essay about hard times

Charles Dickens

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Hard Times: Introduction

Hard times: plot summary, hard times: detailed summary & analysis, hard times: themes, hard times: quotes, hard times: characters, hard times: symbols, hard times: literary devices, hard times: theme wheel, brief biography of charles dickens.

Historical Context of Hard Times

Other books related to hard times.

Full Title: Hard Times – For These Times
When Written: 1854
Where Written: England
When Published: Serialized between April 1, 1854 – August 12, 1854
Literary Period: Victorian Era
Genre: Novel, Social Criticism
Setting: Coketown, England
Climax: Louisa, instead of eloping with James Harthouse, runs away from her husband to her father's home.
Point of View: Third person, omniscient

Literary Theory and Criticism

Home › Literature › Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Hard Times

Analysis of Charles Dickens’s Hard Times

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on February 12, 2021 • ( 0 )

Dickens’s 10th novel, serialized weekly in Household Words (April 1–August 12, 1854), unillustrated. Published in one volume by Bradbury & Evans, 1854. This controversial book, the shortest of Dickens’s novels, takes up the issues of industrialism and education and offers a moral fable challenging some of the dominant ideologies of the Victorian era.

I. Book the First. Sowing.

Part 1 (April 1, 1854) (I:1) Mr. Gradgrind instructs schoolmaster M’Choakumchild that the one thing needful in life is facts. (I:2) Sissy Jupe is the only “little vessel” in Gradgrind’s school that is not filled with facts. Bitzer, the star pupil, shows off his ability to recite all the physical characteristics of a horse. These children are “regulated and governed” by fact; they are never to imagine. M’Choakumchild, a factory-produced teacher, will fill them with facts and kill any harmful fancy lurking within them. (I:3) On his way home to Stone Lodge, Thomas Gradgrind passes the circus and discovers his children Tom and Louisa peeping into the tent. He reprimands them by repeating, “What would Mr. Bounderby say?”

Part 2 (April 8, 1854)

(I:4) Banker and manufacturer, Mr. Bounderby, the “Bully of Humility,” is bullying Mrs. Gradgrind, a woman of surpassing feebleness, with the story of his neglected and abused childhood. Bounderby ascribes Louisa and Tom’s deliquency to the influence of Sissy Jupe, a circus performer’s daughter who is a student at Gradgrind’s school. He and Gradgrind decide to ask Signor Jupe to persuade his daughter to refrain from encouraging the idle curiosity of the Gradgrind children. As they leave to find Jupe, Bounderby kisses Louisa goodbye and she tries to rub off the mark of the kiss. (I:5) Coketown, a red-brick town founded upon fact, is totally utilitarian and functional—blackened by the “serpentlike” smoke from factory chimneys. On the way to Pod’s End, Gradgrind and Bounderby meet Sissy, who is being chased through the streets by Bitzer. They halt the pursuit and go on with the girl.

Part 3 (April 15, 1854)

(I:6) When they get to the Pegasus’ Arms, Jupe is not there. The circus people tell them that Jupe has probably “cut,” run off because his talents were slipping, and deserted both the circus and his daughter. Bounderby berates Jupe’s irresponsibility. Grandgrind offers to take Sissy into his home if she will promise to cut herself off from the circus. Sissy tearfully agrees. As they leave, Sleary, the circus manager, counters Gradgrind’s harsh judgment of the circus by reminding him that “People must be amuthed,” and asking him to “make the betht of uth, not the wurtht.”

Part 4 (April 22, 1854)

(I:7) Mrs. Sparsit, grandniece to Lady Scadgers, acts as Bounderby’s housekeeper. He exploits her privileged background as a contrast to his story of deprivation. She tolerates, but inwardly resents, this vulgar exploitation. Sissy is told to pay proper deference to Mrs. Sparsit, to forget her own past and the circus, and to begin her life anew as a servant to Mrs. Gradgrind. (I:8) The keynote of Gradgrind’s system is “never wonder,” but Tom and Louisa sit before the fire and wonder about the “something missing” in their lives and about the future. Tom wants to leave home and join Bounderby’s bank, where he plans to manage Bounderby by playing on the banker’s affection for his sister. When Mrs. Gradgrind discovers the two children “wondering,” she reprimands them for disobeying their father.

Part 5 (April 29, 1854)

(I:9) Sissy does not do well in school. She cannot take facts seriously and cannot remember them. Given statistical problems, she ignores the percentages and attends only to individuals who are suffering, no matter how small their numbers. She tells Louisa of her father, a clown, and of the stories she read to him from the Arabian Nights . She continues to hope for his return.

(I:10) After work, Stephen Blackpool, a weaver in Bounderby’s mill, walks home with Rachael, the woman he loves, telling her of his unhappiness and of his belief that life is a muddle. When he gets to his own apartment, he discovers that his wife of many years has returned and is lying drunk on his doorstep.

Part 6 (May 6, 1854)

(I:11) Stephen seeks Bounderby’s advice about getting a divorce. Bounderby warns him not to be a malcontent and tells him that he married for better or worse and that there is no way that he, a poor man, can dissolve the bond. Stephen’s response, “Tis a muddle,” shocks Mrs. Sparsit and prompts Bounderby to assert, “I see traces of turtle soup, and venison, and gold spoon in this.” (I:12) Outside Bounderby’s house, Stephen meets an old woman who tells him that she comes to town once a year to look at Bounderby. Later, as he works at his loom, Stephen sees the old woman in the street, looking at the factory building with admiration.

Part 7 (May 13, 1854)

(I:13) At home Stephen finds Rachael attending his ailing wife. He sleeps fitfully in a chair, dreaming that he is on stage and everyone in the world shuns him. Then, half awake, he sees his wife get up from the bed and take a bottle of poison from the table. He is powerless to stop her, inwardly wishing to be free of her. Just as she is about to drink it, Rachael awakens and takes the bottle away from her. As Rachael leaves, Stephen blesses her as “an angel” who “changest me from bad to good.” (I:14)

Some years later, Mr. Gradgrind has become a member of Parliament, Sissy has been dismissed from school but is liked by Gradgrind in spite of her academic failings. Tom works in Bounderby’s bank. When her father makes an appointment to talk with Louisa about marriage, Tom urges her to remember him. Louisa looks into the “factory” of her self and finds it mute, noiseless, and secret.

Part 8 (May 20, 1854)

(I:15) Gradgrind tells Louisa that Bounderby has proposed to marry her. When she asks if she is expected to love Bounderby, Gradgrind advises her just to look at the facts: she is 20; Bounderby is 50. There is disparity in their ages but not in their means or positions. In sum, he says, Bounderby has asked her to marry him. The question now is whether she will. Louisa observes the smoke pouring from the Coketown chimneys, wonders about the shortness of her life, and then accepts the proposal. “Let it be so,” she says. “What does it matter?” Sissy looks at Louisa in wonder, pity, and sorrow. Mrs. Gradgrind worries about what she will call her son-in-law. (I:16) When Bounderby announces his intentions to Mrs. Sparsit, she responds with compassion, simultaneously wishing him happiness and treating him as “a Victim.” She accepts his offer of a position at the bank. At the wedding, Bounderby speaks of Louisa as deserving of him, and Tom bids her goodbye as “a game girl” and a “first-rate sister.”

Book the Second. Reaping.

Part 9 (May 27, 1854)

(II:1) On a hot summer day, Mrs. Sparsit and Bitzer, now the bank’s light porter, look out of her window above the bank and see a stranger with an “air of exhaustion.” He brings an introduction to the Bounderbys from Mr. Gradgrind and inquires if Mrs. Bounderby is quite the formidable philosopher her father makes her out to be.

Part 10 (June 3, 1854)

(II:2) Bored with serving in the Dragoons and the foreign service, traveling to Jerusalem, and yachting about the world, the stranger, James Harthouse, has decided to go in for hard fact. He flatters Bounderby by agreeing with him on the necessity of smoke, the pleasantness of the work in the mills, and the unreasonable demands of the “hands.” But he is puzzled and challenged by the cold, unrevealing face of Louisa. He believes any set of ideas as good as any other; she seems to believe in nothing. Only when Tom arrives does Harthouse discover something that will “move that face.” So he cultivates “the whelp” and secures him as a guide back to his hotel.

(II:3) Harthouse plies Tom with cigars and liquor and pumps him for the truth about his sister, who married Bounderby for Tom’s sake. He also asks about Mrs. Sparsit, who had her cap set for Bounderby herself, and, inadvertently, about Tom himself. The whelp leaves in a fog, not remembering what he has revealed.

Part 11 (June 10, 1854)

(II:4) Slackbridge, the union organizer, urges the workingmen of Coketown to shun Blackpool as a traitor for refusing to join them. Stephen defends himself before the men, saying that he remains their friend and will work by himself among them, but the loneliness of being shunned is difficult, for Stephen is afraid even to contact Rachael. After four lonely days, Bitzer informs Stephen that Bounderby wishes to see him. (II:5) Bounderby asks him why he refuses to join the union, but Stephen declines to reveal his reason. He defends the men against Bounderby’s charges that they are rebellious, and, taking courage from looking at Louisa’s face, he describes “the muddle” and condemns the rich, who blame everything on the workingmen. By the end of the interview, Bounderby is so angry he fires Stephen.

Part 12 (June 17, 1854)

(II:6) In the street, Stephen meets Rachael and the old lady he met once before outside Bounderby’s house. Stephen tells Rachael he has been fired and that he plans to leave Coketown to search for work. She knows it was because of his promise to her not to join the union. They go to Stephen’s home, where Mrs. Pegler, the old woman, questions Stephen about Bounderby’s wife. Their tea is interrupted by Louisa and Tom. Louisa offers Stephen help for his journey. Tom engages him to wait outside the bank on the evenings before he sets out, telling him that he hopes he can do something for him and that Bitzer will bring a message. But no message comes. After the third night, Stephen sets out on his journey.

Part 13 (June 24, 1854)

(II:7) Harthouse gains the trust of Gradgrind and Bounderby and takes an increasing interest in Mrs. Bounderby. He visits her at the country house that Bounderby has acquired by repossession. There he learns that she has given Tom a good deal of money to cover his gambling debts, but Tom is short with her because she has refused him more money. In a private interview with Tom, Harthouse offers to help him with his debts and urges him to be nicer to his sister. That evening, Tom is indeed much nicer to her. Harthouse observes the gratitude in her face.

Part 14 (July 1, 1854)

(II:8) During the night, the bank is robbed by someone using a forged key. Bitzer and Mrs. Sparsit had seen Blackpool loitering outside the bank, and the disgruntled hand is suspected. After this “explosion,” Mrs. Sparsit comes to stay at the Bounderby country house; she pays particular attention to Bounderby, playing cards with him and fixing his favorite drinks. Louisa is shocked by the news of the robbery. When she asks Tom if he has anything to tell her, she gets only a sullen and resentful reply.

