Ann Kamanga

Jude V. Nixon

ENL 110-18

7 April 2015

The Family Dickens’s Hard Times

A circus is a traveling company of acrobats, trained animals, and clowns that provides

performances, typically in a large tent and in many different locations. During the

19th century, circuses were growing in popularity and operating all throughout England.

They operated as family entertainment and gatherings, provided a welcome break for

working people. Since the performers who are part of the circus travel with one another

and see each other on a daily basis, they naturally growing into an extended family.

(Jando) Throughout Hard Times, Charles Dickens shows the difference between the

circus families and the other families in the novel.

During the 19th century, circuses were beginning to operate all throughout

England. They were becoming very popular, and most acts were performed doing

different events. They would normally stay at one area for a about a month which gave

them time to practice for upcoming shows. Circus shows were not always outside under

a tent, they used to be in wooden buildings which would be used like a theater While

the main attraction was trick-riders, other acts included jugglers, trapeze acts, tightrope

walkers and clowns. Animals such as elephants and horses accompanied these

performers. The circus functioned as a pleasant interlude for the normally busy lives
people led. In Hard Times, Charles Dickens uses the circus as an ideal family unit amidst

his many dysfunctional family units that pervade the novel.

One way that circus members were able to put on great shows together was

because they built a special relationship full of trust, commitment, and contribution. For

a family to be stable they must communicate, listen to one another, share thoughts and

contribute each other’s emotions. This does not happen to be the case for the

Gradgrinds. There is Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind and their children Louisa, Jane and Tom.

Gradgrind raises his children to believe nothing but facts, which gives them no time for

imagination or no time to express their emotions. Because of this, his children and wife

have become corrupt. Throughout the novel, we see how Mr. Grandgrinds philosophy

on facts affects his family. Starting with Ms. Gradgrind, Dickens presents her as weak

and passive because she cannot seem to function without her husbands assistance.

Gradgrind has manipulated her into believing that she has to depend on him for

everything. Louisa, the daughter, was raised to believe nothing but facts, which led her

to hide her feelings and emotions. When she gets married to Bounderby, she is not sure

if that is what she wants and she takes matters into her own hands. Towards the end of

book two, Louisa has an emotional breakdown about her childhood, about which she

confronts her father. She says, “How could you give me life, and take from me all the

inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the

graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, O

father, what have you done, with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this

great wilderness here!”(Dickens; Book 2 Chapter 12) At this point Louisa is telling her
father, Thomas Gradgrind, about how he has ruined her childhood by not raising her like

a normal child by brainwashing her to believe in nothing but facts meaning no

imagination emotions and because of that she is unable to live a normal life. As for Tom,

the son, he is raised same way as Louisa but he is different because he grows up looking

out for himself and he ends up hurting people along the way. He robs Bounderby’s bank

and sets up Stephen Blackpool to be blamed for the crime. Due to Gradgrind, Tom does

not know how to share or act towards certain things meaning he does not know what

he is doing is right or wrong, and confessing up to mistakes that he did, which lead him

to being careless. The Gradgrinds are a dysfunctional family whose members misbehave

because of how the family had been run. The family does not know how to speak to

each other about their problems because they were never taught how to go about it.

Towards this subject, critics said “Tom Gradgrind, more than his father, sees Louisa’s

marriage to Bounderby as strengthening of “power relationships” between the two

families apart from providing a good financial deal to his sister. Tom employs a

mercenary approach. He views matrimonial alliance as economic advantage or

exploitation. And he is not wrong in doing so.” (Williams) Critics are saying that

Grandgring was only watching out for the future of his children by making sure that they

will be financially stable which leads into happiness. They see nothing wrong in what

Grandgrind was doing it is just the way he was doing it.

Considering that their marriage has little to do with love, Mr. Bounderby and

Louisa are also a dysfunctional family. This all began when Mr. Bounderby indirectly

proposes to Louisa through Mr. Gradgrind who plays the major role to the existence of
their marriage because Bounderby was his good friend and he knew he would take care

of her daughter. Louisa was not thinking the same, she says; “Father,' said Louisa, 'do

you think I love Mr. Bounderby?' Mr. Gradgrind was extremely discomfited by this

unexpected question. 'Well, my child,' he returned, 'I — really — cannot take upon

myself to say.' 'Father,' pursued Louisa in exactly the same voice as before, 'do you ask

me to love Mr. Bounderby?' 'My dear Louisa, no. No. I ask nothing.' 'Father,' she still

pursued, 'does Mr. Bounderby ask me to love him?' 'Really, my dear,' said Mr.

