Dickens’ Hard Times: His Penchant for Romantic Principles Essay

problematic Times is a rare example of fiction spun out of actually prosaic materials. nonetheless it possesses certain romantic characteristics of brooding tenderness and deep sympathy for the ignored and the underprivileged which became hall mark of Charles dickens novels. It also displays a suffer melancholy, a mournful reflectiveness and a quantity of self-indulgent sen snipntality. The American scholarly person A. O. Lovejoy argues that the word romantic has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing at all.It may seem that repetition has wrung the action out of the term, yet it still appears to be as potentially sustaining as a twist of pemmican. It is a word at once subjective and useless. F. L. Lucas has counted 11,396 definitions of romanticism. (Cuddon. 767). But we are more concerned with the definition of a course to exalt the individual and his needs and emphasis on the need for a freer and more personal expression. (Cuddon. 769-70) The entir e novel in three separate is built up on the romantic and nature imagery of sowing reaping and garnering of harvest.It is an representative of the biblical saying As you sow, so your reap. The initial book of sowing begins with the seeds of wrong(p) information by Mr. Thomas Gradgrind In this life, we want nothing tho Facts, sir nothing besides Facts (Hard Times. 3) But as the story develops, we find that it is this nurture of hard facts which runs riot and destroys the happiness of his own children, gobbler and Louisa. daemon creates a poignant novel out of misplaced affections and social exploitations.Ironically, his son and daughter, Tom and Louisa, are misled by their fathers unimaginative information. They get along with the wretched Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a poor circus doer and suffer at the hands of the hard-hearted school master. Sissy is forced by circumstances to leave school and work as a business firm companion to Tom and Louisa who prefer the world of imagination so vehemently denounced by their father. Louisas first blunder is to run into an incompatible espousal with a man of fifty when she is just eighteen.It turns out to be a marriage of convenience with a highbrow aristocrat named Joshia Bounderby who unabashedly declares I have watched her bringing-up, and I believe she is fitting of me. At the same time not to deceive youI believe I am worthy of her. (Hard Times. 84) The reason for such odd marriage is her comrade Tom who seeks a position in Bounderbys bank.Dickens exposes the hypocrisy behind the veneering of Victorian idealism. Interwoven with it is the sub-plot of unfortunate Mr.Stephen Blackpool who jumps from the frying pan into the fire by his attempt to run away from his alcoholic wife. His love for Rachel is frustrated as he gets no help from anyone to divorce his wife. Moreover, he is witch hunt for a false charge of robbing the bank which is actually masterminded by than Tom. passim the novel Dickens explor es the conflict between the world of facts and imagination in children and its effects in their freshr life, as the New Testament says by their fruits ye shall know them. (Matthew 7. 20)Being a drop-out Sissy is lucky to have send off Gradgrinds soul-destroying education and upgrades its futility. Dickens story depicts the suffering of victims, oddly women, for whom we feel great sympathy. The underdogs include Sissy and his poor father Mr. Jupe, the disquieted Blackpool and Mrs Pegler. Rachael is romantically attached to Blackpool and spends sleepless night to be with him, but it is an mockery of fate that she has to serve Stephens sick wife in destitute lodgings.Like Sissy, she is an angel who lives for others. In Victorian society her relationship with a married man can hardly be expected to be respectable. In a moving speech she reveals her feeling of guilt for her misjudgment. Mrs Gradgrind first carries out her husbands philosophy only to realize late its folly and advi ces Louisa to pay heed to Sissy. Mrs. Pegler is another victim of wrong education. Her megalomaniac son, Bounderby, tries to prove how he has succeeded de enkindle his neglected childhood, but his allegations are proved to be false.The romantic interest in the story is sustained in Hard Times by Louisa Gradgrind. Against her fathers warning, she peeps at the circus and comes to her brothers defense by asserting her curiosity. Because of her immaturity she is exploited by James Harthouse yet she shows considerable wisdom by being very sensitive to her mother in death bed. Harthouse has his charm of personality, particularly for the population he akins. Mr. Harthouses romantic affair with Louisa is marred by the green-eyed monster and suspicion of Mrs Sparsit.Sissy Jupe is associated with the heavenly ray of sunlight. In spite of the halo, she is down-to-earth and she makes a last attempt to hide Tom in the circus when he is implicated in robbery. It is touching to see her comfort Rachael when she waits for Blackpool. There are also victims of incompatible marriage like Louisa and Bounderby, as well as Blackpool and his drunken wife. Louisas marriage is a dedicate to provide her brother with a job, but he repays this sacrifice with give off ingratitude by robbing the bank that provides him with livelihood.Most of them are victims of wrong education imparted by Thomas Gradgrinds model school. Failed marriage is a recurrent theme in Dickens novels. In David Copperfield, for example, the marriage with the sweet-flavored doll-like Dora crumbles to make way for a sensible marriage with mature Agnes. Dickens himself was romantic like his hero and had an incompatible marriage with Maria which bust up in 1833 when he became free to marry Catherine Hogarth in 1836. though she bore thirteen children, her marriage broke up in 1858 when Dickens developed a romantic affair with actress Ellen Ternan.Dickens spins a memorable tale out of the sordid industrialized life of nineteenth snow England Coketown with its blackened factories, downtrodden workers and polluted environment. Dickens gives a vivid picture It was a town of red brick, or brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. .. It has a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where at that place was a rattling and trembling all day long..(Hard Times. 18)His concern for temper being substituted by man-made machines is expressed in no doubtful terms A special contrast, as every man was in the forest of looms where Stephen worked, to the crashing, smashing, tearing piece of mechanism at which he laboured. neer fear, good people of an anxious turn of mind, that Art will lodge Nature to oblivion. (Hard Times. 54) This horrid picture of an industrialized town presupposes a romantic nostalgia for t he natural beauty of the pre-industrialized era.The plot of Hard Times hinges on the stick-to-hard-facts education imparted by Mr.Gradgrind Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. (Hard Times. 39) But his philosophy is defeat by his own children who secretly wondered about human beings nature, human passions, human hopes and fears, the struggles, mirths and defeats, the cares and joys and sorrows, the lives of death of common men and women (Hard Times. 39) Herein lies dickens romanticism the triumph of the mind over matter.