Part 15 (July 8, 1854)

(II:9) Mrs. Sparsit takes over her old role as Bounderby’s housekeeper. Louisa is indifferent, but Mrs. Sparsit’s involvement with Bounderby frees Louisa to spend more time with Harthouse. When Louisa is called back from the country to the bedside of her gravely ill mother, Mrs. Gradgrind tries to tell her daughter of something that has been missing from her life, but she dies without communicating her message. (II:10) Mrs. Sparsit imagines a staircase and, as she contemplates this mental image, she watches Louisa descending. Bounderby informs Mrs. Sparsit that Blackpool and an old woman are the prime suspects in the robbery. That evening Mrs. Sparsit watches Harthouse and Louisa talking in the garden. They are talking about Blackpool: Harthouse found him “dreary,” but Louisa believed in him.

Part 16 (July 15, 1854)

(II:11) Mrs. Sparsit continues to watch Louisa’s descent. When she learns that Harthouse, who is away hunting in Yorkshire, will return while Bounderby is away on business, she hastens to the country house and, hiding in the heavy shrubbery, spies on the couple as Harthouse presses his suit. Louisa resists but appears finally to give in. Mrs. Sparsit cannot overhear the arrangements, however, for a thunderstorm drowns out their words. In the rain, she follows Louisa to the train, but she loses track of her when they arrive in Coketown. (II:12) Louisa goes to her father and tells him that his training has made her empty and confused, that she has left a husband she despises, that Harthouse has proposed to elope with her, and that she has not disgraced her father. She tells him that his philosophy has brought her to this pass and asks him to save her. Then she collapses at his feet.

Book the Third. Garnering.

Part 17 (July 22, 1854)

(III:1) Shaken by his daughter’s revelations, Gradgrind tells Louisa the next morning that he has neglected the wisdom of the heart for the wisdom of the head. Sissy, who has brought such understanding into the Gradgrind household, offers to help Louisa. (III:2) That evening Sissy goes to Harthouse and tells him that he should forget Louisa and leave Coketown. Harthouse is struck by how “absurd” and “ridiculous” he will appear if he just walks away from Coketown, but he is “vanquished” by Sissy and decamps for Egypt and the pyramids.

Part 18 (July 29, 1854)

(III:3) When Bounderby appears at Stone Lodge with Mrs. Sparsit to inform Gradgrind that Louisa has run off, he learns that she is in her father’s house. Although Gradgrind tells Bounderby that Louisa is suffering from the education he gave her and needs time with Sissy to recuperate, Bounderby demands that she return to his house by noon the next day. When she does not appear, he gets rid of her things and resumes his bachelor life. (III:4) Bounderby pursues his investigation into the bank robbery. Rachael assures him that Stephen will return to clear his name; she sends a letter to Stephen telling of the accusations against him, but he does not return.

Part 19 (August 5, 1854)

(III:5) Sissy assures Rachael that the people of Stone Lodge still believe in Stephen. The two women plan to walk in the countryside to search for him on the route he would take back to Coketown. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sparsit has apprehended the old lady who is suspected along with Stephen. The woman turns out to be Bounderby’s mother, Mrs. Pegler. She humiliates her son by giving a very different account of his childhood from the story he tells.

(III:6) In the country, Sissy and Rachael find Stephen’s hat lying on the ground near the entrance to an abandoned mine—the Old Hell Shaft. With help they find Stephen at the bottom, injured but still alive. Stephen tells of hurrying to return to Coketown, cutting across open country at night, and falling into the pit. He also tells of a star he has watched from the bottom of the pit and of his wish that all men might live together peacefully. He tells Gradgrind of Tom’s request that he wait outside the bank. Then he dies.

Part 20 (August 12, 1854)

(III:7) Tom disappears from the group gathered around the Old Hell Shaft. Gradgrind realizes his son’s guilt and Sissy tells him that she directed Tom to go to Sleary’s circus. There they find Tom, dressed as a clown, taking part in the show. He blames Louisa for his crime, for she did not give him the money he needed, and he excuses himself by citing figures to prove his dishonesty was predictable. They prepare to send him abroad, but just as he is about to leave, Bitzer arrives to arrest him. (III:8) Gradgrind tries to appeal to Bitzer’s good nature, which is lacking, and to his self-interest, but Bitzer thinks he can take over Tom’s position at the bank only if he apprehends him. Finally Sleary distracts Bitzer and Tom is spirited away. Sleary explains the circus philosophy to Gradgrind: Sissy’s faith that her father will return is a sign, he says, that there is love in the world and “not all [is] self interest after all.” His other message to Gradgrind is that “People mutht be amuthed. They can’t be alwayth a-learning, nor yet they can’t be alwayth a-working.” Thus Sleary challenges the two central propositions of Gradgrind’s shattered worldview.

(III:9) Bounderby, outraged by the Mrs. Pegler episode, dismisses Mrs. Sparsit and sends her off to live with her relation, Lady Scadgers. The future shows Bitzer rising in business; Bounderby dying of a fit in the street; Gradgrind adopting the philosophy of Faith, Hope, and Charity and exonerating Blackpool; Tom dying penitent abroad; Sissy marrying and raising a loving family; and Louisa, remaining unmarried, loving Sissy and her children.

Dickens wrote Hard Times for Household Words , and the novel seems almost tailored to articulate the aims of the magazine, stated in its first issue: “No realities, will give a harsh tone to our Household Words. . . . We would tenderly cherish that light of Fancy which is inherent in the human breast; which, according to its nurture, burns with an inspiring flame, or sinks into a sullen glare, but which (or woe betide that day!) can never be extinguished.”

Yet Dickens had difficulty with the short installments called for in the weekly magazine, and as he worked on the novel, he thought of it in terms of monthly parts. Compared with the other monthly serials, however, Hard Times is a very short novel. Its five monthly numbers (two for “Sowing,” two for “Reaping,” one for “Garnering”) make it only a quarter of the standard length. Even when compared with the other weekly serials, such as A Tale of Two Cities or Great Expectations, Hard Times is a short novel. Its spare and unembellished prose, its simple fable, and its overt didacticism reinforce the impression that the shortest of Dickens’s novels is also the simplest. So uncharacteristic is it that many Dickensians have considered it insignificant; Frederic G. Kitton (1900), for example, placed it along with the magazine articles, travel books, and Christmas Books among Dickens’s “minor writings.”

The novel’s controversial subject matter has put off many readers like the Whig historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay, who dismissed it as “sullen socialism,” but Hard Times has also had defenders; John Ruskin considered it the most important of Dickens’s novels and in Unto This Last (1862) called its view of industrialism “the right one, grossly and sharply told.” This Victorian controversy, which pitted the novel’s detractors, who decried its lack of Dickensian humor, against those who praised its social insights, has continued to the present, supercharged in 1948 by what may be the single most controversial essay on Dickens in the 20th century, F. R. Leavis’s “Note” on Hard Times in The Great Tradition . After excluding Dickens from the great tradition of the English novel as an “entertainer” in whose works “the adult mind doesn’t as a rule find . . . a challenge to an unusual and sustained seriousness,” Leavis added an appendix describing Hard Times as a “masterpiece” and an exception to this rule. He praised the tight construction of the novel as a “moral fable,” its systematic critique of Utilitarianism, and its poetic expression. His eccentric evaluation—reprinted in slightly revised form in 1970 in Dickens the Novelist—aroused many Dickensians to respond. Many made the case for the greatness of the other novels, often at the expense of Hard Times , which was frequently described as misinformed on the issues, humorless, and lacking convincing and engaging characters.

Certainly Dickens’s intent in the novel was serious. When he dedicated it to Thomas Carlyle, he told him, “I know it contains nothing in which you do not think with me.” The critique of industrialism and utilitarianism in the novel is as Carlylean as the history of the French Revolution in Two Cities. Carlyle described Victorian times as diseased, hardened by a belief in “mechanism” and “machinery,” and he attacked the economic philosophers of the day for using an analytic method that reduced everything to numbers and statistics. The utilitarians, he asserted, did not consider individuals, and they denied the truths of intuition and spirit.

Gradgrind represents the utilitarians in the novel. Appropriately, he schools his own children to become creatures of fact like himself. He sees these children not as living creatures filled with wonder but rather as empty vessels to be stuffed with facts. The contrast between the living, organic world that he stifles and the deadly realm of fact that drains life from the children is presented in the contrast between Sissy Jupe and Bitzer as they are caught in a shaft of sunlight entering the schoolroom. Sissy “was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone upon her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he possessed. . . . His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white” (I:2). This contrast between the natural and unnatural is fundamental to Dickens’s analysis in the novel. By reducing everything to material fact, utilitarianism is unnatural and destructive. It fragments the world into unnatural pieces—like the “facts” in Bitzer’s definition of a horse—and fails to see anything whole as it naturally appears in the world.

Dickens is sometimes criticized for creating an unrecognizable caricature of utilitarianism, the rational-empiricist philosophy of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), James Mill (1773–1836), and Mill’s son, the great political philosopher John Stuart Mill (1806–73). Bentham based his philosophy on a binary opposition between sensations of pleasure and pain and on the principle of maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. The philosophy’s quantifiable social goal was to achieve the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people. Bentham and his followers were particularly interested in principles of social organization that facilitated progress toward this goal. While Gradgrind’s philosophy may not be intellectually rigorous, it is grounded in a binary opposition between fact and fancy, and it constructs “reality” from analytically derived pieces.

Gradgrind’s educational program has often been compared to the one James Mill developed for his son, a rigorous discipline in mathematics, logic, and language, instilled from early childhood, but Gradgrind’s system, with its commitment to the “-ologies,” may be more scientific than the one Mill devised. Both schemes, however, were unsuccessful. In his Autobiography (1873), John Stuart Mill described a nervous breakdown he suffered in his 20s when he realized that he really did not care about the social and rational principles he had been taught; he overcame the depression only when he allowed the truths of feeling, especially as expressed in Wordsworth’s poetry, to counter the absolute rationalism of his upbringing. In the novel, Louisa, Tom, and Bitzer also discover that their education in Gradgrind’s school, by denying feeling and imagination, has not prepared them to live fulfilling lives.

Louisa has no resources to enable her to respond to Bounderby’s proposal of marriage. When she asks her father’s advice, he can only suggest that she treat the issue “simply as one of Tangible Fact,” and then he reduces the fact to numbers, to the 30-year difference in their ages that he then evaluates statistically. Although Louisa has a vague sense that something more should be at issue, she does not know what it might be and acquiesces to the marriage, saying, “What does it matter?” (II:15). Tom, who has learned the principle of self-interest and who has no empathy for anyone but himself, robs Bounderby’s bank and frames Blackpool. Bitzer, the model analyst who reduces the world to bits, also evaluates everything in terms of self-interest. When Gradgrind tries to bribe him to allow Tom to escape arrest, the calculating Bitzer responds from pure self-interest: “Knowing that your clear head would propose that alternative,” he tells Gradgrind, “I have gone over the calculations in my mind; and I find that to compound the felony, even on very high terms indeed, would not be as safe and good for me as my improved prospects in the Bank” (III:8).

