"Cliff Notes - Hard Times" - читать интересную книгу автора (Cliff Notes)

Dickens's writing skills and his social conscience merged when he began a weekly periodical in 1850. He invited many of his friends to contribute history, fiction, reviews, and essays that portrayed social matters. The purpose of the periodical was "to cherish the light of Fancy which is inherent in the human heart." (Remember this phrase as you read Hard Times.)

Each issue (or number) of the magazine, called Household Words, dealt with a social problem: government aid for education, alcoholism, illiteracy, factory accidents, industrial schools. These articles often championed radical ideas, and they were so skillfully blended with entertainment that the magazine was an enormous success. Pioneers in sanitary and housing reform gave Dickens much credit for bringing their causes to the general public.

It was at a time when sales of Household Words were low that Dickens decided to write a weekly serial that would match the popularity of some of his earlier works. Since his previous novels had been written in monthly numbers, the task of writing weekly episodes was exhausting. Yet he was spurred by the challenge of writing about the horrors of the Industrial Revolution that had so shocked him in Manchester fifteen years before. In this way Hard Times was born and helped the magazine's popularity considerably. Dickens said at the time that the purpose of the novel was not to create social unrest, but to foster understanding between management and labor.

Hard Times has not enjoyed the critical success of such Dickens's masterpieces as David Copperfield (1849-50) and Great Expectations (1860-61). Some readers have charged that it does not explore factory life with the same perceptive detail with which he exposed the courts in Bleak House. (And it is strange that, for all of the talk of worker hardship in Hard Times, Dickens never takes us within the factories themselves.) Some readers even point to the Stephen Blackpool sequences as melodramatic and unbelievable.

The novel does have its champions; some regard Hard Times as one of his finest works of satire. They cite its economy (it is one of Dickens's shortest novels), its passion, and its prophetic portrait of social ills in their praise of the book. As always, Dickens tells a wonderful story, one with suspense, humor, deeply felt emotion, and tenderness. Dickens the entertainer is never blotted out by Dickens the reformer.

How successful was Hard Times as a document of radical social change? It's often impossible to gauge the exact influence a book has on a culture, since its effects materialize slowly. And Dickens was not the only writer pointing to the hideous results of industrialization. (Elizabeth Gaskell, another novelist and a friend of Dickens, wrote about similar topics in such books as North and South.) Yet his immense readership guaranteed that the public would become aware of the plight of the factory workers in greater numbers than could be reached by any newspaper.

By the 1890s, conditions for the workers had improved somewhat, thanks largely to the workers themselves, who formed trade unions that forced reforms on employers. Even though Dickens criticizes the unions in Hard Times, he would have been the first to applaud these reforms. Such passionate social critics as George Bernard Shaw acclaimed Dickens as a supreme influence on the betterment of English society. (He thought Dickens's novel Little Dorrit was as radical and rebellious a work as Karl Marx's Das Kapital.)

In 1858, Dickens began to give a series of public readings from his own work. He was a marvelous performer, as popular onstage as he was in print. But the exhausting performances damaged his health, which declined seriously over the next few years.

Despite illness he took a trip to America. He had been there years before, and a resulting book, American Notes (1842), made some Americans furious at the way Dickens had portrayed them. But during this visit in 1867, he was greeted with a frenzy we might reserve for a rock star today.

Dickens returned to England in extremely poor health. He died of a paralytic stroke on June 9, 1870. At the time, he was writing The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which he never finished.

Even if you've never read a Dickens novel, it's likely that you know his work anyway. Countless movies, television shows, musicals, and plays have been based on his work. Scarcely a Christmas season goes by without a new version of A Christmas Carol (1843). So you may "know" Dickens without having read a word of his writing. But there's no substitute for his own words. No adaptation can do justice to his genius. Like all great writers, Dickens created worlds both recognizable and magical. Like Shakespeare, Dickens embraced all levels of society and invested each one with his own generous touch of humanity.


