1- Mrs.

Sparsit is a fairly minor character in Hard Times. What themes does she
illustrate? Why is she important in terms of plot development?

Although Mrs. Sparsit is a relatively minor character, her pride drives much of the action
in the second half of the novel. Originally from an aristocratic background, Mrs. Sparsit
has fallen on hard times, and she must work as Bounderby’s housekeeper for a living.
Because she wants to marry Bounderby so that she can share his wealth, Mrs. Sparsit
secretly connives to destroy his marriage to Louisa. Yet even while she panders to
Bounderby, Mrs. Sparsit considers him an upstart “Noodle,” and considers herself his
superior because of her aristocratic blood. Although she is a proud aristocrat, Mrs. Sparsit
shares the calculating self-interest of capitalists like Bounderby. Thus, Mrs. Sparsit
illustrates the transition from a social hierarchy in which aristocrats hold the power to one
in which the wealthy middle class holds the power. In her attempt to retain her power
within a new social order, Mrs. Sparsit simply ends up looking ridiculous.

2- Think about the character of Bounderby. How might this character fit with
Dickens’s social program to explode the myth of the self-made man?

One defense of the new economic conditions created by the Industrial Revolution was its
expansion of individual opportunity. The wealthy could justify the condition of the poor
by pointing out that if the poor worked industriously, they could work their way into a
fortune. Dickens implicitly mocks that idea by presenting one such supposed self-made
man as a blundering braggart. By exposing Bounderby as a fraud who did not actually
start from nothing, as he so often claims, Dickens questions the validity of that entire
justification for poverty. If the self-made man is a lie, then what can the poor hope to
achieve? Moreover, Dickens raises the question of whether the self-made man owes
anything to the rest of society.

3- Hard Times has many artistic thematic images and symbols. Argue with
textual references.

Nature Imagery: Sowing, Reaping, Garnering.

In the opening Chapter: ‘plant nothing but else but facts – root out everything else.’
Gradgrind’s hair is described as a ‘plantation of firs’
The ray of light irradiating Sissy and Bitzer.
Light/Darkness: the inner radiance of Rachael lifts the gloom from Stephen: ‘the light of
her face shone upon the midnight of his mind.’ Rachael’s candle. Then, Sissy is described
as ‘a beautiful light’.
In the final part of the begging of the novel, wheels have replaced nature and the
machines are described as ‘mad elephants’. In Book ii, Chapter 7 Bounderby grows
cabbages in his flower garden! This is typically utilitarian – you can eat cabbages.
Animal Imagery
Bitzer’s eyes are described as ‘the antennae of busy insects.’
Sparsit – a hawk concealed beneath the mildness of a dove; she is seen as a ‘dragon’ –
she watches Louisa and Harthouse with ‘hawk’s eyes’. She is associated with nasty,
creepy things – worms, snails, adders as she goes through the woods to spy on them.
Meantime, the machinery in Coketown is compared to ‘mad elephants.’
There is much Fairytale imagery in the novel – the teacher is seen as ‘a dry ogre’, ‘a
monster in a lecturing castle.’ Louisa is the Snow Queen with a frozen heart. Coketown
is seen as a ‘monstrous serpent’ by day. The Blue Books are reminiscent of Bluebeard.
Sparsit considered herself to be the ‘Bank Fairy’. The people of Coketown referred to her
as the ‘Bank Dragon’.
In addition, the image of the serpent refers to the coils of smoke from the chimneys of the
factories (lines 7-8). Once again, the image is negative and suggests something animate
and evil (it goes on forever and therefore never dies) rather than the product of
machinery. The elephant image is used to describe the functioning of a steam engine,
which was a very large machine and swung up and down pulling and pushing pistons –
thus seeming to be an enormous animal with a long trunk , but performing a movement
which was unnatural and, therefore, melancholy and mad. All three images are drawn
from the animal world and share the connotation of wilderness.
Symbolism
In the novel, there is a war being waged between the Heart and the Head, between
Fairytales and Mathematical imagery, between Fact and Fancy.
The mill is symbolised by the ‘mad elephants’ – the factory is a living thing.
The characters are symbolic: Sissy represents simplicity; Gradgrind symbolises
materialism; Harthouse represents cynicism/lack of principle; Stephen Blackpool stands
for all victims of social oppression; Sleary stands for imagination and true love; Rachael
represents virtue, goodness, compassion; she is ‘sweet-tempered and serene’.
Dickens overdoes the symbolism with many of his characters and there is little doubt in
anyone’s mind who Choakumchild, Bitzer, Slackbridge or Bounderby represent.
Again, Sparsit’s Staircase is hugely symbolic: it charts Louisa’s approach to moral ruin as
she descends Lower and Lower until she is Down ‘lying insensible at his (Gradgrind’s)
feet. The imaginary staircase represents her belief that Louisa is going to elope with
Harthouse and consequently ruin her reputation forever. Mrs. Sparsit has long resented
Bounderby’s marriage to the young Louisa, as she hoped to marry him herself; so she is
very pleased by Louisa’s apparent indiscretion. Through the staircase, Dickens reveals
the manipulative and censorious side of Mrs. Sparsit’s character. He also suggests that
Mrs. Sparsit’s self-interest causes her to misinterpret the situation. Rather than ending up
in a pit of shame by having an affair with Harthouse, Louisa actually returns home to her
father.
The smoke and soot from the serpentine chimneys symbolize the uncertainty of the
workers. The sun symbolizes the freedom of the next world that can only be attained by
suffering.
4-Critically, analyze the themes of class conflict and gender conflict in Hard Times.

