Dickens's Hard Times: Still Relevant 150 Years Later

Charles Dickens's Hard Times is a brilliant and complex novel that tackles many social issues that are highly relevant in these times, almost 150 years after its publication. Hard Times is often referred to as Dickens's "Industrial Novel" as it deals with the social effects of the Industrial Revolution upon both the working class and middle class in 19th century England. Many of the same social problems exist in today’s Information Age, both as a hangover from the Industrial Revolution and as a result of the current Information Revolution.

As in Dickens's time, today millions of people work under appalling conditions for menial wages while the rich get richer. As the Australian band Midnight Oil sang, "The rich get richer/the poor get the picture." For the vast majority of people alive today, life is still, as Thomas Hobbes put it, "nasty, brutish, and short."

Hard Times is by no means all doom and gloom though. Dickens has a wonderful satirical talent and constantly provides light relief from his heavy subject matter by mocking his most loathsome characters and highlighting the idiocy of certain types of people, such as those who place a lot of importance on "breeding" and "manners", and those who ascribe more importance to the creation of wealth than the preservation of human life.

Dickens also has a wonderful talent for description of both character and environment. One of the main characters, Mr. Gradgrind, is described thus:

The emphasis was helped by the speaker's hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the facts stored inside. The speaker's obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders - nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as it was - all helped the emphasis.

Coketown, the fictional Northern English city in which Hard Times is set, is described as

... a town of red brick, or of brick that would've been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but, as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled.

I do not intend to summarize the plot here. I will, however, mention some of the main issues. Apart from the effects of the Industrial Revolution, already referred to, the novel deals with the following: education, fact versus fiction, city versus country, working class versus middle class, parents versus children, work versus leisure, and money versus poverty. Dickens examines these topics through a number of well-developed characters, some loathsome to the reader, such as the industrialist Mr. Bounderby, and others adored by the reader, such as the factory hand Stephen Blackpool.

While Hard Times covers heavy ground thematically, it provides sufficient humor and entertainment to satisfy the majority of readers. It was a highly important book when it was first published, and it remains so today. Anyone with even the slightest interest in the world around us and the human condition should read this brilliant novel.