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

Soon after Stephen's departure, it's learned that the bank has been robbed. Since Stephen was seen lingering outside the bank, he is implicated in the crime. So is Mrs. Pegler, a woman Stephen befriended, who comes to Coketown every year to watch Bounderby from afar. Louisa immediately suspects that Tom is responsible for the robbery, but he denies it.

Mrs. Sparsit believes that Harthouse and Louisa are about to elope. As Mrs. Sparsit sees Louisa board a train, she follows her, only to lose her along the way. But Louisa is not on her way to meet Harthouse. She is going to her father's home, and there she confesses to him that Harthouse is waiting to run away with her. She begs for her father's advice. Faced with the failure of his "facts-only" philosophy, Gradgrind is shattered. He offers Louisa shelter.

Sissy, now an important part of the Gradgrind household, goes to Harthouse on her own to persuade him to leave town. He is powerless in the face of Sissy's moral goodness, and he agrees to leave Louisa and Coketown behind.

The robbery still remains unsolved. Mrs. Sparsit is triumphant when she discovers Mrs. Pegler, but the old woman turns out to be Bounderby's mother, who had supposedly deserted him at an early age. Bounderby is revealed as a fraud and a liar, but he is unrepentant.

The search for Stephen continues. Rachael can't understand why he has not responded to her letter asking him to return. But the mystery is solved when Sissy and Rachael take a quiet walk in the country. They discover that Stephen has fallen into an abandoned mine and is near death. When he is brought from the pit, he is reunited briefly with Rachael before he dies.

Knowing that Stephen's death will point the finger of guilt at him, Tom runs away, on Sissy's advice, to Sleary's circus. When Louisa, Sissy, and Gradgrind find him there, he is playing a silly down in one of the circus acts. He feels no guilt for what he has done, and Gradgrind again must face a failed product of his philosophy.

Despite Bitzer's attempts to arrest Tom, Sleary helps the young culprit escape to a port where he can sail to safety. Sleary offers the final parting words of wisdom: people need amusement as much as they need work.

The characters go on to their respective futures. Mrs. Sparsit will live unhappily with her relative, Lady Scadgers. Bounderby will die of a fit. A repentant Tom will die before he has a chance to return home. Gradgrind will grow old, alienated from those who once shared his philosophy. Rachael will continue to live in town, occasionally helping a drunken wretch of a woman who shows up from time to time. Sissy will marry and have children, but there is no such reward in store for Louisa. She must be content with helping those less fortunate than she. Nothing changes for the workers of Coketown. They continue to be exploited from every side, all of life still "a muddle."



^^^^^^^^^^HARD TIMES: THOMAS GRADGRIND, SR.

A leading businessman of Coketown and governor of the school, Gradgrind becomes a member of Parliament during the course of the story. He is married and the father of five, including Louisa and Tom, Jr., two of the major characters.

Gradgrind is a strict disciple of the philosophy of Utilitarianism that prizes hard fact above all else. Anything not a fact is considered "fancy" or sentiment. Gradgrind practices what he preaches--to the letter. Not only are his learning techniques taught in the school he governs, but his children have been raised by its laws. Their learning has been strictly scientific, free from the "corrupting" influence of poetry, fairy tale, or song.

The novel charts Gradgrind's growing realization that his theories, when applied without the humane influence of the heart, can be destructive. A marriage arranged for profit and convenience between Louisa and Bounderby ends in disaster. Tom, Jr., becomes a liar and a thief, forced to escape the law in disguise.

A basically decent man (unlike Bounderby), Gradgrind is not beyond redemption, according to Dickens. Largely through the influence of Sissy Jupe and the trauma of Louisa's failed marriage, Gradgrind grows in wisdom and experience. He pays for his earlier insensitivity by seeing the harmful results of his philosophy: Tom's life of crime, Bitzer's cold-hearted practicality, and Louisa's emotional breakdown. By the end of the novel, however, he is a wiser and better man.

^^^^^^^^^^HARD TIMES: LOUISA GRADGRIND (MRS. BOUNDERBY)

Daughter of Thomas Gradgrind and, later, wife to Josiah Bounderby, Louisa is first seen curiously peeking at the goings-on at the horse-riding performance. Her action is symbolic of her yearning to experience more than the hard scientific facts she has learned all her life. Instinctively seeking romance and laughter when all she has known are theory and statistics, Louisa is viewed by Dickens as a pathetic product of her father's philosophy.

Attractive and sensitive, Louisa has always masked her emotions under a cool and passive facade. She is often linked symbolically to fire: Dying embers represent her fading hopes for happiness, and the fires of Coketown chimneys that are frequently hidden beneath smoke represent her inward passions.

Her humanity emerges gradually as the novel progresses. At first she cares only for her brother Tom; for his sake she marries Bounderby, a much older man. But as the lovelessness of her marriage takes its toll, she reaches out, first to Stephen Blackpool, an oppressed factory worker, and then to James Harthouse, an arrogant aristocrat who tries to seduce her. Pressed to the brink of madness by the temptation that Harthouse offers, Louisa throws herself on her father's mercy. Nothing in her previous education has prepared her to handle her emerging passions. She saves herself from disgrace just in time, helped by the friendship of Sissy Jupe, who represents the wisdom of the heart--a wisdom Louisa has never known.

Louisa and Gradgrind's changes of character mark the greatest progression in the novel. Louisa begins as a passive, daydreaming girl and ends as a mature, generous, and humane young woman. She dedicates her life to helping those less fortunate than she.

^^^^^^^^^^HARD TIMES: JOSIAH BOUNDERBY

A powerful citizen of Coketown, Bounderby owns a factory and a bank. If Gradgrind represents the Utilitarian philosophy in the novel, Bounderby symbolizes the greedy capitalist, shockingly insensitive to the needs of workers.

Bounderby (whose name is British slang for "cad") is also the "Bully of humility," a self-made man who endlessly repeats the story of his rise from poverty and childhood abuse to his current position of power. He claims to loathe the trappings of wealth--a grand home, beautiful furnishings, art objects--but he nonetheless collects them avidly.

His greatest source of pride is Mrs. Sparsit, his housekeeper, a woman of high station brought low by a bad early marriage. The delicious irony that this highborn lady should now work for him--who was born a pauper--is irresistible to Bounderby. He reminds everyone, including Mrs. Sparsit, of this striking contrast time and again.

Bounderby is shattered by his marriage to Louisa, who never respects him as he thinks he deserves. He is also highly embarrassed when it is discovered that Mrs. Pegler is his mother and that he has paid her to stay out of his life. He suffers a dual humiliation when Louisa deserts him and Mrs. Pegler reveals that he has lied about his past. To make matters worse, he learns that Mrs. Sparsit--the one person whose respect for him seemed unshakable--has long held him in contempt.

Bounderby is a one-dimensional character. He learns nothing from his trials, and he seems to have no inner life. He begins and ends as a blustering, opinionated fool. Drawn from a comic tradition that Dickens began with The Pickwick Papers, Bounderby is "flat," almost a cartoon. His effect on other characters in the book, such as Stephen Blackpool and Louisa, is powerful and real, but he is not as fully rendered a character as his friend Gradgrind.