Concerning class conflict, Hard Times definitely has a specific view on wealth. In this
novel, the gulf between rich and poor is vast and cannot be crossed, despite the myth
created by the rich that the poor can lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Those who
rise do so at the expense of others, and even then, their progress is slow, painful, and does
not reach much higher than where they started – and anyone who says otherwise is telling
self-serving lies. With wealth come options and opportunities for all sorts of abnormal
and deviant behavior. With wealth also comes the privilege of escaping from paying for
transgressions, and the chance to start life over fresh.
As the novel progresses, it portrays how industrialism creates conditions in which owners
treat workers as machines and workers respond by unionizing to resist and fight back
against the owners. In the meantime, those in Parliament (like Mr. Gradgrind, who winds
up elected to office) work for the benefit of the country but not its people. In short,
industrialization creates an environment in which people cease to treat either others or
themselves as people. Even the unions, the groups of factory workers who fight against
the injustices of the factory owners, are not shown in a good light. Stephen Blackpool, a
poor worker at Bounderby's factory, is rejected by his fellow workers for his refusal to
join the union because of a promise made to the sweet, good woman he loves, Rachael.
His factory union then treats him as an outcast.
The remedy to industrialism and its evils in the novel is found in Sissy Jupe, the little girl
who was brought up among circus performers and fairy tales. Letting loose the
imagination of children lets loose their hearts as well, and, as Sissy does, they can combat
and undo what a Gradgrind education produces.
Obviously, the middle and the working classes were the creators of the wealth, they were
getting little benefit for themselves, and they were without low and political power.
Whereas members of the upper class were leaders and kept the political power in the
country and this is what allowed emergence of social classes in the society.
For gender conflict, in the Victorian ideal, a woman was the repository of family morality
– the one who would not only nurture the bodies of her children and husband, but also
their minds. The educational experiment Gradgrind undertakes is to our eyes quite
progressive – teaching his girls and boys the same things and removing the burden of
ideal femininity from his daughter. Unfortunately, this leaves her unprepared for entering
the world outside her own progressive family. She is unable to fulfill the idealized roles
of wife and mother, and has no other options for adulthood outside of these. Hard Times
illustrates the depression and progression of men and women respectively. It follows the
role of women in Victorian society, where women were associated by specific,
stereotypical traits such as sensitivity and transparency, but develops into a story
highlighting the importance of femininity in society. Hard Times professes Dickens’s
views on femininity, as he prophesizes and analyses the true nature of women.
The character of Cecilia Jupe is dramatically contrasted by the performance of Thomas
Gradgrind and his promotion of philosophy of rationalism, egotism, and raw, rigid fact.
He is portrayed as a rigid man, largely with Dickens comical interpretation of the man’s
appearance; “square coat, square legs, square shoulders,” Gradgrind is a strong product of
utilitarianism; a strong belief in facts and numbers, common in the nineteenth century.
Louisa is Grandgrind’s daughter, later becoming Bounderby’s wife. Confused by her
cold-hearted childhood, Louisa feels detached from her emotions and alienated from
other people. Louisa becomes the primary female character, however does not embody
the Victorian feminine characteristics as Sissy does. Instead Louisa has become cold and
lifeless through the life of her father. While at first Louisa unable to comprehend and
function within the grey matter of emotions, she can at least recognize their existence and
are more influential within society than her father or Bounderby lead her to believe, even
without any factual basis. With the help of Sissy and Rachel, Louisa grows and
progresses, blooming into a model woman. She defines the story. As she grows and
changes as does the story, she is the timeline of feminism and her breakthrough
symbolizes the start of female equality.