The reductionism inherent in Utilitarianism was exaggerated in the principles of political economy, the popular economic philosophy of the time that reduced all human relationships to economic self-interest. The names of Gradgrind’s younger children—Adam Smith and Malthus— suggest the alliance between the utilitarians and political economists whom Dickens was attacking. Coketown and Mr. Bounderby are the most blatant expressions of the new economics in the novel. A town of red brick, smoke and ashes, machinery, and tall chimneys, Coketown articulates the philosophy that created it: “Fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the material aspect of the town; fact, fact, fact, everywhere in the immaterial” (I:5). Like the schoolchildren who are reduced to “vessels,” Coketown’s inhabitants are reduced to “hands,” “people equally like one another, who 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 counterpart of the last and the next” (I:5). What signs there are of imagination have been perverted into repetitive madness by the iron laws of economics that define the town’s existence: from the chimneys “interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. . . . [and] the piston of the steam engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness” (I:5).

Bounderby, the captain of industry who represents the triumph of economics, also perverts imagination. Like Dickens’s great comic figures— Micawber, Tony Weller, or Sarah Gamp, for example—Bounderby claims to be self-created, but his rags-to-riches story of rising from abandonment to become Josiah Bounderby of Coketown is not a triumph of imagination. It is a clichéd narrative, produced to affirm the ideology of laissez-faire, and it is a lie. Unlike Gradgrind, who is humbled and changed by Louisa’s fall, Bounderby is simply reinforced in his fatuous dishonesty. He bullies Gradgrind’s humility and rejects Louisa.

Stephen Blackpool’s double bind shows how the “laws” of Coketown constrain and oppress the worker. When he seeks to escape “the muddle,” Bounderby accuses him of rebelliousness and of being a dupe of some “mischievous stranger” (I:11), but when Stephen refuses to go along with Slackbridge and join the Labor Union, he is shunned by his fellow workmen. The marriage laws and the laws of political economy conspire to deny Stephen love, community, and identity. Although Stephen can imagine a better life for himself, he dies as an industrial martyr, killed by falling into the hell shaft of industrial England. He cannot escape the muddle.

Harthouse’s cynical fatalism—“What will be will be” (II:8)—is an apt expression of the fundamental truth of a world without imagination, and it echoes Louisa’s “What does it matter?” If fact rules everything, then human choice and action can have no effect. Harthouse is ironically named, for he is as empty inside as Bounderby, but he does act as a catalyst to make Louisa aware of her own heart and inner needs. Their climactic rendezvous takes place outside Coketown in a natural setting during a cleansing rainstorm (II:11), and it releases Louisa’s natural impulses that have been so long repressed.

Sissy Jupe is the real representative of heart. She acts from a higher law than the law of fact, and she alone can reduce Harthouse to absurdity and convince him to leave Coketown. She affirms the centrality of love. Her loyalty to her father, even after he abandons her, is in marked contrast to Bounderby’s immediate rejection of Louisa after she returns to her father. Sissy’s connections with the circus also enable Tom to escape the inevitability of “the law.”

The circus embodies the alternative to Coketown’s philosophy of fact. Its world of illusion expresses its commitment to fancy, to imagination. Its horses are not fettered to mechanical routines like the melancholy elephants in Coketown; the circus people know and understand them from experience, not from textbook definitions of them, so a real horse can dance rings around Bitzer and foil his attempt to arrest Tom (III:8). There is a community among the circus people, derived from another power of the imagination, the power to empathize with others, to imagine oneself in another’s place. Sleary sums up the philosophy of fancy when he tells Gradgrind “that there ith a love in the world, not all Thelf-interetht after all” and that fancy “hath a way of ith own of calculating or not calculating, whith Thomehow or another ith at leatht ath hard to give a name to” (III:8). These mysterious powers of love, empathy, and imagination offer hope, comfort, and amusement.

The circus has sometimes been criticized as an inadequate symbol to represent the alternative to fact. Certainly the amusing circus vagabonds were a less-established social institution than the factories and schools of fact in Victorian England. The circus’s power to counteract the destructive effects of industrialism is very limited. It saves Tom from arrest, but he will soon die far from home. It may be the basis of Sissy’s ability to achieve happiness, but it cannot remove the taint of Coketown from Louisa, who will never know the happiness of having her own family. Coketown has blighted Tom’s and Louisa’s lives and the lives of every other inhabitant. The circus changes Gradgrind, but he is scorned by his former associates and Coketown goes on as before. The marginality of the circus may suggest just how important its presence was in Victorian England, even if its unspoken philosophy of fancy was accessible only to those who could translate the truths in Sleary’s boozy prose.

CHARACTERS AND RELATED ENTRIES

Star pupil at Mr. Gradgrind’s school, he goes to work for Bounderby’s bank. There he spies on Tom Gradgrind and reports his illegal activities. “His skin was so unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as though, if he were cut, he would bleed white” (I:2).

Bitzer’s name—especially apt today in the age of computer bits—identifies him as an example of the fact school that fails to see things whole and instead cuts them up analytically into bits and pieces. His education has left him with only one motivation, self-interest. His opposite in the novel is Sissy Jupe, who is as colorful as he is white. She thinks only of individuals, not averages or numbers, and her primary motivation is love for others.

Blackpool, Mrs.

Stephen’s wife of 19 years, “a disabled, drunken creature . . . so foul to look at, in her tatters, stains, and splashes, but so much fouler than that in her moral infamy, that it was a shameful thing even to see her” (I:10). A shadowy figure who has left her husband, she reappears periodically, disrupting his life and his hopes of marrying Rachael.

Blackpool, Stephen

A power-loom weaver in Bounderby’s mill, he is “a rather stooping man with a knitted brow, a pondering expression on his face, and a hard-looking head sufficiently capacious, on which his iron grey hair lay long and thin” who finds life “a muddle” (I:10). He loves Rachael, another Coketown factory hand, but he is unable to marry her because he is already married. When he seeks advice from Bounderby about how to obtain a divorce, he is rebuffed by his employer as a troublemaker (I:11), and when he refuses to join the union he is ostracized by his fellow workers (II:4). When Stephen leaves Coketown to look for work, Tom Gradgrind manages to throw suspicion for the bank robbery on him (III:4). As he returns to clear his name, Blackpool falls into an empty mineshaft, the Old Hell Shaft, and dies shortly after he is rescued by Sissy and Rachael (III:6).

Stephen’s name, combining allusions to Stephen, the first Christian martyr, and Blackpool, a town in Yorkshire, suggests the tension between his symbolic role as a victim of industrialism and his realistic role as a Yorkshireman. He has been criticized as sentimental and impossibly good, and he has been praised by Ruskin and others as an accurate portrait of a workingman.

Bounderby, Josiah

Coketown banker and mill owner and friend of Mr. Gradgrind: “A big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. A man made out of coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make him. . . . A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. . . . A man who was the Bully of humility” (I:4). To maintain the myth that he is self-made, Bounderby hides his mother, Mrs. Pegler, who has sacrificed to give him an education and a place in the world. He bullies his employees, convinced that they are a rebellious lot who want to “be set up in a coach and six, and . . . fed on turtle soup and venison, with a gold spoon” (I:11). He pursues Stephen Blackpool, one of his mill hands who is accused of robbing his bank, and later the actual robber, Tom Gradgrind, who works in the bank. His marriage to Louisa Gradgrind is a loveless union that ends when she leaves him and returns to her father’s home (II:12). The truth about his origins is revealed at the close of the novel (III:5).

A satiric portrait of a “Manchester Man”—the composite of the generation of mill owners that emerged in the early decades of the industrial revolution—Bounderby has often been considered one of the great achievements in Hard Times . Described by James Marlow ( Charles Dickens: The Uses of Time, 1994) as “an archetypal character of capitalistic civilization,” Bounderby represents the practical captains of industry who often allied themselves with the philosophic radicals like Gradgrind to promote their interests and doctrines of laissezfaire. Typical of this new class, Bounderby combines ownership of the factory with that of the bank to control the economy of Coketown; he celebrates his economic ascendancy by hiring as his housekeeper Mrs. Sparsit, a lady with upper-class relations, and by acquiring in a liquidation sale a country house formerly owned by a member of the gentry. Most of all, Bounderby concocts a clichéd rags-to-riches story, attributing his success solely to his own hard work. The novel exposes him as a bounder and fraud and his story as a lying misuse of the power of fiction.

Childers, E. W. B.

Equestrian performer with Sleary’s Circus, “a remarkable sort of Centaur . . . celebrated for his daring vaulting act as the Wild Huntsman of the North American Prairies” (I:6). He stands up to Gradgrind and Bounderby when they disparage Sissy’s father (I:6), and he later helps Tom escape to Liverpool (III:7, 8). He is married to Sleary’s daughter Josephine, and their three-yearold son is billed as “The Little Wonder of Scholastic Equitation” (III:7). His name is associated with the childlike qualities of the imagination that are represented by the circus and threatened by industrialism.

Industrial town that serves as the setting for Hard Times ; “a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness” (I:5). Commentators have disagreed whether the original of Coketown was Manchester or Preston; it is safe to say that it is neither but rather a town based on Dickens’s visits to both places and to other industrial towns in the north of England.

Gradgrind, Louisa

Gradgrind’s daughter, whose emotional life and imagination are blighted by her father’s philosophy. She is vaguely aware that something is missing in her upbringing and her life: “struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which brightened its expression.” Taught to consult only her head and not her heart, she marries Bounderby because she can think of no reason not to, because her father provides no help with her decision (I:15), and because Tom asks her to. She is wholly unprepared to encounter the seductions of James Harthouse who, by playing on her affection for her brother, convinces her to leave her husband (II:11–12). She does not run off with Harthouse but instead returns to her father, whose transformation is inspired by her fall. She is denied the joys of motherhood but becomes a loving nurturer to Sissy’s children (III:9).

Gradgrind, Mrs.

Thomas Gradgrind’s wife. So much in the shadow of her husband, Mrs. Gradgrind lacks even the identity of a Christian name. She is “a little, thin, white, pink-eyed bundle of shawls, of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily; who was always taking physic without any effect, and who, whenever she showed any symptom of coming to life, was invariably stunned by some weighty piece of fact tumbling on her” (I:4). Gradgrind’s philosophy has so drained her of life that she is reduced to near transparency and idiocy. She dies unenlightened before Louisa returns home (II:9).

Gradgrind, Thomas

Retired merchant and member of Parliament for Coketown, he is the sponsor of a school devoted to teaching his philosophy of hard facts and a representative of the utilitarian point of view in Parliament. “A man of realities—a man of facts and calculations—a man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over” (I:2). Gradgrind’s educational system discourages imagination, stresses fact, and encourages such rote memorization as Bitzer’s definition of a horse (I:2). The children are told to “never wonder” (I:8). This heartless philosophy has its harshest effects on his children: Louisa accepts a loveless marriage, and Tom is consummately selfish. The names of the other Gradgrind children, Jane, Adam Smith, and Malthus, bespeak their father’s philosophical commitments. The coldness, hardness, and lack of imagination in Gradgrind’s philosophy is caricatured in Stone Lodge, his home, which expresses the same qualities as its owner: “A great square house, with a heavy portico darkening the principal windows, as its master’s heavy brows overshadowed his eyes” (I:3).