Gradgrind, 'it is difficult to answer your question.”(Dickens Book 1 Chapter 15) When

Louisa is asked about the proposal she turns the question to her father asking what she

should do. Of course, Louisa tries to please her father so she marries Bounderby.

“Shortly after which oration, as they were going on a nuptial trip to Lyons, in order that

Mr. Bounderby might take the opportunity of seeing how the Hands got on in those

parts, and whether they, too, required to be fed with gold spoons; the happy pair

departed for the railroad.” (Dickens Book 2 Chapter 16) Their honeymoon shows how

dysfunctional their marriage is because Bounderby chooses to go to Lyon to observe the

factories that are there rather than to only go to spend some time with his bride.

Louisa does not know how to love Bounderby because of her father’s philosophy

on facts that she was raised with. Louisa is challenges when James Harthouse moves to

Coketown. James Harthouse declares his love for Louisa, who then turns to her father

for help rather than her own husband. She does now how to act towards Harthouse that

she tells her father, “And I so young. In this condition, father—for I show you now,

without fear or favor, the ordinary deadened state of my mind as I know it—you
proposed my husband to me. I took him. I never made a pretense to him or you that I

loved him. I knew, and, father, you knew, and he knew, that I never did. I was not

wholly indifferent, for I had a hope of being pleasant and useful to Tom. I made that

wild escape into something visionary, and have slowly found out how wild it

was.”(Dickens Book 1 Chapter 15) She confesses to her father that she never loved

Bounderby or that she never knew if she ever did. This shows that due to the lack of

emotional connection and communication, the relationship between Mr. Grangrind and

Louisa has progressively diminished the relationship between Louisa and Bounderby and

Louisa and Harthouse. The lack of love and communication within this marriage that

Gradgrinds philosophy portrayed in for financial and business needs causes this

marriage to be dysfunction.

Contrary to these images of dysfunctional families in the novel, Dickens sets up

the circus as his model family. A circus performer lives life with freedom, no worries,

humor and fun. When working in a circus, all you do is perform and act which is

something that you choose to do yourself. “A very different model from that of

European circuses, which for the most part remained under the control of performing

families.”(Victorian) Circus performers enjoy life with their large extended families who

love acting, supporting and running the circus business together. “Yet there was a

remarkable gentleness and childishness about these people, a special inaptitude for any

kind of sharp practice, and an untiring readiness to help and pity one another, deserving

often of as much respect, and always of as much generous construction, as the every-

day virtues of any class of people in the world.”(Dickens Book 1 Chapter 6) Dickens
portrays the circus family as a perfect family who are a warm and caring family who

respect, work and help each other. Circus families are known to sacrifice for each other

and the idea of altruism; because of this they have a strong emotional connection. Tom

Grandgrinds actions towards the end of the novel when he seeks for help from the

circus shows how the circus family is Dickens model family that does function.

In all, circuses were becoming very popular during the 19th century. They

functioned as a pleasant interlude for the working people and entertainment for

families. Charles Dickens Hard Times is filled with many dysfunctional families that he

uses the circus as an ideal family. For the Grandgrinds, the philosophy that they grew up

with did not give the results that Tom Grandgrind wanted. For Mr. Bounderby and

Louisa, their marriage was not successful because Louisa was not taught how to love or

show affection to another human being. All these families proved the point that the

circus families were the ideal family.

 References

Dickens, C. (199). Hard times. Champaign, Ill.: Project Gutenberg

Jando, Domonique. "SHORT HISTORY OF THE CIRCUS." - Circopedia. Cycopedia, 2013.

Web. 06 Apr. 2015.
<http://www.circopedia.org/SHORT_HISTORY_OF_THE_CIRCUS>.

"Victorian Circus." Victoria and Albert Museum, Online Museum, Web Team,
Webmaster@vam.ac.uk. Victorian Circus, 2014. Web. 6 Apr. 2015.

Williams, Mukesh. "Dickens’ Hard Times in Our Hard Times »." The Copperfield Review.
WordPress, 28 Apr. 2012. Web. 04 May 2015.