5- Compare the characters of Gradgrind and Bounderby.

Thomas Gradgrind is the first character we meet in Hard Times, and one of the central
figures through whom Dickens weaves a web of intricately connected plotlines and
characters. Dickens introduces us to this character with a description of his most central
feature: his mechanized, monotone attitude and appearance. The opening scene in the
novel describes Mr. Gradgrind’s speech to a group of young students, and it is
appropriate that Gradgrind physically embodies the dry, hard facts that he crams into his
students’ heads. The narrator calls attention to Gradgrind’s “square coat, square legs,
square shoulders,” all of which suggest Gradgrind’s unrelenting rigidity.
In the beginning of the novel, Mr. Gradgrind expounds his philosophy of calculating,
rational self-interest. He believes that human nature can be governed by completely
rational rules, and he is “ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell
you what it comes to.” This philosophy has brought Mr. Gradgrind much financial and
social success. He has made his fortune as a hardware merchant, a trade that,
appropriately, deals in hard, material reality. Later, he becomes a Member of Parliament,
a position that allows him to indulge his interest in tabulating data about the people of
England. Although he is not a factory owner, Mr. Gradgrind evinces the spirit of the
Industrial Revolution insofar as he treats people like machines that can be reduced to a
number of scientific principles.
While the narrator’s tone toward him is initially mocking and ironic, Gradgrind
undergoes a significant change in the course of the novel, thereby earning the narrator’s
sympathy. When Louisa confesses that she feels something important is missing in her
life and that she is desperately unhappy with her marriage, Gradgrind begins to realize
that his system of education may not be perfect. This intuition is confirmed when he
learns that Tom has robbed Bounderby’s bank. Faced with these failures of his system,
Gradgrind admits, “The ground on which I stand has ceased to be solid under my feet.”
His children’s problems teach him to feel love and sorrow, and Gradgrind becomes a
wiser and humbler man, ultimately “making his facts and figures subservient to Faith,
Hope, and Charity.”
On the other hand, although he is Mr. Gradgrind’s best friend, Josiah Bounderby is more
interested in money and power than in facts. Indeed, he is himself a fiction, or a fraud.
Bounderby’s inflated sense of pride is illustrated by his oft-repeated declaration, “I am
Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.” This statement generally prefaces the story of
Bounderby’s childhood poverty and suffering, a story designed to impress its listeners
with a sense of the young Josiah Bounderby’s determination and self-discipline.
However, Dickens explodes the myth of the self-made man when Bounderby’s mother,
Mrs. Pegler, reveals that her son had a decent, loving childhood and a good education,
and that he was not abandoned, after all.
Bounderby’s attitude represents the social changes created by industrialization and
capitalism. Whereas birth or bloodline formerly determined the social hierarchy, in an
industrialized, capitalist society, wealth determines who holds the most power. Thus,
Bounderby takes great delight in the fact that Mrs. Sparsit, an aristocrat who has fallen on
hard times, has become his servant, while his own ambition has enabled him to rise from
humble beginnings to become the wealthy owner of a factory and a bank. However, in
depicting Bounderby, the capitalist, as a coarse, vain, self-interested hypocrite, Dickens
implies that Bounderby uses his wealth and power irresponsibly, contributing to the
muddled relations between rich and poor, especially in his treatment of Stephen after the
Hands cast Stephen out to form a union.