Gradgrind is not a wholly unsympathetic figure. His motives, unlike Bounderby’s, are not selfinterested, and his remorse when Louisa leaves her husband and Tom robs a bank generates a natural sympathy for him not unlike that for the converted Scrooge. Gradgrind has often been criticized, especially in the 19th century, as a shallow and ignorant depiction of utilitarianism, but the story recounted in John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography (1873) of his nervous breakdown after he underwent a one-sided utilitarian curriculum gives credence to Dickens’s critique.

Gradgrind, Thomas, Jr. (“the Whelp”)

Son of Thomas Gradgrind whose education leaves him totally selfish and unconcerned for others: “It was very remarkable that a young gentleman who had been brought up under one continuous system of unnatural restraint, should be a hypocrite; but it was certainly the case with Tom. It was very strange that a young gentleman who had never been left to his own guidance for five consecutive minutes, should be incapable at last of governing himself; but so it was with Tom. It was altogether unaccountable that a young gentleman whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle, should be still inconvenienced by its ghost in the form of groveling sensualities; but such a monster, beyond all doubt, was Tom” (II:3). Tom urges Louisa to marry Bounderby to forward his own career at Bounderby’s bank (I:14). Later, he robs the bank after framing Stephen Blackpool to appear guilty (II:6–8). He hides in Sleary’s circus, and Sleary helps him escape to Liverpool and from there to America.

Harthouse, James

A good-looking gentleman of 35 who comes as a potential parliamentary candidate to look over Coketown. “Had tried life as a Cornet of Dragoons, and found it a bore; and had afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad, and found it a bore; and had then strolled to Jerusalem, and got bored there; and had then gone yachting about the world, and got bored everywhere” (II:2). He insinuates his way into Louisa Bounderby’s affections by his apparent interest in her brother Tom, whom he calls “the Whelp” (II:7). When Bounderby is away, he meets Louisa in the garden of her country house and urges her to run off with him, but she returns instead to her father’s home (II:11–12). Representing Louisa, Sissy Jupe confronts him and persuades him to leave Coketown (III:2).

Described by George Bernard Shaw (1985) as the typical Victorian “swell,” Harthouse is the catalyst who prompts Louisa’s transformation, even as he fails to engage her affections. He is less sympathetically treated than some others among Dickens’s dandies, characters such as Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities or Eugene Wrayburn in Our Mutual Friend . Diffident, fashionable, and smooth, he is described as satanic and devilish, and he uses his diabolical smoothness to take in Gradgrind, corrupt Tom, and seduce Louisa. In the end, his schemes come to nothing, and he leaves Coketown “a great Pyramid of failure . . . to go up the Nile” (III:2).

Jupe, Cecelia (Sissy)

Daughter of the circus clown and dog trainer Signor Jupe, she is adopted into the Gradgrind household when her father runs off and abandons her. There she is unsuccessfully educated, as “Girl number twenty,” at Gradgrind’s school. A foil to Bitzer, whose whiteness reveals his lack of human feeling and warmth, Sissy “was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a deeper and more lustrous color from the sun, when it shone upon her” (I:2). She is wholly incapable of making sense of statistics, which she calls “stutterings.” Her loving-kindness counters the “hard fact” utilitarianism in the Gradgrind household. She cares for Louisa after her separation from Bounderby, convinces Harthouse to leave Coketown (III:2), discovers the dying Stephen Blackpool in the Old Hell Shaft (III:6), and accompanies Gradgrind and Louisa when they go to Sleary’s circus in search of Tom (III:7).

Jupe, Signor

Circus clown and dog trainer who disappears from the circus when he thinks himself too old to perform (I:6). Although Jupe’s fate remains unknown, Sleary assumes that he has died when his dog, Merrylegs, returns to the circus on his own (III:8).

Kidderminster

“A diminutive boy with an old face” who assists E. W. B. Childers in his equestrian act in Sleary’s Circus. “Made up with curls, wreaths, wings, white bismuth, and carmine, this hopeful young person soared into so pleasing a Cupid as to constitute the chief delight of the maternal part of the spectators; but in private, where his characteristics were a precocious cut-away coat and an extremely gruff voice, he became of the Turf, turfy” (I:6). Like that of his colleague Childers, Kidderminster’s name suggests the childlike imagination that is symbolized by the circus.

M’Choakumchild

Schoolmaster in Gradgrind’s school of hard facts. “He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters, had been lately turned out at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography, and general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land-surveying and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. . . . If he had only learnt a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!” (I:2).

In M’Choakumchild, Dickens satirizes the gen eration of teachers produced—mechanically, he thought—by the new teachers’ colleges. M’Choakumchild’s Scottish ancestry alludes to the importance of the Scots as political economists and hard-facts philosophers. George H. Ford and Sylvere Monod (1966) suggest that M’Choakumchild was based on the Scottish schoolmaster and textbook writer J. M. McCulloch, headmaster of Circus-Place School, Edinburgh.

Coketown factory hand and faithful friend to Stephen Blackpool: “She turned . . . and showed a quiet oval face, dark and rather delicate, irradiated by a pair of very gentle eyes, and further set off by the perfect order of her shining black hair. It was not a face in its first bloom; she was a woman of five-and-thirty years” (I:10). Although she and Stephen love each other, his inability to secure a divorce from his drunken wife prevents their marrying. She tends Stephen’s wife during her illness (I:13). Stephen’s promise to her not to join the trade union causes the other workmen to shun him (II:4). With Sissy, she discovers the injured Blackpool at the bottom of Old Hell Shaft (III:6).

Slackbridge

Union organizer in Coketown who publicly castigates Blackpool for refusing to join the association. “An ill-made, high-shouldered man, with lowering brows, and his features crushed into an habitually sour expression, he contrasted most unfavourably, even in his mongrel dress, with the great body of his hearers in their plain working clothes” (II:4).

George Bernard Shaw (1985) considers Slackbridge Dickens’s “one real failure in the book,” revealing the author’s bourgeois mistrust of unions. Slackbridge’s characterization is vague, and his language, as Steven Connor (1985) points out, has an “elaborately ‘written’ quality.”

Proprietor of an equestrian circus, “a stout man . . . with one fixed eye, and one loose eye” and a lisping, asthmatic voice “like the efforts of a broken pair of bellows, . . . and a muddled head which was never sober and never drunk” (I:6). He cares for Sissy Jupe after her father deserts her (I:6), and he shelters Tom Gradgrind after he runs from Coketown (III:7). Sleary’s philosophy, summed up in his assertion “People mutht be amuthed” (III:8), expresses Dickens’s views that imagination must temper hard facts and that amusement is essential even in the most earnest life. Many commentators consider Sleary’s circus inadequate as a symbol to represent the realm of imagination and counter the factualism of Gradgrind’s philosophy.

Sleary, Josephine

The circus owner’s daughter, “who had been tied on a horse at two years old, and had made a will at twelve, which she always carried about with her, expressive of her dying desire to be drawn to the grave by the two piebald ponies” (I:6). She marries E. W. B. Childers.

Sparsit, Mrs.

Bounderby’s housekeeper. A widow with aristocratic pretensions and “a Coriolanian style of nose” (I:7), she trades on her connections with the Powler and Scadgers families and hopes to marry Bounderby. When he marries Louisa, she is relegated to a position at Bounderby’s bank where, resentfully, she sets out to undermine his marriage, creating the fantasy of a great staircase that she sees Louisa descending. She spies on Louisa, brings news of Louisa’s rendezvous with Harthouse (III:3), and uncovers the identity of Mrs. Pegler as Bounderby’s mother (III:5), an act for which she is dismissed from Bounderby’s service (III:9). Critics have generally admired Mrs. Sparsit as an unerring portrait of aristocratic snobbery, satirically balanced to Bounderby’s bourgeois pretensions. Each is, in a way, the undoing of the other.

FURTHER READING F. R. LEAVIS’s essay, first included in The Great Tradition (1948) and later in slightly revised form in Dickens the Novelist (1970), defined many of the critical issues in Hard Times and threw down a gauntlet to other critics by describing the novel as a “masterpiece.” John Holloway (“Hard Times: A History and a Criticism,” Dickens and the Twentieth Century, edited by John Gross and Gabriel Pearson, 1962) responded to Leavis by arguing that the novel was a shallow and simplistic rendering of utilitarianism. Robin Gilmour (“The Gradgrind School: Political Economy in the Classroom,” Victorian Studies, 1967), on the other hand, showed that Dickens understood in some depth the educational philosophy and schools that he was attacking. Michael Goldberg (1972) discusses Dickens’s debt to Thomas Carlyle in the novel. Paul Schlicke (1985) describes Victorian circuses and analyzes the symbolism of the circus in the novel. Steven Connor (1985) deconstructs the novel by analyzing the tensions between metaphor and metonymy. Kate Flint (1986) suggests that Dickens failed to confront the structural and social issues in his critique of industrial capitalism and chose instead to offer a sentimental vision of Sleary’s circus as an anarchic alternative to Coketown. George H. Ford and Sylvere Monod (1966), in their edition of the novel, include a selection of contemporary background pieces and responses to the novel as well as Leavis’s essay and some responses to it. Margaret Simpson’s Companion to Hard Times (1997) provides exhaustive notes to the text, its sources, contexts, and backgrounds. Source: Davis, P. (2007). Critical companion to Charles Dickens. New York: Facts On File.

How Gratitude Can Help You Through Hard Times

A decade’s worth of research on gratitude has shown me that when life is going well, gratitude allows us to celebrate and magnify the goodness. But what about when life goes badly? In the midst of the economic maelstrom that has gripped our country, I have often been asked if people can—or even should—feel grateful under such dire circumstances.

My response is that not only will a grateful attitude help—it is essential . In fact, it is precisely under crisis conditions when we have the most to gain by a grateful perspective on life. In the face of demoralization, gratitude has the power to energize. In the face of brokenness, gratitude has the power to heal. In the face of despair, gratitude has the power to bring hope. In other words, gratitude can help us cope with hard times.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not suggesting that gratitude will come easily or naturally in a crisis. It’s easy to feel grateful for the good things. No one “feels” grateful that they have lost a job or a home or good health or has taken a devastating hit on their retirement portfolio.

But it is vital to make a distinction between feeling grateful and being grateful. We don’t have total control over our emotions. We cannot easily will ourselves to feel grateful, less depressed, or happy. Feelings follow from the way we look at the world, thoughts we have about the way things are, the way things should be, and the distance between these two points.

But being grateful is a choice, a prevailing attitude that endures and is relatively immune to the gains and losses that flow in and out of our lives. When disaster strikes, gratitude provides a perspective from which we can view life in its entirety and not be overwhelmed by temporary circumstances. Yes, this perspective is hard to achieve—but my research says it is worth the effort.

Remember the bad

Trials and suffering can actually refine and deepen gratefulness if we allow them to show us not to take things for granted. Our national holiday of gratitude, Thanksgiving, was born and grew out of hard times. The first Thanksgiving took place after nearly half the pilgrims died from a rough winter and year. It became a national holiday in 1863 in the middle of the Civil War and was moved to its current date in the 1930s following the Depression.

Why? Well, when times are good, people take prosperity for granted and begin to believe that they are invulnerable. In times of uncertainty, though, people realize how powerless they are to control their own destiny. If you begin to see that everything you have, everything you have counted on, may be taken away, it becomes much harder to take it for granted.

