Thinking Activity- Charles Dickens's 'Hard Times'

This blog is written in response to the Thinking Activity on Charles Dickens's Novel 'Hard Times' by Dilip Barad Sir at the Department of English, MKBU.

Charles Dickens

Charles John Huffam Dickens was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era.

In his literary career he has written fifteen novels, five novellas and lots of other stories.

Some of his best works are,

‘A Christmas Carol’

‘Bleak House’

‘Oliver Twist’

‘Great Expectations’

‘Hard Times’

‘A Tale of Two Cities’

‘The Pickwick Papers’

‘Hard Times for these times’

Hard Times: For These Times is the tenth novel by Charles Dickens. It was first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirises the social and economic conditions of the era. Unlike other novels of Dickens, it is shorter and has no illustration and also its set in a fictional town named ‘Cocktown’.

Review of the Hindi play based on 'Hard Times'

The Hindi Play "Hard Times" is  a musical adaptation of Charles Dickens's  novel “Hard TImes for These TImes'' performed by Khilona Theater for Children.

The Hindi adaptation of the novel completely follows the story of the novel but it is a musical play! The music and song makes it more interesting to see the play because the story it's dealing with is about industrialism and that's why it provides the touch of artificiality. So the new element of music in the play makes it less artificial and more entertaining

The characters and names of them are the same as in the novel and their representation is also very accurate. The dialogues are mostly the same as in novel conversation but the translation and modification of it is very brilliant. The way actors speak the dialogues are mostly as how mostly hindi indian people speak and that's why it makes the play relatable to the hindi speaking audiences. 

The great thing is that the play is an adaptation of the novel ‘Hard Times’ because its subject of industrialization and dehumanisation of society is something that is highly relatable to contemporary time.

The two narrators of the play provide an interesting outline to the audience and connect the audience with the story of the hard times. The presentation of various events in the play like the father of sissy leaves her and other things are demonstrated very brilliantly. 

You can watch this Hindi play adaptation of the novel 'Hard Times' on YouTube.

 The theme of 'Utilitarianism'  in the Novel 'Hard Times' by Charles Dickens

Utilitarianism is a tradition of ethical philosophy that is associated with Jeremy Bentham (1747-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), two late 18th- and 19th-century British philosophers, economists, and political thinkers. Utilitarianism holds that an action is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to produce sadness, or the reverse of happiness.

Utilitarianism is a theory of morality that advocates actions that foster happiness or pleasure and oppose actions that cause unhappiness or harm. When directed toward making social, economic, or political decisions, a utilitarian philosophy would aim for the betterment of society as a whole.

Utilitarianism would say that an action is right if it results in the happiness of the greatest number of people in a society or a group.

Utilitarianism in Dickens's 'Hard Times'

 Dickens provides three vivid examples of this utilitarian logic in Hard Times. The first; Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, one of the main characters in the book, was the principal of a school in Coketown.

He was a firm believer in utilitarianism and instilled this philosophy into the students at the school from a very young age, as well as his own children. Mr. Josiah Bounderby was also a practitioner of utilitarianism but was more interested in the profit that stemmed from it. 

Thomas Gradgrind Sr., a father of five children, has lived his life by the book and never strayed from his philosophy that life is nothing more than facts and statistics. He has successfully incorporated this belief into the school system of Coketown and has tried his best to do so with his own children.

 Gradgrind's two oldest children, Tom and Louisa, are examples of how this utilitarian method failed miserably.

These children were never given the opportunity to think for themselves, experience fun things in life, or even use their imaginations. True, they are smart people in the factual sense but do not have the street smarts to survive. Tom is a young man who, so fed up with his father’s strictness and repetition, revolts against him and leaves home to work in Mr. Bounderby’s bank.Eventually, to get out of a deep gambling debt, he robs a bank and is forced to flee the area.

Louisa, unlike Tom, does get along with her father. She even agrees to marry Mr. Bounderby, even though she does not love him, in order to please her father. She stays in the marriage with Bounderby and goes about life normally and factually until she is faced with a dilemma and panics. Her father never gave her the opportunity to think for herself, or even love someone. This is why Louisa goes frantic and ends up crying in her father’s lap. She has always been told what to do and what is ‘right’, and now even her father is stumped. For the first time in the whole novel, Mr. Gradgrind strays from the utilitarian philosophy and shows compassion for his daughter and her feelings.

Josiah Bounderby is another prime example of utilitarianism. He is one of the wealthiest people in Coketown; owning a bank and a factory, but is not really a likable person. His utilitarian philosophy is similar to Gradgrinds in the sense that factuality is the single most important virtue that one could possess.

Mr. Bounderby maintained throughout the story his utilitarian views, which basically stated that nothing else is important besides profit. Being the owner of both a factory and a bank, Bounderby employs many workers, yet seems to offer them no respect at all. He refers to the factory workers as “Hands,” because that is all they are to him.