6- Is Hard Times a realist novel? How?

Realism in literature is identified by literary critics as a method of presenting human
experiences as they actually occur. In the nineteenth century, it arose as a style that
purported to be the opposite of romanticism. Realistic literature attempts to present
straightforward facts. Unlike romantic novels that paint pictures of the way life ought to
be by describing picturesque, fantastic adventures, realistic novels portray life as it
actually appears to ordinary people. In Hard Times, Dickens depicts the life of men,
women and children at the time of Industrial Revolution and points to themes like trade
unions, political economy, education, marriage and divorce. Along with the changing
political and economic structures, the role of women began to change in the middle of the
19th century. The so-called Women question was concerned with traditional roles of
women who were valued for their tenderness and domestic affection, but who had no
political rights. Since male writers of the Victorian period were often accused of inserting
female characters “insignificant both in mind and body,” it is very interesting to have a
closer look at the representation of Victorian women and the Women question in Charles
Dickens’ novel.
Dickens uses realism in the novel to critique the underlying structures in society. He
critiques and satirizes lack of imagination (fancy) in Coketown, pollution, monotony; “It
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.” he also criticizes the
blindness of middle class; the distortion of reality.
Dickens shows us an imaginary world without ideals, no appeal to the imagination, and
strict adherence to fact alone. In other words, if you can't touch it or prove it, it doesn't
exist. In the novel, we find a grim view of the world with many characters having realist
outlooks: devoid of lightheartedness, with every man for himself. It seems that, although
Dickens is writing from a romantic prospective, he is trying to get across the point of the
fallacy of realism. However, to the open-minded reader, the Truth found in romanticism
comes out on top. Probably the two furthest poles of character in the novel are those of
Josiah Bounderby and Stephen Blackpool. Although the two characters' lives are very
different, they seem strangely perpendicular. 

7- Discuss the role of Sissy Jupe in Hard Times.

Sissy is the daughter of a circus performer; she is naturally good and emotionally healthy,
so the Gradgrind philosophy does not affect her, and she is able to take care of Louisa
and to arrange Tom's escape. At the end of the novel, she is the only character who gets a
happy ending of marriage and children.

Sissy is the main force for good in the novel. She is kind, caring, and loving. In the face
of being abandoned by her father and then being forced to learn the Gradgrind
philosophy, she never stops being the only grounding, emotionally positive force in
Coketown. In a way, she is similar to another one of Dickens's favorite character types,
the perfect young woman who selflessly takes care of other people. Check out Esther
in Bleak House, Amy Dorrit in Little Dorrit, Lizzie in Our Mutual Friend… OK, there
are a lot of them. Take our word for it.

But, Sissy is also a messenger from the land of imagination, creativity, and selfless
actions. For instance, all three are combined when she cheers up her father after a hard
day in the circus ring by reading him fairy tales about ogres and giants. What's more,
everyone else in the novel is so weirdly screwed up, that the reader is always hugely
relieved whenever Sissy appears, because finally someone normal is going to say some
normal things in a normal way about all the craziness going on.

however, Sissy, like Bounderby, is an interesting contradiction. She is obviously tied to

the circus, to entertainment, to the life of the imagination. But she is also clearly one of
the more realistic and matter-of-fact characters in the novel. The reason she cannot deal
with most of things Gradgrind's school is trying to teach her is that they are so abstract.
Gradgrind's policies do not make any actual sense despite being logical (well, to a
Utilitarianist, anyway). Think about when Sissy tells Louisa about her mistakes in school.
They are all intersections of economic theory. They are clearly meant to be Sissy's more
reasonable, human interpretations of what the world is actually like. For instance, when
questioned about how very unimportant a few deaths in a thousand people are, she pretty
sensibly answers that to the families of those dead people, those deaths are actually quite
significant indeed.