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So crisis can make us more grateful—but research says gratitude also helps us cope with crisis. Consciously cultivating an attitude of gratitude builds up a sort of psychological immune system that can cushion us when we fall. There is scientific evidence that grateful people are more resilient to stress, whether minor everyday hassles or major personal upheavals. The contrast between suffering and redemption serves as the basis for one of my tips for practicing gratitude: remember the bad.

It works this way: Think of the worst times in your life, your sorrows, your losses, your sadness—and then remember that here you are, able to remember them, that you made it through the worst times of your life, you got through the trauma, you got through the trial, you endured the temptation, you survived the bad relationship, you’re making your way out of the dark. Remember the bad things, then look to see where you are now.

This process of remembering how difficult life used to be and how far we have come sets up an explicit contrast that is fertile ground for gratefulness. Our minds think in terms of counterfactuals—mental comparisons we make between the way things are and how things might have been different. Contrasting the present with negative times in the past can make us feel happier (or at least less unhappy) and enhance our overall sense of well-being. This opens the door to coping gratefully.

Try this little exercise. First, think about one of the unhappiest events you have experienced. How often do you find yourself thinking about this event today? Does the contrast with the present make you feel grateful and pleased? Do you realize your current life situation is not as bad as it could be? Try to realize and appreciate just how much better your life is now. The point is not to ignore or forget the past but to develop a fruitful frame of reference in the present from which to view experiences and events.

There’s another way to foster gratitude: confront your own mortality. In a recent study, researchers asked participants to imagine a scenario where they are trapped in a burning high rise, overcome by smoke, and killed. This resulted in a substantial increase in gratitude levels, as researchers discovered when they compared this group to two control conditions who were not compelled to imagine their own deaths.

In these ways, remembering the bad can help us to appreciate the good. As the German theologian and Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said, “Gratitude changes the pangs of memory into a tranquil joy.” We know that gratitude enhances happiness, but why? Gratitude maximizes happiness in multiple ways, and one reason is that it helps us reframe memories of unpleasant events in a way that decreases their unpleasant emotional impact. This implies that grateful coping entails looking for positive consequences of negative events. For example, grateful coping might involve seeing how a stressful event has shaped who we are today and has prompted us to reevaluate what is really important in life.

Reframing disaster

To say that gratitude is a helpful strategy to handle hurt feelings does not mean that we should try to ignore or deny suffering and pain.

The field of positive psychology has at times been criticized for failing to acknowledge the value of negative emotions. Barbara Held of Bowdoin College in Maine, for example, contends that positive psychology has been too negative about negativity and too positive about positivity. To deny that life has its share of disappointments, frustrations, losses, hurts, setbacks, and sadness would be unrealistic and untenable. Life is suffering. No amount of positive thinking exercises will change this truth.

So telling people simply to buck up, count their blessings, and remember how much they still have to be grateful for can certainly do much harm. Processing a life experience through a grateful lens does not mean denying negativity. It is not a form of superficial happiology. Instead, it means realizing the power you have to transform an obstacle into an opportunity. It means reframing a loss into a potential gain, recasting negativity into positive channels for gratitude.

A growing body of research has examined how grateful recasting works. In a study conducted at Eastern Washington University, participants were randomly assigned to one of three writing groups that would recall and report on an unpleasant open memory—a loss, a betrayal, victimization, or some other personally upsetting experience. The first group wrote for 20 minutes on issues that were irrelevant to their open memory. The second wrote about their experience pertaining to their open memory.

Researchers asked the third group to focus on the positive aspects of a difficult experience—and discover what about it might now make them feel grateful. Results showed that they demonstrated more closure and less unpleasant emotional impact than participants who just wrote about the experience without being prompted to see ways it might be redeemed with gratitude. Participants were never told not to think about the negative aspects of the experience or to deny or ignore the pain. Moreover, participants who found reasons to be grateful demonstrated fewer intrusive memories, such as wondering why it happened, whether it could have been prevented, or if they believed they caused it to happen. Thinking gratefully, this study showed, can help heal troubling memories and in a sense redeem them—a result echoed in many other studies.

Some years ago, I asked people with debilitating physical illnesses to compose a narrative concerning a time when they felt a deep sense of gratitude to someone or for something. I asked them to let themselves re-create that experience in their minds so that they could feel the emotions as if they had transported themselves back in time to the event itself. I also had them reflect on what they felt in that situation and how they expressed those feelings. In the face of progressive diseases, people often find life extremely challenging, painful, and frustrating. I wondered whether it would even be possible for them to find anything to be grateful about. For many of them, life revolved around visits to the pain clinic and pharmacy. I would not have been at all surprised if resentment overshadowed gratefulness.

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As it turned out, most respondents had trouble settling on a specific instance—they simply had so much in their lives that they were grateful for. I was struck by the profound depth of feeling that they conveyed in their essays, and by the apparent life-transforming power of gratitude in many of their lives.

It was evident from reading these narrative accounts that (1) gratitude can be an overwhelmingly intense feeling, (2) gratitude for gifts that others easily overlook most can be the most powerful and frequent form of thankfulness, and (3) gratitude can be chosen in spite of one’s situation or circumstances. I was also struck by the redemptive twist that occurred in nearly half of these narratives: out of something bad (suffering, adversity, affliction) came something good (new life or new opportunities) for which the person felt profoundly grateful.

If you are troubled by an open memory or a past unpleasant experience, you might consider trying to reframe how you think about it using the language of thankfulness. The unpleasant experiences in our lives don’t have to be of the traumatic variety in order for us to gratefully benefit from them. Whether it is a large or small event, here are some additional questions to ask yourself:

What lessons did the experience teach me?
Can I find ways to be thankful for what happened to me now even though I was not at the time it happened?
What ability did the experience draw out of me that surprised me?
How am I now more the person I want to be because of it? Have my negative feelings about the experience limited or prevented my ability to feel gratitude in the time since it occurred?
Has the experience removed a personal obstacle that previously prevented me from feeling grateful?

Remember, your goal is not to relive the experience but rather to get a new perspective on it. Simply rehearsing an upsetting event makes us feel worse about it. That is why catharsis has rarely been effective. Emotional venting without accompanying insight does not produce change. No amount of writing about the event will help unless you are able to take a fresh, redemptive perspective on it. This is an advantage that grateful people have—and it is a skill that anyone can learn.

About the Author

Robert Emmons

University of california, davis.

Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D. , is the world's leading scientific expert on gratitude. He is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis, and the founding editor-in-chief of The Journal of Positive Psychology . He is the author of the books Gratitude Works!: A 21-Day Program for Creating Emotional Prosperity and Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier .

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Introduction of Hard Times

Hard Times is one of the books, Charles Dickens wrote to criticize the process of industrialization and its impacts on different social divisions of life in England. It was published in 1854. The novel proved a masterpiece of satire . Despite its being the shortest, it is still more biting than other novels by Dickens. With the absence of illustrations and preface as most of the novels of Dickens have, this novel presents the town of Coketown with its stereotypical characters to lash out at materialism, utilitarianism, and industrialism.

Summary of Hard Times

Thomas Gradgrind, the supporter of the philosophy of facts. He currently resides in Coketown, a fictional city in England, with his children Tom and Louisa. Wherever he goes, he propagates his rationalism of facts through his philosophy of eliminating imagination and fancy ideas. To spread his ideas, he opens a new school where he hires teachers for this purpose. To show himself more generous and charitable, he also takes the responsibility of raising, Sissy Jupe, a girl whose father disappeared after having to work for some time in Circus.

Mr. Gradgrind brings up his children with facts and beyond creativity. Therefore, Toma becomes a self-centered pleasure seeker, while Louisa becomes a confusing girl, who does not know herself fully. Although Gradgrind finds a better future for her by marrying her to Bounderby, the old factory tycoon, he still feels that facts have proved useful. On the other hand, despite marrying Louisa, 30 years younger than him, the girl of the age of his daughter, Bounderby still flaunts himself an icon as a self-made person left by his mother and grandmother. Bounderby, therefore, apprentices Tom in his bank while he uses Sissy to take care of the domestic chores and younger Gradgrinds at the house of Mr. Gradgrind, who is Mr. Bounderby’s father-in-law.

On the other side, a poor laborer, Stephen Blackpool, called “Hand” in the novel, is trapped in a love affair with Rachael, who also works in the same factory. The problem, however, arises as Rachel is already married to a person, who leaves her, vanishing from the scene for months. When Stephen tries Rachael’s divorce, he comes to know that it is a very expensive affair and unaffordable for them. He consults Bounderby but he, too, does not prove of much help to them. Though, he meets a strange character during this occasion, Mrs. Pegler, who comes to meet Mr. Bounderby.

Later, Mr. Grandgrind becomes a parliamentarian and James Harthouse becomes his deputy. He tries to groom Louisa and manipulates situations through Mrs. Sparsit, who lives with Bounderby. He fails in his attempt. Meanwhile, the laborers try to forge a union to which Stephen does not join on his feeling that it only plays in the hands of the factory owners. The punishment meted out to him from both these parties, however, is unjust. Mr. Bounderby fires him and other laborers shun him. Heartbroken, Stephen leaves Coketown, and, Louisa helps him before his departure. Although Tom suggests him otherwise and Stephen follows that suggestion. Sadly, there is no assistance from Tom. Finally, he leaves the town for good to some rural area to work and live. However, when the bank robbery occurs shortly after that, Stephen becomes an alleged robber.

When Mrs. Sparsit sees Harthouse and Louisa taking interest in each other, she tries to intervene. She soon comes to know that Louisa has gone to Gradgrind to disclose her predicament, giving Gradgrind a soul-searching opportunity. Sissy Jupe, Louisa’s friend, then goes to Harthouse to advise him to leave the town before he becomes the victim of capitalists’ fury. Despite this, Bounderby goes after Stephen Blackpool, who falls into a pit. He is later discovered by Louisa and Gradgrind. Eventually, it is revealed that Stephen is not a robber. Instead, Tom has robbed the bank who escapes the country through the support of the circus administration and Bitzer stops the entourage. However, timely help from Sleary, the circus manager, helps Tom escape.

Mrs. Sparsit, too, is anxious to help Bounderby to find the robber of his bank. Interestingly, she brings in Mrs. Pegler and it comes to light that she is Bounderby’s mother to whom he orders not to meet. All of his boasts of being a self-made man come down crashing. Though he fires Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby is left alone and dies with his philosophy later. Gradgrind, witnessing his daughter and son involving in different defaming events, abandons his philosophy and finally starts helping the destitute. Tom dies out of the country. Sissy marries and lives a happy life. Louisa never marries again and helps Sissy in her domestic chores.

