Hard times

Through his novels, he fiercely criticised the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society. He had to leave school to work ten-hour days in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtor’s prison. In spite of his lack of formal education, he went on to become a literary juggernaut and achieved world-wide fame within his lifetime.

Hard Times, first published in 1854, is Charles Dickens’ shortest novel. The novel is set in the fictitious Coketown, a mill town in 19th century northern England, modelled perhaps on Manchester, albeit smaller. It is the story of one ThomasGradgrind, a school superintendent who raises his children, Louisa and Tom, in the arid environs of only pragmatic and definable facts and figures. Due to this demonic approach, their life is devoid of imagination, beauty or empathy and they wander through life without a moral compass. As they slowly sink into desperation and despair as adults, Gradgrind is forced to realize that his misguided principles have crippled them for life.

The novel is a bitter and untempered criticism of the dehumanizing effect of the diabolical industrial practices in Victorian England. Of its theme, Dickens declared “My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else.”