^^^^^^^^^^HARD TIMES: THE PLOT

Coketown is a grimy, smelly industrial town in northern England, its houses and skies blackened by smoke from factory chimneys. One of its leading citizens is Thomas Gradgrind, future member of Parliament and governor of the local school. Gradgrind lives with his wife and five children, including the eldest, Louisa, and Tom, Jr.

When we first see Gradgrind, he is observing a typical class in his school, taught by Mr. M'Choakumchild. Gradgrind lectures the teacher on the school's philosophy: "Facts" are important, nothing else but facts. All else is "fancy"--sentiment, imagination. Cecilia Jupe ("Sissy"), the daughter of an acrobatic rider and clown with a traveling troupe of performers, is asked to define a horse. She can't, but Bitzer, an ambitious student, can. His answer is based entirely on fact.

Gradgrind later spies Louisa and young Tom outside the horse-riding (circus) tent, trying to catch a glimpse of the performers. Shocked at their interest in such frivolity, Gradgrind seeks the advice of his friend, Josiah Bounderby, a banker and factory owner. They conclude that it must be Sissy Jupe's influence that is responsible. They try to find her father, but discover that he's deserted Sissy to prevent her from seeing him lose his talents. Gradgrind offers to take care of Sissy by bringing her into his household, hoping that Louisa will see what happens to someone who was raised on fancy, not fact. Sissy accepts his invitation.

Bounderby objects to the arrangement. He has dragged himself up from poverty to a position of power and wealth. Treating the "lower classes" with such kindness is a mistake to him; these people are spoiled enough. Bounderby lives with his housekeeper, Mrs. Sparsit, a member of the faded aristocracy. She has lost her money, but not her disdain for those she considers beneath her.

Another resident of Coketown is Stephen Blackpool, a factory worker.

Once happily married, Stephen is separated from his wife, a drunkard who wanders off for months at a time, only to return to shame him. Stephen is in love with Rachael, another worker, but the two of them can't marry because of divorce laws that favor the wealthy. For Stephen and Rachael, life is a "muddle."

Gradgrind is elected to Parliament. It is decided that his son Tom should work at Bounderby's bank and that his daughter Louisa should marry Bounderby. Louisa tries to communicate to her father that the marriage would be a mistake, but Gradgrind refuses to hear of anything that speaks of love or sentiment. Only Sissy, who discontinues her education because she is thought "unteachable," but who stays on in the Gradgrind household, understands Louisa's plight. But Louisa is too proud to accept Sissy's compassion. When the wedding takes place, only Tom Gradgrind is truly happy, thinking his life at the Bounderby bank will be much easier with his sister around to defend him.

A year after the wedding, changes have taken place in Coketown. Mrs. Sparsit now lives in an apartment at the bank, where the sneaky Bitzer has become the messenger. And a new person has come to town--James Harthouse, an aristocratic young man recruited by Gradgrind's political party.

Harthouse is immediately attracted to Louisa, and he accurately senses that the Bounderby marriage is not a success. He makes plans to alleviate his own boredom by trying to win Louisa's affections.

Meanwhile, the workers of Coketown are attempting to form a union to protect their rights. They are led by Slackbridge, a power-hungry union organizer. Stephen refuses to join the union because he's convinced it won't help their plight, and because of a promise he's made to Rachael. True to their pact, the workers shun Stephen, who eventually loses his job when loyalty to his co-workers prevents him from denouncing them to Bounderby.

Stephen is forced to leave town to look for work. Louisa offers him money, which he refuses, but Tom has something else in mind. He asks Stephen to linger for several evenings around the bank, which Stephen innocently does. After waiting for three evenings, nothing happens, so Stephen sets off from Coketown.

The relationship between Harthouse and Louisa begins to intensify. Their every move is watched by Mrs. Sparsit, eager to prove the fact of adultery and to see the Bounderby marriage crumble.