Major Themes in Hard Times

Human Nature: The novel exposes oddity human nature subject to change in different situations. Bounderby has built a house of cards around his self-styled self-made life, showing his true nature and even disowning his own mother. However, when it turns out that he is not what he pretends to be. It comes to light that he only wants to win public fame out of this antic. On the other hand, the philosophy of facts propagated by Thomas Gradgrind fails as he finds himself in hot waters that his daughter has left the loveless household of Bounderby and his son has died far away from the country after his escape. The abandonment of his philanthropy finally proves that human nature is most of the time generous, loving, and not factual and dry.
Imagination and Facts: Charles Dickens also stresses the need for imagination and facts in life. Through Thomas Gradgrind’s character along with his family’s, Dickens highlights that everything is not a fact. Through the character of Sissy Jupe and Louisa how one loses her future while the other, who has been placed at the lower order in thinking about facts and fancy, become a successful wife in her life. Dicken shows the importance of imagination in life. Her successful life shows that imagination has as much importance in life as material things or facts. It, however, is also a fact that had Gradgrind not adopted her, she might have lost her future which means that facts also have significance in life.
Femininity: Hard Times shows the theme of femininity through feminine compassions and sympathies . The novel also shows that though Louisa has lost her feminine quality, she still longs to help Sissy, while Mrs. Sparsit, despite living with Mr. Bounderby, does not lose her feminine touch. The same goes for Bounderby’s mother who always waits for her son, while Sissy Jupe shows this when she becomes a mother of children despite the stress upon her education about facts and nothing else.
Industrialization: The novel sheds light on the theme of industrialization through the city of Coketown, the establishment of factories as well as the employment of human beings. Coketown shows the impacts of industrialization through its environment and the condition of the working class. Examples of environmental pollution and the situation of Stephen Blackpool are cases in point. Where the establishment of factories is concerned, Mr. Bounderby and the establishment of banks in Coketown sheds light on it and its impacts on the life of “hands,” the laborers who are at the receiving ends. Although they find work, they also find it hard to live in that polluted environment that has stunted their mental and physical growth.
Utilitarianism: The theme of utilitarianism is presented in the novel through the characters of Mr. Thomas Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby. Although both of them are practical, they suppose that human happiness depends on the acquisition of money and material resources and not human relations, compassion, and love. That is why Mr. Bounderby supports the education that places stress upon facts and practicality, abandoning his mother. Mr. Gradgrind, however, receives a rude shock when he sees his daughter becoming a victim of his pragmatism and his son dying away from the home town after he becomes a criminal in the bank robbery case.
Education: The presentation of Thomas Gradgrind, his school, and the characters of M’Choakumchild and Kidderminster show Dicken’s attitude toward education prevalent during the newly industrialized Victorian period. Although the industrialists, like Mr. Bounderby, use to stress the acquisition of education, they also stress the practical utility of education and not upon the education of humanities and arts. That is why Louisa loses her femininity and Sissy Jupe becomes able to face the world with her family by her side.
Power : The use of power has been shown through Mr. Bounderby and the escape of Tom. Mr. Bounderby manipulates the situation and people using his money in such a way that he marries Louisa, a girl of his daughter’s age and 30 years younger. Despite robbing a bank, Thomas Gradgrind exploits the situation to make Tom escape the law. It shows the use of financial as well as bureaucratic power.
Love: The novel sheds light on the theme of love through the character of Sissy Jupe who is attached to her father so much that she does not think that he could leave her. The story even exposes false love that leads to the predatory behavior of Harthouse toward Louisa.
Familial Setup: The novel stresses the issue of the family setup and family love through Sissy Jupe as she is left alone by her father. Although she becomes a good woman, the novel also shows through Louisa that balanced family life is important for the healthy growth of children.
Wealth and Status: The character of Josiah Bounderby and Thomas Gradgrind show the use of wealth and status that keep the upper strata of the society in power. They also use this power to their selfish ends. The marriage of Louisa, escape of Tom, and above all Mr. Gradgrind’s good lifestyle show these thematic strands in the novel.

Major Characters in Hard Times

Mr. Josiah Bounderby: Mr. Josiah Bounderby, known as Bounderbay throughout the story is the epitome of industrialism and new money. He sets up factories and also established banks to supplement his sources of income. With a very little background and boasts of having emerged from nowhere, Boundary is a pathological liar and hides his murky background and poverty during his childhood. His mental degradation has been demonstrated through his manipulative marriage with Louisa and the exploitation of Gradgrind. Later when his bank is robbed, it appears that he was lying all along about his lineage and mother, showing his hypocritical character.
Mr. Thomas Gradgrind: As the founder of the educational system of facts, Mr. Thomas Grandgrand is a respectable British citizen of Coketown who also happens to be a parliamentarian. In his system, there is little room for imagination as he shows during his treatment of Sissy Jupe. He also brings up his own kids through his notions of facts. However, it dawns upon him later that Louisa has lost her femininity in the rigors of his facts and that his son has lost his moral sense, the reason that he has committed a robbery. It is another thing that his status and wealth save the neck of his son but not the social life of his daughter.
Louisa Gradgrind: Loving daughter of Mr. Gradgrind, Louisa becomes the victim of his education system and also of her father’s manipulative behavior. First Gradgrind plays havoc with her future by denying her the right kind of education and secondly, he destroys her life by marrying her to Mr. Bounderby, the old industrialist. Although she suffers from an emotional breakdown and faces dissolved marriage, she finds it impossible to lead a balanced life again.
Tom Gradgrind: Referred as “the whelp” in the novel, he is the only son of Mr. Gradgrind who gets a good job with Mr. Bounderby’s help, who has an eye on his sister, Louisa. However, it happens that Tom junior is morally deprived and he robs Bounderby’s bank. He gets involved with Mr. Stephone Blackpool by dishonestly exploiting his poverty and innocence. His father, however, succeeds in saving him at the end through the circus people whom he uses to smuggle him out of the country.
Sissy Jupe: Popular in the Gradgrind circle as Sissy Jupe. Cecelia Jupe is the daughter a circus performer. She is abandoned by her father who sees her as a burden due to a lack of income. However, it is noteworthy that despite sending her away, he loves her dearly. She is taken in by the Gradgrind household as a family member and plays with Tom and Louisa. However, her imaginative ability stays alive and intact despite Mr. Gradgrind’s various onslaughts to uproot it and introduce his notion of facts. She marries at the end of the novel and has a successful domestic life with Louisa as her helping hand.
Stephen Blackpool: He is the popular “hand,” whose daughter brings a change in the Gradgrind household. Although he marries a drunk woman from Coketown and loses his job due to his activities in the unions, Stephen is a passionate person who tries to do his best to save his daughter from the looming poverty yet with little success. He gets rather involved in bank robbery due to the shrewdness of Tom Gradgrind. However, flees the police, and when he tries to return and exonerate himself. Unfortunately, he dies when he falls into a pit.
Mrs. Pegler: Mrs. Pelger is quite significant in the novel as she emerges as the mother of Mr. Bounderby. She reveals the truth later to put him to shame for his lies and worthless boasts. She becomes popular for her annual pilgrimage to Coketown to see her son, Bounderby.
Bitzer: Bitzer plays his minor role by pointing his finger at Tom as the robber. He identifies him as he has been his playmate along with Sissy and Louisa and has been working in the bank as a clerk, too.
Mrs. Gradgrind : The role of Mrs. Gradgrind is minor and yet important. She follows her husband in letter and spirit in the upbringing of her children believing that facts are important and creativity must be banned as trained by Mr. Gradgrind. She, however, leaves her children in the middle.
James Harthouse: Harthouse’s role is significant in that he agrees with Gradgrind over his philosophy of implementing facts in his school. He tries to groom Louisa but fails. Besides him, Rachael, Mrs. Sleary, and Mrs. Sparsit are also important characters in the novel.

Writing Style of Hard Times

Hard Times shows Charles Dickens at his best in making characters stand for abstract ideas. The overall style of the novel seems dry, witty, and satirizing but the sentence structure is highly calculated and measured. Sometimes sentences are quite long but they come up to the standard of stylish writing, showing the requirement of the context . He mostly used formal diction in an ironic sense. Sometimes the conversation of different characters specifically Chokamchild, Mrs. Sparsit, Mrs. Pelger, and Mr. Bounderby show their down-to-earth behavior. However, it mostly stays formal except for Mr. Bounderby’s, who often boasts of his achievement from rags to riches.

Analysis of Literary Devices in Hard Times

Anaphora : Hard Times shows the use of anaphora . For example, i. No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star ; how I wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject. (Book First, Chapter-III) ii. He was a rich man: banker, merchant, manufacturer, and what not. A big, loud man, with a stare, and a metallic laugh. A man-made out of a coarse material, which seemed to have been stretched to make so much of him. A man with a great puffed head and forehead, swelled veins in his temples, and such a strained skin to his face that it seemed to hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows up. A man with a pervading appearance on him of being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start. A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. 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. (Book First, Chapter-IV) iii. Because those two were one. Because they were never asunder. Because, up to this time, he seemed to dote upon her,’ said Childers, taking a step or two to look into the empty trunk.. (Chapter-IV) These sentences show the repetitious use of “No little Gradgrind” in the first, “a man” in the second, and “Because” in the third. These repetitions show the use of anaphora.
Antagonist : Hard Times shows the character of Mr. Bounderby, who is a liar, brutish, horrid and lecherous to the point of selfishness. Therefore, he is the real antagonist of the novel.
Allusion : There are various examples of allusions given in the novel. i. To be sure, the better and profounder part of her character was not within his scope of perception; for in natures, as in seas, depth answers unto depth; but he soon began to read the rest with a student’s eye. (Book-Second, Chapter-VII) ii. He sat writing in the room with the deadly statistical clock, proving something no doubt – probably, in the main, that the Good Samaritan was a Bad Economist. (Book Second, Chapter-XII) iii. …the sturdiest physical manhood will be morally stark death, and the plainest national prosperity figures can show, will be the Writing on the Wall, – she holding this course as part of no fantastic vow, or bond, or brotherhood, or sisterhood, or pledge, or covenant, or fancy dress, or fancy fair; but simply as a duty to be done, – did Louisa see these things of herself? (Chapter-IX, Final) The first example alludes to Psalm, the second to the parable in the Gospel of Luke, and the third to a biblical phrase “Writing on the Wall.”
Conflict : The are two types of conflicts in the novel . The first one is the external conflict that is going on between the industrialists and the “hands” on the wider scale and between Stephen Blackpool and Mr. Bounderby and the system at a minor level. There is also a conflict between Mr. Gradgrind and his children and between different sets of values.
Consonance : The novel shows the use of consonance in its rhythmic pattern. It is rare that a prose uses such devices, allowing the reader to enjoy the descriptive parts. For example, i. The same Signor Jupe was to ‘enliven the varied performances at frequent intervals with his chaste Shaksperean quips and retorts.’ (Book First, Chapter-III) ii. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are! (Book First, Chapter-III) These examples show the use of consonants in the shape of the sounds of /s/ and /t/.
Characters: Hard Times presents both static as well as dynamic characters. The young girl, Louisa, is a dynamic character as she goes through a transformation during her growth. However, the rest of the characters do not see any change in their behavior, as they are static characters like Mr. Bounderby, Mr. Gradgrind, and even Sissy Jupes.
Climax : The story reaches the climax when Louisa tries to run away with Harthouse but then returns to her father’s house.
Foreshadowing : The novel shows the following examples of foreshadowing : i. ‘ Now , what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.. (Book First, Chapter -I) ii. A sunny midsummer day. There was such a thing sometimes, even in Coketown. (Book Second, Chapter -I) These examples show the use of foreshadows in the novel as both predict what is going to happen next.
Hyperbole : Hyperbole or exaggeration occurs in the novel at various places. For example, i. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. (Book First, Chapter-II) ii. You are to be in all things regulated and governed,’ said the gentleman, ‘by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. (Book First, Chapter-II) The first example shows exaggeration about the character of Mr. Gradgrind and the second about his application of facts.
Imagery : Imagery is used to perceive things involving five senses. For example, i. The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a school-room, and the speaker ’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. (Book First, Chapter-I) ii. The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the intensely white-washed room, irradiated Sissy. (Book-I, Chapter-II) Both of these examples show the use of different images such as touch, sight, and movement.
Metaphor : Hard Times shows good use of various metaphors . For example, i. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. (Book First, Chapter-V) ii. Seen from a distance in such weather, Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays. (Book-Second, Chapter-1) iii. So many people are employed in situations of trust; so many people, out of so many, will be dishonest. I have heard you talk, a hundred times, of its being a law. (Book-III, Chapter-VII) These examples of metaphors show the comparison of smoke with serpents, Coketown, with some mystery , and people with law.
Mood : The novel shows various moods including ironic and satirizing but it turns to tragedy and comedy at times and then again turns to satirize.
Motif : Most important motifs of the novel are industrialization, reason and imagination, childhood experiences and love.
Narrator : The novel is narrated from a third-person point of view , which is the author.
Protagonist : Stephen Blackpool and Sissy Jupe are both protagonists of the novel.
Setting : The setting of the novel is the fictional town of Coketown in the northern part of England during industrialization.
Simile : The novel shows good use of various similes. For example, i. They had been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed, like little hares. (Book First, Chapter-III) ii. …the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles’s Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. (Book First, Chapter-III) iii. Louisa asked these questions with a strong, wild, wandering interest peculiar to her; an interest gone astray like a banished creature and hiding in solitary places. (Book First, Chapter-IX) These are similes as the use of the word “like” shows the comparison between different things.

