Sissy Jupe is the abandoned daughter of a poor clown—Louisa Bounderby is the rich wife of one of Coketown’s magnates. But Sissy lives a happy, healthful life of love to others, while Louisa’s upbringing has made her cold, hard, and tired of life. When will Mr. Gradgrind, Louisa’s father and Sissy’s adopted father, compare the two and learn his mistake?
For a full-fledged Dickens novel, Hard Times is short. It’s about as long as Tom Sawyer or Anne of Green Gables.
Hard Times is largely a social critique, which I doubt would be interesting or intelligible to younger readers. It also has a fairly dark plotline. I think it would be suitable for readers 17+.
If you’re just looking for a brief recap, jump to the end where you’ll find my three sentence conclusion. If you need more details, read on!
The Plot [spoiler alert!]
Hard Times is set in the factory city of Coketown—a dull, smog-filled place of all work and no play. It’s a world of cold, hard, unemotional and unimaginative Facts, and in their different ways, Mr. Thomas Gradgrind and Mr. Josiah Bounderby are epitomes of the Facts of Coketown.
Mr. Gradgrind is respectable, gentlemanly, and eminently practical. He’s active in the political sphere of Coketown, eventually holding a seat in parliament. His life is based on a grand system—a system of facts and figures, a system that distrusts and stifles imagination and creativity. Never wonder, is his watchword, and he brings his children up in strict accord with this policy. Nevertheless, Mr. Gradgrind is not stern or severe—only unapproachably unemotional; at bottom he’s even rather kind-hearted, and when Sissy Jupe’s father, a clown, abandons her, Mr. Gradgrind is willing to take the young girl into his house.
I hasten to explain that the book is not at all about Sissy and her trials in the Gradgrind family—which trials, in fact, are not nearly as severe as you might be thinking they are. Rather than get squeezed into the Gradgrind mold, Sissy succeeds in expanding the mold considerably. But her beneficent injection of human warmth into Mr. Gradgrind’s cool system of facts comes too late for Louisa Gradgrind—already grown into the coolest, most systematically matter of fact young woman you can imagine.
The only love in Louisa’s life is her love for her brother Tom—and the only love in Tom’s life is himself. Though brought up as strictly as Louisa, Tom does not have her common sense—he has no creativity left at all, much less a well-regulated imagination—and when he moves out of the house to work for Mr. Bounderby’s bank (you’ll recall I mentioned Mr. Bounderby as the other epitome of the Facts of Coketown), he throws his training to the wind and becomes careless and dissipated.
Always in debt and not very punctual in his business tasks, Tom hints that he’d find life more jolly if Louisa would marry Mr. Bounderby and keep him in a generous and overlooking frame of mind. Not seeing any better prospect—half not believing any better could be—Louisa agrees to marry Mr. Bounderby when her father comes to her with his proposal.
Mr. Bounderby’s matter-of-factness is rather different from Mr. Gradgrind’s. Mr. Bounderby is a self-made man; he’s pulled himself out of the gutteriest gutters without so much as a bootstrap to hang by—or so he forever boasts. Louisa has no respect and less liking for him—but the facts of the case, from a material point of view, make it sound like a good marriage. Besides, it will benefit Tom, and Louisa doesn’t see what else she could get out of life. She marries Mr. Bounderby.
I must digress here to mention Stephen and Rachael—not so much because they’re very integral to the plot, as because they play a big part in bringing out the book’s morals. Stephen is a working “hand” in Mr. Bounderby’s factory who married long ago; but his wife became a drunkard and habitually sells all the furniture. For a while she disappeared and left Stephen in peace—but she comes back, and Stephen asks Mr. Bounderby if there’s no way he can get a divorce. Mr. Bounderby is matter-of-fact about retorting that divorce cases are expensive and not for Stephen. This leaves Stephen with a strong feeling of injustice somewhere. But his good friend Rachael, who is basically his good angel, keeps him from taking any violent steps.
Rachael’s influence also keeps Stephen from joining with other hands as they begin to unionize under the leadership of a time-serving demagogue. Stephen is therefore ostracized. Mr. Bounderby hears of Stephen’s plight and far from being sympathetic, pretends to find discontent and rebellion in him and fires him. Louisa is not one to be guided by Mr. Bounderby’s opinion; she visits Stephen and helps him out. But Tom, accompanying her on the visit, sets Stephen up to be suspected of a bank robbery Tom (in debt as ever) is about to commit.
This capstone of Tom’s moral failure—committing a petty bank robbery and framing an innocent man—happens because Lousia has been rather a failure in the conciliate-Mr.-Bounderby-for-Tom’s-sake business. She’s too cold and distant to beg from her husband on Tom’s behalf, though she gives the boy everything she has. But that’s not enough for Tom, so he ends up robbing the bank.
Meanwhile, Lousia has made the acquaintance of a young politician, James Harthouse. Harthouse is piqued by Louisa’s reserve and eventually finds a way to get around it by pretending to befriend Tom. Louisa’s gratitude leads her to frequently enjoy Harthouse’s company. When Harthouse eventually claims that he loves her and suggests she elope with him, Louisa agrees—but instead, she escapes and goes to her father.
Of course Mr. Gradgrind is horrified. Louisa has always been his favorite child, and when she puts it to him strongly that, although she knows he meant it for the best, his system has left her completely hopeless, he is more than ready to stand by her and rectify the mistakes as best he can. Mr. Bounderby, however, sees matters in a different light and is completely unwilling to consider the possibility of an only temporary separation. As for Harthouse, Sissy pays him a visit, tells him that the only reparation in his power is to go and never come back, and takes it so coolly for granted that he is dying to make reparation, that Harthouse is shamed into taking her advice.
