Evaristo 1 Leila Cristina Evaristo Professor Jos Roberto OShea LLE 7423 Literaturas de Lngua Inglesa III 5 July

2011 Analyze how elements of humor are used to depict Coketown and its dwellers (The Gradgrinds and Mr. Bounderby) in Hard Times by Charles Dickens. Humour is the soul of [Dickens] work. Like the soul of man, it permeates a living fabric which, but for its creative breath, could never have existed. -- George Gissing During the Victorian era, England underwent a period of massive industrial and scientific development. With all its trade-offs, this era was indeed a period of contrasts. While valuable contributions to the growth and understanding of the world like Charles Darwins On Origin of Species (1859) were coming into light, the steam and the black smoke of the factories were signaling that goods were being produced almost uninterruptedly by numerous workers hands (including childrens). Laborers were living and working in pitiable conditions; all for supplying the demands of the Empire. From this context, Hard Times by Charles Dickens emerges and it represents a critique of some of the Victorian era incongruities. The novel, first published in1854, is divided into three Books: Sowing, Reaping and Garnering. As the title suggests, it is a story that deals with poignant themes such as inequality, unfairness, conformity, and monotony. Among such distressing themes, Dickens is able to find room to impress elements of humor on the novel, mainly on Book 1 (Sowing), but as the story grows to be denser, the use of elements of humor becomes sparser.

Evaristo 2 The story is set in Coketown a town with a fictional name and scarcely fictional attributes. Being coke a type of fuel obtained from coal, the name of the town suggests a place which is noticeable for its mines, mills and factories. It is described as a dull place, inhabited by dull people. Although the setting is gloomy, Dickens manages to portrait it in a humorous style, as the following excerpt demonstrates: It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it (Dickens 30). The way Dickens gives his first accounts of Coketown tricks the readers anticipations by starting out like a photographic portrayal of the place, then shifting to an unexpected perspective that sounds almost illogical, since it would be impossible to know the color of the bricks once they are covered in smoke. This shift in perspective, due to its surprising development, is likely to produce humorous effects. Another element Dickens employs to produce a similar effect is repetition. Apart from its bricks, Coketown is described as a town that contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and tomorrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. (Dickens 31) Here the author, in a whimsical way, exposes the monotonous environment in which the Coketowners were inserted. The boredom that permeates Coketown is represented by a hyperbolic description of the components of the town (streets, people, sound, pavements, and work). Regarding Coketown dwellers, some belong to the middle class, many are laborers; but according to the aforementioned excerpt, they are all the same, probably due to the social inertia the system imposes on them.

Evaristo 3 One of Coketown most eminent inhabitants is Mr. Gradgrind. He is one of the responsible for educating the children by filling them with loads of Facts. In Gradgrinds system, there is no room for imagination or feelings (things which he considers pure nonsense). Gradgrind, with his square forefinger, square wall of a forehead, square coat, square legs and square shoulders (Dickens 11, 12) is the first character introduced to the reader. Dickens humor is presented very early in the book, in this first scene where Gradgrind is teaching a lesson at school. He is the father of metallurgical Louisa, mathematical Thomas (Dickens 21) and three more children, and is married to a woman that does not really understand his thinking but lives accordingly. She is described as a woman of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily and who, whenever she showed a symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her (Dickens 24). Dickens, through the mockery of the Gradgrinds, criticizes the mentality that was greatly present in that period. This particular family was so much concerned with statistics that they were simply devoid of emotions and imagination. Ironically, Gradgrind becomes a victim of his own teachings when a former student of his refuses to help his son Tom out of compassion, since Facts were all that matters. Another eminent Coketower is Mr. Bounderby. A man who is always bragging about his miserable childhood (which eventually was proved to be a fraud) and, as Mr. Gradgrind, he is also perfectly devoid of sentiment (Dickens 23). Mr. Bounderby is a man made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility (Dickens 23, 24). He is a factory owner who seems to be blind to the human nature of his employees. Thus, Dickens appears to make use of this character as a conduit to draw harsh criticism upon the members of the society who were

Evaristo 4 responsible for much of the socio-economic crisis that derived from the exploitation of manpower. Much of this criticism is made through humor, as the following excerpt illustrates: So Mr. Bounderby threw on his hat he always threw it on, as expressing a man who had been far too busily employed in making himself to acquire any fashion of wearing his hat (Dickens 29). His manners and his interventions about his wretched youth (these being exceptionally frequent) are so constantly ridiculed that makes Bounderby a character that is unlikely to have the readers appreciation. Given these points, it is possible to observe that Dickens uses elements of humor mainly to criticize the values and discrepancies of the Victorian society. Despite of its title and its themes, the novel contains several moments of humor, mainly in Book 1. With a wit description of Coketown and its dwellers, Dickens manages to draw attention to the harsh reality English were going through at that time. In addition, the author is capable of entertaining the readers while depicting an appalling environment by using tongue-in-cheek language. In this way, Hard Times represents a critical (and amusing) portrayal of the Victorian era and its contradictions.

Number of words: 1,103

Work Cited Dickens, C. Hard Times. New York: Signet Classics, 1961. Print.