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Hard Times Essays

Charles Dicken’s novel Hard Times is a commentary on the shortcomings of the Mid-Nineteenth Century England’s Industrialization Era, which favored the development of human beings into machines, without having any emotions or imagination. The characters in this novel have allegorical shades and...

Hard Times: Struggle of Fact vs Imagination and Struggle Between Two Classes Charles Dickens' novel, Hard Times, is a story of two struggles--the struggle of fact versus imagination and the struggle between two classes. It takes place in Coketown, and industrial-age English city. The novel is...

The shortest of Dickens' novels, Hard Times, was also, until quite recently, the least regarded of them. The comedy is savagely and scornfully sardonic, to the virtual exclusion of the humour - that delighted apprehension of and rejoicing in idiosyncrasy and absurdity for their own sakes, which...

1 997 words

.Hard Times In the novel Hard Times, by Charles Dickens, we can immediately see the problems that occurred in England around the times period of the mid 18oo's. Dickens shows us how the class system works and what the economy was then and what it would shape out to be. This novel is split into...

The novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens offers a glimpse into the life and times during the industrial revolution in England during the nineteenth century. Dickens offers a wide range of characters from the upper class factory owner to the lowest class factory workers. He creates characters in...

The novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens is a fictitious glimpse into the lives of various classes of English people that live in a town named Coketown during the Industrial Revolution. The general culture of Coketown is one of utilitarianism. The school there is run by a man ready to weigh and...

1 823 words

Hard Times Symbolism, Imagery & allegory Sometimes, there’s more to Lit than meets the eye. Fairy Palaces and Elephants (a. k. a. Factories and the Machinery inside them) This one is from the narrator and runs throughout the novel: the idea that the ugly, square, fact-based, oppressive mills...

4 561 words

Hard Times, Charles Dickens The Industrial Revolution is the period marking the introduction of mass production, improved transportation, technical progress and the industrial factory system. Industrialisation changed people’s lives because Britain progressed from just a centre of “worldwide...

1 442 words

Hard Times It is obvious that Charles Dickens is trying to express his negative feelings towards the industrial revolution by describing the town the way he does. He uses a large amount of figures of speeches and metaphors to indirectly describe the depressing look of Coketown and the people that...

MRS. sparsit is an elderly lady who is highly connected and have a huge aristpcratic bvackground. her husband belonged to the family of "POWERLS". Scadgers.... she is a widow now, fallen yupon evil days to take up job. She works as a housekeeper olf mr. Josiah Bounderby. bounderby treats her in...

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. This is the principle on which...

1 119 words

“I am as proud as you are. I am just as proud as you are. ” Dickens is an intrusive narrator who comments on the characters through their dialogues and thoughts. Through the above lines, uttered by Bounderby, Dickens presents his observations of an age in which religion, taking a simplistic view...

Dickens has cleverly used exaggeration in Hard Times, in the form of caricature and farce to criticize the theory of utilitarianism; the popular way of living in the Victorian age. Utilitarianism comes under the theory of consequentialism which dictates that one should always judge an action from...

1 580 words

The victorian era in England gave birth to the first real industrial society the world had ever seen. With the rise of industry came large cities, an expanded working class population and the rapid rise of imperialism. Although England was progressing towards a more powerful place in the world...

2 839 words

Moral fable combines the left (logical) & right (creative) side of the brain, so it both entertains creatively and validates certain types of behaviour, morally. The creative part is the fairy tale which often involves animals rather than humans. It speaks to our hearts as it entertains us...

1 965 words

The sexual codes of the Protestant monogamous marriage were the touchstones of Victorian morality. An unshakable faith in the social convention and legal institution of marriage as a source of morality, informs a wide spectrum of discursive articulations in nineteenth century Britain. Sexual...

2 455 words

When one thinks of a “fairy tale” story they think of the themes and characterization of any common “fairy tale” such as; good vs. evil, hero/heroin vs. evil villain, good triumphs evil and love conquers all, these are some of the obvious themes of any ”fairy...

The Worst Hard Times Study Guide Chapters 3-5 I. PROMISE: The Great Plowup, 1901-1930 Chapter 3: Creating Dalhart 1. Vocabulary (choose 3 that you want to make sure you know): sharecropping (p. 52), optimism (p. 53), factory farms (p. 53), hooch (p. 54), landlord (56), cannon fodder (57) 2. Make a...

Compare the characters of Slackbridge and Blackpool in this chapter. How do they symbolise both the values that Dickens admires and the attributes he dislikes? In this chapter Slackbridge is presented as a loud, hot tempered and shallow man, whereas Blackpool is presented as an honest, calm and...

Ritsie Armington Mrs. Thompson AP English Lit 11/6/12 In the novel, “Hard Times,” Charles Dickens uses Mr. Gradgrind, Louisa Gradgrind and Sissy Jupe to express his view on Utilitarianism. Utilitarians believe “our moral faculty, according to all those of its interpreters who are entitled to the...

by Charles Dickens

Hard times study guide.

Hard Times was originally published in serial form, in a magazine called Household Words beginning on April 1, 1854. The last time that Dickens had published a work in serial form was in 1841 and when publication of Hard Times had begun, Dickens was barely halfway through the writing. In the end, Hard Times is among the shortest of Dickens's novels and the material was arranged so that it would "divide well"?prolonging suspense at all of the weekly conclusions.

Dickens had originally intended to take the year off, having written Bleak House the year previous but he was convinced to write Hard Times in part because the book was to improve the financial situation of the struggling magazine. The characters and major themes of the novel are little different from many of the others that are more famous. Some critics liken Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby to other "men of business" who populate Dickens's fiction: Ebenezer Scrooge, Ralph Nickleby and Mr. Dombey chief among them.

On another level, Hard Times is considered to be a revision of an earlier novella entitled The Chimes. The characters of Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby are more developed. While Coketown represents the typical manufacturing town of the English midlands, the Manchester aspects of the town come largely from the similarities between the utilitarianism espoused by Gradgrind and Bounderby and the utilitarianism expounded by the "Manchester" school of thought. Hard Times reveals Dickens' increased interest in class issues and social commentary. In contrast to the earliest work, like the more "playful" novel, The Pickwick Papers, Hard Times is seen by critics as being more in line with the novels published immediately before it: Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey and Son , and Bleak House. While Hard Times does not have the epic proportions of some of Dickens's other work, the concern for the plight of the poor and the hypocrisy of the leisure class is more explicit than it had been previously.

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Hard Times Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Hard Times is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

What is the name of Slack Bridge labor movement?

I believe the movement is called the "Brotherhood"

The Circus in Hard Times

Some would say that the circus symbolizes amusement, or the need people have for amusement and entertainment. But although this is true, the circus also represents something..... something more simple, and that is a contradiction to Gradgrind's...

Many people consider Hard Times to be an example of Proletariat Propaganda. Dicken's portrayal of the bourgeoisie, specifically, his portrayal of Bounderby, is seen as an inaccurate illustration of businessman at the time, as well as an attack...

Study Guide for Hard Times

Hard Times study guide contains a biography of Charles Dickens, literature essays, a complete e-text, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

About Hard Times
Hard Times Summary
Character List
Book I, Chapters 1-5 Summary and Analysis

Essays for Hard Times

Hard Times literature essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of Hard Times.

Louisa as Victim
Black Pools of Tragedy
Love versus Reality in Charles Dickens' Hard Times
Hard Times: A Microcosm of Urban Factories
The Intellectual Limits of Class: Fact vs. Truth in Hard Times and Howard's End

E-Text of Hard Times

Hard Times E-Text contains the full text of Hard Times

Book the First - Sowing. Chapters 1-5.
Book the First - Sowing. Chapters 6-10.
Book the First - Sowing. Chapters 11-16.
Book the Second - Reaping. Chapters 1-6.
Book the Second - Reaping. Chapters 7-12.

Hard Times Essay

Hard Times is a novel by Charles Dickens, written and published in 1854. Hard Times: For These Times (or Hard Times) was also the name of a speech given by Charles Dickens; we will see the connection between the title and the content later. Dickens explores industrialization in England without romanticizing it like he did with past novels such as Oliver Twist and David Copperfield. Hard Times is written in a journalistic style to expose the evils of capitalism while also warning against revolution similar to the violent French Revolution and Dickens’ personal fear: communism.

The story follows Thomas Gradgrind, a utilitarian man who believes in facts and numbers rather than emotions or imagination; he pushes this philosophy on his children above all else. Hard Times contrasts to other Charles Dickens novels by not having an obvious villain like Fagin or Uriah Heep (although there are antagonists). The main focus of Hard Times is to explain how economic exploitation leads to misery through Louisa and Mr. M’Choakumchild. Hard Times takes place around 1820-1830 during the Victorian era; the novel is the only one set in this period by Charles Dickens.

As an author, Charles Dickens, also known as ‘Boz’ created many literary works while borrowing from his life experiences and public opinion. Hard Times was published in 1854 and written for a popular audience with characters easily related to real-life people at the time. Out of all Charles Dickens’ novels, Hard Times creates the most images through sensory language; this helps readers visualize his opinions and emotions surrounding industrialization during Victorian times.