Jumping back to Tom and the robbery he framed Stephen for—Stephen left Coketown immediately after being fired, so he doesn’t know he’s under suspicion until Rachael writes to tell him so. On his way back, he falls into an old mineshaft; everyone in Coketown is wondering where he is, and why, if innocent, he doesn’t come back to clear himself. Louisa and Sissy both strongly suspect the real facts of the case, and even go one better in suspecting that Tom is responsible for Stephen’s disappearance. Stephen eventually is found, at the point of death; Tom is exposed, but he manages to escape (thanks to his family and largely to Sissy) before being captured; Louisa lives contentedly, if not happily, ever after, enjoying Sissy’s company. One last loose end; Mr. Bounderby is discovered to be total fraud—it turns out he had a very respectable upbringing with nothing of the gutter in it whatsoever.
My biggest critique of Hard Times boils down to: there wasn’t enough Sissy. I don’t say this because I liked Sissy so much, but because she wasn’t well enough developed, despite being (with Rachael) the centrally “good” character. She had very little independent existence, just showed up when the plot needed her and disappeared whenever it didn’t. Of course this is what side characters are for, but ideally it gets a little better disguised. I would have liked to see some of what made Sissy who she was—some of her development as she grew up with the Gradgrinds. Theoretically, she had the essential something that Louisa lacked. What was that something? We see its results, but we don’t really see it, largely because we don’t see enough Sissy.
That biggest critique can be followed now by several smaller critiques: for one thing, there was absolutely zero likeableness to Tom. Not that every villain needs to have a spark of likeableness, but if one of the heroes loves the villain, a spark of likeableness is, you know, helpful. The other villains were equally unlikeable in their ways, but I didn’t mind that so much; it didn’t matter, you know, because no one liked them.
Then, I found Louisa overstrained, particularly when she talks to her dad after running away from her husband. Granted, she’s been brought up to be “practical” and doesn’t know the first thing about love or romance; I don’t care, no one ever talked like that or ever could. (Time for a belated, in my humble opinion.)
But I do have a couple good things to say about the book. I always admire the kind of plot that can make you, as you sit there reading, will with all your might that the main character won’t make some stupid decision. Hard Times did that for me pretty strongly; I was desperately willing Louisa not to run off with Harthouse, all the more so because it seemed like she would. Even on a second reading I still felt a little of that. When she went to her father instead I felt very much like slapping her on the back three times, by way of congratulations.
Also, I found Louisa rather likeable, and Mr. Gradgrind quite likeable, if a little blind to normal human nature. The plot itself, with its combination of a triangle and a robbery complete with falsely implicated innocent victim, is not bad and the climax point (Louisa going to her father) sufficiently unexpected.
However, that’s not enough to outweigh the fact that Dickens didn’t give enough screen time to his role model character, Sissy—thereby missing (in my opinion) a good opportunity to introduce some really enjoyable scenes, instead of all the smog-ridden scenes of the majority of the book, where the colors seemed to range from dark dark grey to inky-black (with the sole exception of Mr. Bounderby’s mother… there was some humor for you, I grant).
4/10
The Point
The point of Hard Times is that you can’t reduce human nature to facts and figures; that statistics are no substitute for sympathy and line charts can’t replace love. This main point trails off into many related points in areas of social justice and even a proper view of the place for recreation.
In the “cold facts” debate there are always two sides of the subject; particular cases can be used to emotionally manipulate for an overreaction in one direction, just as much as cold statistical “facts” can be used to mask human suffering. (I would argue that “facts” divorced from experience—generalities as opposed to particular cases—tend to distort the reality of the case and thus aren’t actually “facts.” I suspect Dickens would basically agree with me, but he doesn’t articulate this.) Dickens’ emphasis in this book is unquestionably the suffering masking that goes on under the name of being practical; and it’s an important point.
That said, I don’t think Dickens presents his position quite as compellingly as he could, precisely because he goes in the direction of particular cases used to emotionally manipulate. I say this, because in the world of Hard Times basically everything and everybody bears out the main premise. Plunged into a world that operates on Mr. Gradgrind’s system, everyone is either poor and miserable or well-off and a hypocrite—or well-off and miserable. This makes Dickens point… but it makes the point in a world that doesn’t feel quite real. (Obviously Sissy is an exception—and here’s another reason why I wish she’d been developed more. Mr. Gradgrind himself is also something of an exception—at least he’s not a hypocrite.)
Hard Times leaves me dissatisfied in another way too; while Dickens’ condemnation of a system that leaves no room for relaxation and creative impulses (not to mention a system full of unfair inequalities in favor of the rich) is clear and sweeping, he does little by way of laying groundwork for a different system. Again, a better developed Sissy, showing why/how she can live in the same world and be so much happier, and make it so much brighter, would have helped.
4/10
The Style
I’ve described Dickens’ style in several other book reviews (especially in my comments on Our Mutual Friend and Dombey and Son); suffice it to say that Dickens is as eloquent, as unique in his turn of phrase, and as demanding of steady concentration in Hard Times as ever.
7/10
Conclusion
5/10
The plot of Hard Times has an exciting climax and a good resolution, but I did wish for more actually enjoyable scenes throughout the book to make it a little less dark. Also, while Dickens sets out to make a fairly good point, I didn’t find his presentation as compelling or clear as I’d have liked it to have been. It’s worth reading if you have the time, but Hard Times doesn’t make it anywhere near my must-read list.
Hard Times is available for free as an ebook on Project Gutenberg: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/786
You might find these other book reviews I’ve written helpful:
Geneva D 
What do you think?