[Hard Times]
"Hard Times" is not one of the longest, but it is one of the most powerful of Dickens's works. John Ruskin went so far as to call it "in several respects the greatest" book Dickens had written. It is, of course, a fierce attack on the early Victorian school of political economists. The Bounderbys and Gradgrinds are typical of certain characters, and, though they change their form of speech, are still recognisable to-day. As a study of social and industrial life in England in the manufacturing districts fifty years ago, "Hard Times" will always be valuable, though allowance must be made here as elsewhere for the novelist's tendency to exaggeration--exaggeration of virtue no less than of vice or weakness. In Josiah Bounderby and Stephen Blackpool this characteristic is pronounced. The first, according to John Ruskin, being a dramatic monster, and the second a dramatic perfection. The story first appeared serially in "Household Words" between April 1 and August 12, 1854.
I.--Mr. Thomas Gradgrind
"Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of facts and calculations. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to."
In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself, whether to his private circle of acquaintance or to the public in general. In such terms Thomas Gradgrind presented himself to the schoolmaster and children before him. It was his school, and he intended it to be a model.
"Now, what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon facts. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to facts, sir."
Mr. Gradgrind, having waited to hear a model lesson delivered by the school master, walked home in a considerable state of satisfaction.
There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They had been lectured at from their tenderest years; coursed, like little hares, almost as soon as they could run, they had been made to run to the lecture-room.
To his matter-of-fact home, which was called Stone Lodge, Mr. Gradgrind directed his steps. The house was situated on a moor, within a mile or two of a great town, called Coketown.