This is great moment to pick on Ellie because it's one of those tell-tale signs that Dickens leaves in the text (another is Gradgrind's adoption of Sissy when her father disappears, or later, his distress at discovering that Tom is largely responsible for Stephen's plight) suggesting that if other characters like the cynical Harthouse or the bloodless Bitzer (not to mention the self-absorbed Bounderby) are heartless, Gradgrind may be only emotionally impaired. He proves himself to have the potential to redeem himself.

Jessica Hanna
In Charles Dickens novel Hard Times, the audience is introduced to lively imagery, which plays an important role throughout the novel. One of the images that Dickens uses in his novel is that of fire. In the third chapter of “Book the First,” Louisa is introduced as having a light and fire within her: “ there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow” (Dickens 17). I believe that Dickens is indicating that even though Louisa is under the rules of her father, she still has her own thoughts and her own imagination inside of her. The fire and light in Louisa symbolizes her inner thoughts and emotions that she possesses. The reader also sees the image of fire when Dickens describes Coketown: “It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves forever and ever” (Dickens 26). Dickens does not directly use the word fire, but the reader can conclude that fire is what runs the machinery and chimneys in Coketown. What is the significance of the fire in Louisa and the fire that runs Coketown, and what does it indicate about the novel in its entirety? I believe that Dickens intended the fire to be an encouraging image, as well as a destructive image. Louisa thinks for herself and develops her own ideas and beliefs; however, we see that Louisa’s inner fire eventually subsides when she shares her suppressed feelings with her father. The reader can also see that fire is destructive in Coketown. The fire causes the town to become dark, dirty, and poor. The destruction of the fire in Hard Times represents the life and death in both Louisa and Coketown.

Professor's Reply: In the segment marked in bold, I especially like your impulse to see the fire imagery doubly: as suggesting both creative and destructive potential. I wonder whether in both Louisa and in the Coketowners we don't see the potential for rebellion which Dickens as a novelist then elects not to pursue and develop? Other novelists, like Elizabeth Gaskell, were bolder in this regard, as were theorists like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. What d'you make of Dickens closing the novel with Louisa still looking at the fire?