8- Is "Hard Times" a satire of industrial society?

Yes, the novel is a satire of industrial society.  More importantly, perhaps, it is a satire of
the values on which industrial society is based.  The sort of values which Dickens is
satirizing is best summed up in Josiah Bounderby's phrase "the Good Samaritan was a
bad economist".  Bounderby is a parody, of sorts, of Utilitarian values--i.e. measuring the
worth of something according to its usefulness while disregarding sentimentality
entirely--but the novel also demonstrates that utilitarian principles are, in some ways,
contagious and cause great pain to all who emulate them.  Hence, the story's protagonist,
Louisa, marries Bounderby for the sake of her brother even though she does not love
Bounderby; this leads to a marriage which inevitably fails and succeeds in revealing the
weakness of Utilitarian values to Mr. Gradgrind, Louisa's father.  The only character who
ends up truly happy in the novel is Cissy Jupe who (in the first chapter) demonstrates that
she is ready to confront the Mr. Gradgrind's trite philosophy.  To summarize, the novel is
more than a satire of industrial society; it is a satire of the industrial culture that creates
that society.

In Hard Times Dickens sharply criticizes the poor living conditions of the working class
in industrial towns. He depicts life in a fictive industrial town Coketown as a symbol for
a typical industrial town in Northern England of that time. It is a place full of
exploitation, desperation and oppression. Soot and ash is all over the town; it is a dirty
and suffocating place. The workers have low wages and work long hours. The work
begins before sunrise, the production is important and there is no regard for the rights and
suffering of the low class. Children in school are taught according to Utilitarianism
philosophy – they should accept and live according to facts and facts alone, they are not
allowed to fantasize or think for themselves. In Coketown, machines cause great
pollution. The industrial workers have no chance of progress in life. The upper-middle
class ignores their misery (Bounderby) and denies imagination and creativity
(Gradgrind). Utilitarianism exerts mechanization of society and human mind. The
character of Sissy Jupe represents the personification of fact vs. fancy conflict, she tries
hard to learn facts, but is unable to, she freely thinks and imagines. She is the most stable
character because she succeeds to find balance between the two. Dickens points out the
flaws and limitation of the newly created industrial society and the necessity of social
reform.

9- Elaborate on Technique of Characterization in Hard Times.

In Hard Times, Dickens placed villains, heroes, heroines, and bystanders who are
representative of his times. Even though many of these characters have names that
indicate their personalities or philosophies, they are not caricatures but people endowed
with both good and bad human qualities. Shaped by both internal and external forces,
they are like Shakespeare's characters — living, breathing beings, who love, hate, sin, and
repent. True to the class or caste system of nineteenth-century England, Dickens drew
them from four groups: the fading aristocracy, the vulgar rising middle class, the
downtrodden but struggling labor class, and the itinerant group, represented by the circus
people. For example, the characters who represent the fading aristocracy include Mrs.
Sparsit and James Harthouse. Characters of the middle class take many faces: the wealthy
factory owner, the retired merchant who is a champion of facts, the "whelp," and the
beautiful Louisa nurtured in facts. Just as the buildings of Coketown are all alike in
shape, so are these people alike.
Gradgrind is the father of five children whom he has reared to learn facts and to believe
only in statistics. His wife, a semi-invalid, is simple-minded; although she does not
understand his philosophy, she tries to do his bidding. As the book progresses, however,
he begins to doubt his own teachings. Mr. Thomas Gradgrind represents the Utilitarian
philosophy of the nineteenth century.
In addition, Dickens used the minor characters for comic relief, for transition of plot, and
for comparison and contrast. For instance, Bitzer is a well-crammed student in
Gradgrind's model school of Fact. He is the living contrast to the humble, loving,
compassionate Sissy. Bitzer can best be characterized as the symbolic embodiment of the
practical Gradgrindian philosophy: he is colorless, servile, and mean; and he lives by
self-interest. Moreover, Mrs. Pegler is the mysterious woman who shows great interest in
Mr. Bounderby. One meets her, usually, standing outside the Bounderby house, watching
quietly.