Hard Times (1854)

Penguin Classics.
Edited with an introduction and notes by Kate Flint.
Paperback, in-8, 319 pp., notes, Dickens chronology.
Hard Times is often called the industrial novel of Dickens (1812-1870).

voor een Nederlandse vertaling, zie ons boeknummer 18530002

Coketown is essential as a setting epitomising the negative aspects of industrialisation and the mechanisation of the human soul. The description of Coketown makes it clear that it is not a place of enjoyment or pleasure or nature - rather, the only thing it encourages is dull, repetitive and endless labour. Dickens wrote this novel as a protest against industrialisation and how it was in danger of turning humans into machines and denying their creativity and imagination. Coketown, then, is his creation showing this transformation in process. Note how the reference to the workers as "Hands" reinforces this - they are named only for the work they are able to do, and have no individuality.

What was Dickens trying to tell us about society and its preoccupation with empirical knowledge, or as Thomas Gradgrind says,

Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.