The document presents a detailed analysis of Charles Dickens' novel 'Hard Times,' emphasizing its themes of industrialization and the impact of a rigid, fact-based education on personal development. It discusses the characters Louisa and Tom Gradgrind, who struggle with emotional detachment due to their upbringing in a harsh environment. Various critics provide their perspectives on the novel, highlighting its gender dynamics, moral lessons, and Dickens' critique of utilitarianism.

1. H A R D T I M E S F O T T H E S E T I M E S
1 8 5 4

2. PRESENTATION
BY: Sibtain Hassan, 4B (Evening)
TO: Dr. Aftab Akram (SIR)
Quotation Of The Novel and Critics C h a r l e s
D i c k e n s

3. 3
Author Biography

4. OVERVIEW OF NOVEL
4
The Gradgring children, Louisa and Tom, are
raised in industrial Coketown to be rational
and practical. Once they grow up, they
discover their education in facts and figures
has not prepared them for the complex
challenges of the world around them. ABOUT THE TITLE
The title Hard Times or the full title Hard Times
for These Times refers to the difficulties of life
caused by industrialization in England in the
19th century and by the constraints of rigid, fact-
based education that arose along with it in the
attempt to increase profits and control life and
thought.

5. “
As Louisa Gradgrind contemplates Mr. Bounderby's marriage proposal, hints
of her emotional detachment and dissatisfaction with her life. She considers
pessimistically how short her life will be and how few options are open to her.
In talking about doing the little she can and is fit for, she alludes to her desire
to help her brother. With no emotional ties to anyone else, she determines it
does not matter if she marries Mr. Bounderby or, indeed, anyone else.
Louisa 5
While it lasts, I would wish to do the little I can, the
little I am fit for. What does it matter?(Louisa, b.1, C.5 ) ’’

6. Quotation
‘‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls
nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.’’
Mr. Gradgrind opens Hard Times with this famous address to
the class at his school. His words outline his philosophy of
educating children: facts are more important than all else, as
they are key to understanding the world and achieving success
in it. This philosophy, rejected by Dickens, dismisses emotional
understanding, analysis, and creative thinking, as it presents
factual analysis as the answer to everything.
Gradgrind 6
(Mr. Gradgrind, Book 1, Chapter 1)

7. Quotation
‘You saw nothing in Coketown but what was
severely workful.’’ (book 1, chap: 5)
When the city is properly introduced, the description of Coketown
culminates in a phrase that shows how the structure and function of
the town mirrors the philosophy of the men who run it. Mr.
Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind, emphasize the usefulness of facts
as the basis for all understanding. They scorn processes not visibly
useful, just as the city rejects structures and residents not visibly
useful. The city, fictitiously set somewhere in northern England,
like its ruling class denies the humanity of its residents.

8. Quotations from the Novel
“Depth answers only to depth .” (Book 2, Chapter 7 Page 2)
“Do the wise thing and the kind thing too, and make the
best of us and not the worst.” (book 3, chapter 8)
“The last trumpet ever to be sounded shall blow even
algebra to wreck.”(book 1, chapter: 15)
“There is a wisdom of the head, and... there is a wisdom of
the heart.”

9. 9
Critics View On Novel (Hard Times)
George Henry Lewes
(The single hard fact about Hard Times is that it is a male-dominated and patriarchal novel.
Obviously, this gives rise to the issue of gender and opens up related issues of the way Victorian
society was constituted, the way people saw themselves and constructed the other, and the way
sexual politics controlled women in private and public life. Dickens explores feminine discourses
such as female affection and sympathy much to the chagrin of his male-dominated critics such as
George Henry Lewes (George Eliot’s companion).
Dickens reveals a linguistic structure that attempts to control literature and more especially the
entry of women in public life. Though speaking as a male and from the outside, Dickens speaks
against the controllers of power thereby enhancing his position as a novelist.) (Jstor)

10. 10
Critics View On Novel (Hard Times)
Marjorie Boulton
‘In Hard Times Dickens almost insists to much on his main theme too much. It is
Mr. Gradgrind’s discovery that ‘’there is wisdom of the Head, and there is a
wisdom of the Heart’’.
Dickens was combating a narrow form of Utilitarianism: Hard Times reminds us
that love, sympathy, generosity, as well as, amusement and imagination, are
vitally necessary complements to reason, intellect and self-interest.’’
(The Anatomy of the Novel (Routledge Revivals)

11. 11
Critics View On Novel (Hard Times)
J. B. Priestley
(‘’Hard Times has had its special admirers, particularly among those who see Dickens as a
propagandist for their own political-economic ideology. We are told that one Cambridge pundit [F.
R. Leavis?], a few years ago, declared that the only Dickens novel worth reading was Hard Times —
surely one of the most foolish statements of this age. It would be far more sensible to reverse this
judgment, to say that of all the novels of Dickens's maturity Hard Times is the least worth reading. It
is muddled in its direct political-social criticism. Here for once it is almost as if we are seeing
Dickens through the eyes of his hostile critics, for in Hard Times there really are reckless and
theatrical over-statements, there really are characters that are nothing but caricatures, there
really is melodramatic muddled emotion- alism.’’
The truth is, Dickens did not know enough about industrial England that's why Hard Times is a bad
novel.
(Priestley, J. B. Victoria's Heyday. New York: Harper & Rowe, 1972)

12. 12
Critics View On Novel (Hard Times)
DR. LEAVIS’S ‘‘Analytical Note’’ on Hard Times and in one of His letter, Dr.
Leavis should allege in regard to Hard Times that ‘‘if there exists anywhere an
appreciation, or even an acclaiming reference, I have missed it.‘’
Dr. Leavis complain of the want of an ‘‘acclaiming reference’’ when G.K
Chesterton’s remark that ‘‘Hard Times…, is perhaps in a sense of his greatest
monuments’’ be found in documents of 1960.
(Geoffrey Johnston Sadock, A critical Commentary on Hard Times, jstor)

13. 13
Paul Schlicke
‘Hard Times is perhaps Dickens’s most polemical novel, contrasting what he
saw as the errors of hard-headed rationalism with values represented by the
daughter of a circus clown. ‘I entertain a weak idea,’ he wrote, ‘that the English
people are as hard-worked as any people upon whom the sun shines. I
acknowledge this ridiculous idiosyncrasy, as a reason why I would give them a
little more play’ (Book 1, Ch. 10).
Critics View On Novel (Hard Times)
(Dr Paul Schlicke is an internationally renowned Dickens scholar, whose works include Dickens and Popular
Entertainment (1985), several Dickens critical editions, including Oxford World's Classics.)

14. THANKYOU!
lalajanmikhandon@gmail.com
https://prezi.com/hasaan.Sibtain.