Summary:
Dickens shows his moral views in `Hard Times' expressing his belief that Victorian schools and their teachers are complete negative influences. He saw the Victorian education system as ineffective and often wrote essays attacking the forces of industrialisation, the government and those responsible for what he saw as the poor schooling techniques.
Hard Times
Dickens did not like the changes industrialisation brought to Victorian society. Industrialisation brought many factories, poor working conditions and overcrowded cities. Dickens also hated Victorian schools altogether. He saw the Victorian education system as ineffective and often wrote essays attacking the forces of industrialisation, the government and those responsible for what he saw as the poor schooling techniques. He shows this hatred clearly in 'Hard times' and nowhere more so than in his description of Gradgrind.
Dickens often gave characters in his novels names that summed up their personality, for example; Mr. M'Choakumchild chokes children to death, Ebenezer Scrooge, unwilling to give or spend and Thomas Gradgrind grinds down the kids.
"we hope to have, before long a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact and nothing but fact." This firstly shows that it is not just Gradgrind that is obsessed with facts, it is the whole school, implying the whole education system is like this. Also they wish for the facts to be 'forced' upon all people as they are doing in the school. Dickens put Gradgrind across as forceful, having high standards, obsessed and full of facts and wishing everyone of his pupils to be as smart as he is. Mr M'Choakumchild is shown very similar to Gradgrind, this gives the impression that all teachers of this time are like this.
The school is set in 'coketown', this gives the impression that English towns around the industrial revolution are ugly, polluted and destroy health. Dickens gives this impression. This is not his first novel dealing with school, he also wrote David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby.
The school is described as plain, containing no imagination or decoration, just straight to the point as if it was built purely of facts. The rooms are white-washed and bare to represent the industry at that time. Dickens describes them as "plain, bare monotonous vault of a school-room." This 'vault' gives the impression of the school-room being like a prison cell, big, bare, white-washed and with barred up windows. The children are like prisoners, under the strict rules and always watchful eye of Gradgrind. They are arranged like prisoners, in evenly-spaced rows strictly monitored and not to move.
Sissy Jupe is a colourful character, full of life. She is very polite, curtsying to address Gradgrind. Sissy is very proud of her father, she thinks of him highly, we can tell this by the way she tries to defend him against the mighty onslaught of Gradgrind's criticism "it's father calls me Sissy, sir"," He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir." and so forth. Gradgrind intimidates Sissy, giving her little confidence. Because of Sissy's timid and shy nature Gradgrind easily embarrasses Sissy with his intimidation "she would have blushed deeper, if she could have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time."
Sissy is contrasted with Bitzer who is dull, pale and lifeless, as Dickens says "the boy who was so light-eyed and light-haired that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white." Whereas his description of Sissy is "the girl was so dark-eyed and dark-haired she seemed to receive a deeper more lustrous colour from the sun." Bitzer is zombie like, he looks ill or even lifeless and has no opinion of his own, he is a slave to Gradgrind's facts. We can tell this from his description of a horse "Quadruped. Gramnivorous. 40 teeth. Sheds coat in spring."
Dickens uses a biblical language sometimes in 'hard times'. For example, "say, good M'Choakumchild when from thy boilling store thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber fancy lurking within-or sometimes only maim him and distort him." This style of writing is good because it stands out well.
Dickens also writes philosophically, like when Gradgrind says "facts forbid," instead of heaven forbid, showing Gradgrind is so obsessed by facts they are his heaven. Dickens shows his moral view in 'Hard Times' that Victorian schools are terrible and the teachers are horrible people. This novel, having 'a moral to the story' is also like the biblical style writing.
This is the complete article, containing 696 words
(approx. 2 pages at 300 words per page).
