Hard Times

This will be the first of what will be many posts on Charles Dickens. Dickens' life was in many ways worthy of novelization. His contribution to western literature cannot be overstated. Some complain that his books are too long, that he was capitalizing on the days when novels were originally serialized in magazines, and a longer story meant a bigger payday. Still, Dickens' best work is a continuation of the social protest of Swift, but imbued with a comic sensibility second to none. His books are beautiful, sprawling, terrifying, hilarious, and cautionary.

Hard Times isn't one of the books that leaps to mind for a lot of people when you mention Dickens, and certainly some of the other novels deserve to be more well-known. But in Hard Times, Dickens points his microscope at utilitarianism, the tyranny of statistics, and the burgeoning industrialization that was the hallmark of northern Britain in the mid ninteenth century.

The story follows Mr. Gradgrind, the administrator of a school, Sissy Jupe, one of his students, and her interactions with his own two children, Louisa and Thomas. Sissy falls afoul of her school's utilitarian atmosphere by following her own flights of fancy. Over time, Sissy's life becomes intertwined with those of the Gradgrinds and their circle.

Dickens' contempt for some of the hallmarks of British society is well-known, and in other books he targets the legal system, the poorhouses, and the education system. Here, he sees the negative aspects of industrialization and conformity as the killing of beauty and imagination. Like most of Dickens' work, it is at turns tragic and comic. You will not forget the characters at the heart of this dark comedy. I'd rate this as top shelf Dickens, if not up to the standards of A Tale of Two Cities or David Copperfield.