Summary of hard times

1. St Xavier’s College, Mahuadanr
Summary of the Novel Hard Times.
All fiction has its autobiographical roots, spreading through as in the case of
Charles Dickens, a provincial world, limited and claustrophobic of industrial
England. But this world which Dickens has described in his novels is one in which
he had his apprenticeship in childhood and which he knew intimately because of his
experiences in the early school of life.
The title of Dickens novel ‘Hard Times’ is an apt description of his early life
and youth, when the Industrial Revolution was just beginning to show its ugly face.
Dickens was a voracious reader and sharp observer of the changing English
landscape in the towns and villages.
Background to Hard Times:
Hard Times is a novel of the Industrial Revolution, of the lives of the men,
women and children that were turned upside down by the demands of the New Age.
Hard Times became synonymous with a slump, when insufficient food and low of
wages or unemployment bore down particularly hard on the common people.
The Historical Image of the Period:
England in the 1840s was known for the breakneck growth of the railways,
the congested towns and mills that sprang up to break the quiet of traditional
England has been vividly described in Hard Times. This was the age when Britain
changed from rural to urban civilization within two generations; or in other words it
was a period of rapid transition from the old to the new and hence marked by cross
currents in which the individual seems to have been lost.The great intellectual and
spiritual disturbances in society and within the individual are reflected in the
literature of the period more especially in Hard Times.
Hard Times which has been set in the 1840s reflects this turmoil in the individual
and collective lives of the people and has been described as a novel of social protest.

2. Analysis of Hard Times:
As we have already said, Hard Times is a novel of social protest against the
injustices of the Industrial Revolution in mid 19th century. It is not only the working
classes known as the “Hands” who bear the brunt of the Revolution but all other
classes as well. The novel is divided into three separate books Sowing, Reaping, and
the Garnering. Essentially these are the concepts taken from the Bible - whatsoever
a man sows that he shall reaps. Each of the characters in the novel sows reaps and
garners the fruits of his or her labors.
Hard Times is an 1854 novel by English author Charles Dickens. Taking
place in three parts named after a Biblical verse, “Sowing,” “Reaping,” and
“Garnering,” it satirizes English society by picking apart the social and economic
ironies of its contemporary life. The novel takes place in a fictional industrial town
in Northern England called Coketown, modeled partially on Manchester. The
novel is best known for its pessimism regarding the state of trade unions and the
exploitation of the working class by capitalist elites.
Book 1, “Sowing,” begins from the point of view of school superintendent Mr.
Gradgrind. An exacting educator, he interrogates a student named Sissy,
revealing his inclination to punish students who are unable to speak strictly in
facts. His two sons are named after famous thinkers, Malthus and Adam Smith,
and his daughter is named Jane. Gradgrind’s friend Josiah Bounderby is a rich
mill owner who constantly reflects on the fruits of his difficult childhood and
unshakable entrepreneurial spirit. The two convene and decide to expel Sissy
because they think she is disrupting the school. However, they learn that her
father has orphaned her in the belief that she might lead a better life without his
influence. Mr. Gradgrind offers Sissy, who wants to join the circus, a chance to
return to school to work for his wife. She decides on school in the hope that she
will find her father again.
Other characters important to the novel include Stephen Blackpool, a mill
worker who struggles with a marriage to an alcoholic wife whom he cannot leave;
and Mrs. Sparsit, the assistant to Bounderby who rebuffs Blackpool’s appeal to

3. Gradgrind for advice. Louisa is proposed to by Bounderby and ambivalently
accepts. Her brother Tom arrives to say farewell as she leaves for Lyon.
Book 2. “Reaping” begins at Bounderby’s bank in the middle of Coketown.
One of Sissy’s classmates, Bitzer, has teamed up with Mrs. Sparsit to watch over it
after dark. A man appears and asks for the way to Bounderby’s, claiming he has
come from London at the request of Gradgrind. He introduces himself as James
Harthouse. Harthouse meets Bounderby who tries to impress him with absurd
stories about his youth, boring him. However, he is infatuated with Louisa, whose
brother Tom now works under Bounderby.
Later, a union meeting assembles where the activist Slackridge announces
that Blackpool is a traitor for refusing to be part of the union. Bounderby
scapegoats Blackpool for the uproar, firing him. Louisa and Tom meet Blackpool,
giving him pity money, while Tom asks him to meet him at the bank after his
shift. As he does, a robbery occurs in the bank; Blackpool is accused of being the
criminal. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sparsit is suspicious of the relationship between Louisa
and Harthouse, believing it is adulterous. She follows Louisa on her way to her
father’s home but loses her. Louisa faints at her father’s doorstep after an
incoherent statement about her repressed emotions.
Book 3 “Garnering” begins at Bounderby’s London hotel. Mrs. Sparsit
informs him of her mistaken finding that Louisa and Harthouse are lovers.
Bounderby goes with her to Louisa’s residence at Stone Lodge, where Gradgrind
insists that Louisa is not in love with Harthouse, and had merely fainted after a
personal crisis. Bounderby grows angry with Mrs. Sparsit, delivering an
ultimatum that Louisa returns immediately lest he calls off the marriage. Louisa
ignores his demand. Sissy tells Harthouse to leave Coketown forever, while
Bounderby suspects that Louisa and Tom are plotting against him.
One Sunday, Sissy and Rachael come upon Stephen trapped in a pit, having
fallen into it on the way to Coketown. A group of locals pull him out, but he dies
after stating his innocence. The two women now suspect Tom of robbing the bank
and framing Stephen. Sissy regrets having helped Tom escape to the circus. They
go there and find him wearing blackface. Gradgrind appears, working with the

4. circus owner, Sleary, to help Tom escape to Liverpool, from where he will leave the
country. Blitzer valiantly arrives, throwing off the plot in an attempt to arrest
Tom, inadvertently allowing Tom to escape.
At the end of the novel, Bounderby fires Mrs. Sparsit for her many
mistakes. The narrator projects into the characters’ future lives, stating that
Bounderby will die on the street of an unknown affliction. Mr. Gradgrind will
become a political outcast; Tom will perish in America after apologizing to Louisa.
Louisa never marries again; she will live a life of charity and kindness, and will
have a happy and imaginative life with Sissy’s children. Hard Times, though
almost all of its many characters face despair, suggests that the actions of
individuals deeply affect even the distant futures of their lives.