Hard Times: For These Times (or Hard Times) was also the name of a speech given by Charles Dickens; we will see the connection between the title and the content later. The moral behind Hard times is hard work will pay off in the end despite being a common idea. Hard work will lead to happiness and prosperity for those willing to do it, while the lazy have nothing to show for their lack of effort Charles Dickens was born on February 7th 1812 in Portsmouth England Dickens daydreamed about becoming an actor when he was young but eventually he turned his attention toward writing when he was 12 years old .

He started off as a freelance reporter for various newspapers In 2013 Hard Times ranked 33rd among all novels that have been considered Great Books of the Western World by Renaissance Italian scholar Umberto Eco, who cited Hard Times as one of only three novels written by Charles Dickens that are “worth reading”. Some literary critics argue that Hard Times is more of a polemical than fictional. Hard Times was initially published in thirty installments on the pages of Charles Dickens’ weekly periodical “Household Words”.

Hard Times begins with Mr. Gradgrind, his family, and their domestic slave Louisa returning home to Coketown (a fictional industrial town near Manchester) after spending some time away in Northern England The story takes place around 1820-1830 during the Victorian era; Hard Times is the only novel by Charles Dickens set in this period. Hard Times becomes one of few books by Charles Dickens that connects to real life due to its title; Hard Times: For These Times (or HardTimes) was also the name of a speech given by Charles Dickens advocating for people in poverty.

Hard Times is the only Charles Dickens novel with this type of allusion; it demonstrates how his novels can be similar to real life without being too obvious. The reader’s first impression of Hard Times is that there are numerous characters described with different jobs and demographics, but the main focus is on Thomas Gradgrind and Mr. M’Choakumchild. The story shifts between their lives throughout the novel while also focusing on Louisa, a girl who has been adopted by Thomas Gradgrind after her father died one evening while working at the factory where he was employed.

There are also two other secondary plots involving an important character named Stephen Blackpool, but his full role is revealed until later in Hard Times. Hard Times is written as both a tragedy and antidote due to the lives of the characters, although it lacks other features present in other Charles Dickens novels. Hard Times was written for a popular audience with characters easily related to real-life people at the time. Hard Times creates images through sensory language; this helps readers visualize Charles Dickens’ opinions and emotions surrounding industrialization during Victorian times.

The main topic Hard Times discusses is the negative effects of industrialization on factory workers during Victorian England under Thomas Gradrind’s guidance. Hard Times takes place around 1820-1830. Industrialization became very well known because machines could provide jobs for many people, but there were also consequences within these factories. Employees would work long hours with low pay hoping they could move up the ladder. Hard Times is a criticism of this way of life, most notably from Charles Dickens himself.

Hard Times was written around 1840-1841, but it wasn’t published until 1854. Hard Times demonstrates how Charles Dickens felt about industrialization and factory life during Victorian times because it shows the negative effects on the workers’ families and children through Mr. Gradgrind’s family’s struggles. This novel doesn’t have many happy moments because it focuses on reality instead of entertainment, which makes Hard Times a tragedy.

Hard Times can be considered an antidote to other novels being produced at this time because they were filled with either wild adventures or fairy tales that didn’t show reality as much as Hard Times does. Hard times also discusses the lack of education children had at the time with Gradgrind’s own children. Hard Times has more of a focus on adults than most Charles Dickens novels do. Hard Times can be considered both an antidote and tragedy because it displays many tragic events, but also shows how everything is connected due to the domino effect.

Hard Times was originally written for weekly installments in Charles Dickens’s periodical titled “Household Words” throughout 1854. Hard Times has four main sections that give insight into each character’s thoughts and actions. This novel can also be considered satirical because Charles Dickens criticizes Victorian England’s way of life through Mr. Gradgrind, who acts as a symbol for society during this time. Hard Times is similar to other works by Charles Dickens because Hard Times focuses on the negative aspects of life and how they affect individuals and society.

Hard Times is similar to Charles Dickens’ other novels in that Hard Times takes place during Victorian times like Hard Times, but also has a pessimistic protagonist like A Tale of Two Cities. Hard Times begins with Thomas Gradgrind, who lives in Coketown (a fictional city). He works as a school headmaster and he has three children: Louisa, Tom, and Sissy. The story opens up with Mr. Gradgrind helping his son Tom study for an exam while neglecting Louisa even though she’s much more academically capable than her older brother.

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Great Expectations: Injustices and Poor Conditions Committed On Women and Children
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Charles Dickens: The realist rebel. An essay on Realism in Hard Times.

. In the current essay we will try to shed some light on the characters and events that represent models of the empirical way and models for the idealist way of looking at reality in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times. We will focus on two key characters - the young Cecyl Jupe and her mentor and schoolmaster Thomas Gradgrind - and the events surrounding the initial quote.

Related Papers

Giorgia Damiani

A Society of Faults and Follies: an Analysis of Charles Dickens' Hard Times

Wiam Eddine Latli

Art does imitate life, but for what purpose? This imitation must have an objective that goes far beyond aesthetics. Charles Dickens's Hard Times portraits Victorian society in the most immaculate description and without the faintest embellishment. It might be considered a depressing piece of art, but to be a realist is to have the panache to project unpleasantness. This paper sheds light on the historical and the social circumstances that propelled Dickens to diagnose the illnesses of his time in Hard Times. It also reviews Dickens’s writing style and his use of the realist conventions. Ultimately, it draws a comparison between Dickens and Thackeray to arrive at the motives of social reformation in Victorian fiction.

Weslati Hamza

pinder sarwara

Meral Bulut

ABSTRACT A REALIST APPROACH TO CHARLES DICKENS’S A TALE OF TWO CITIES Bulut, Meral Department of English Language and Literature Advisor: Instructor, Samet Günven Karabük, 2015 The purpose of this study is to analyse the Realism Movement. This paper searches answers for questions of what the realism is and how realism is represented in A Tale of Two Cities. In the first part of this study, the early life of Charles Dickens and his writing career will be handled. The background of the realism will also be presented. In order to understand realism adequately, different definitions of realism will be given. In the second part, particularly, instruments of realism which are used by the realist writers will be searched in the novel by analysing its plot, characters, authorial point of view, structure and language. As a realist novel, A Tale of Two Cites is a kind of social document which depicts its own time. Hence, in the third part of this study, social, cultural and political context of A Tale of Two Cities will be analyzed. The obtained results about what the realism is and its representation in A Tale of Two Cities will be mentioned in the conclusion part. Briefly, Realistic representation of A Tale of Two Cities and its social, cultural and political context lies in the basis of this study. Key Words: Realism, Dickens, The 19th Century, Society

Juli Loncon

HAL (Le Centre pour la Communication Scientifique Directe)

Kebir Sandy

This dissertation seeks to analyse how the issues of education and industrialism are approached in one of Charles Dickens' most critical works, Hard Times (1854). Set in the fictional city of Coketown, the novel questions the increasingly mechanised and product-oriented nature of 19th-century society. Through an exhaustive exploration of the novel, I seek to argue that Hard Times perfectly epitomises Dickens’ perception of society, displaying how the Industrial Revolution and utilitarianism forged new ideas of education and work. The analysis also features a series of criticisms to provide a more elaborate picture of the novel.

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Zanesville Middle School students have turned difficult situations into solutions

Zanesville students' essays to be placed into the library of congress.

Hailey Anderson and Levi Knott will travel to Washington D.C. in July as part of their prize.
Zanesville is one of only five districts in the state that currently participates in the initiative

ZANESVILLE −Hailey Anderson and Levi Knott will travel to Washington D.C. in July as part of their prize for winning the Zanesville Middle School essay contest that falls under Ohio Attorney General’s partnership with the anti-violence program Do the Write Thing, which launched in Ohio in 2021.Zanesville is one of only five districts in the state that currently participates in the initiative, alongside Springfield, Canton, Lima, and Youngstown. Ten Zanesville seventh and eighth graders were elected as finalists from the 435 essays submitted. Levi and Hailey were then selected as the two winners.“The students are really honest in their writing. That’s what I perceive when I read these,” said Zanesville Superintendent Dr. Doug Baker. “They’re talking about something that is very close to their heart. Sometimes it can be issues that are going on in their family, with their friends, sometimes bigger issues in the community — there’s a lot of emotion in that.

Zanesville Middle School Principal Adrian Williams, left, and Assistant Principal Cedric Harris, right, are shown with Levi Knott and Hailey Anderson who won the Do the Write Thing essay contest and will go to Washington D.C. in July, where their essays will be entered into the Library of Congress with other winners from across the country.

“Sometimes when you read these essays your heart breaks a little with what you’re reading. You’re really rooting for a solution.”One of the requirements of the essays is that the middle school student must not only identify a problem, but also a solution.“(The state wants) to have our citizens starting at a young age not just identifying problems but constructively putting that energy into positive effect and making their community a better place,” said Baker.Zanesville Middle School Principal Adrian Williams said they’ve already implemented programs that sparked from this competition.“This year we implemented a program called Watch D.O.G.S., which stands for Dads of Great Students,” said Williams. “A lot of our students go home to no positive male role models. It’s a way to provide male figures in the building. They play basketball with the kids, eat food with them, talk to them. The kids love it.”Hailey and Levi are hoping their essays have an impact, too. Hailey writes about inclusive language Hailey, 12, in seventh grade, hopes that her school and many others begin using more inclusive language that doesn’t focus on parent-centered assumptions.“Schools could be a little bit more sensitive about the topic,” said Hailey, who wrote her essay on growing up without her mother. “If you go to the office and need to call someone, they always ask, ‘Which parent?’ But I spend a lot of time with my grandma, so if they said parent/guardian, that would be more inclusive because not everybody has a parent.”Hailey said her dad is proud of her and they’re both excited for her trip to Washington D.C.“I’m excited to represent my school,” she said.She’s also excited that her essay opened up a lane for herself and other kids like her to talk more openly about loss and other difficult emotions.“My solution talks about ways that schools and teachers could help children open up,” said Hailey. “So we could feel more comfortable talking about (our issues). The essay itself was a way towards that solution.” Levi wants to stop the bullying Seventh grader Levi, 13, agreed that the essays have been not only educational, but therapeutic.“I do think they’re important because it could really help someone share their feelings,” said Levi. “Instead of keeping things inside they can write about how they feel about situations.”Levi wrote about his brother, who is on the spectrum, and how he was bullied.“The solution I said was we could get a speaker in or a counselor in the building at all times to see if the person who’s getting bullied could talk to the counselor and then the counselor could talk to the bullies and settle it that way.”Levi said his brother was excited for Levi’s win. “He was basically jumping up for joy.”Levi’s overall message to bullies is simple: “Stop bullying. Because you don’t know what that person is going through, and you could really hurt them and bring them down a lot.” Transformation Williams said the essays have not only improved the writing of the students, but it’s improved communication throughout the building.“I think the biggest impact I’m seeing is kids are starting to open up more,” said Williams. “They’re feeling this is a space where they have trusted adults, whether it’s things at school or outside of the school.”And for Levi and Hailey, they get one more big achievement to add to their college applications someday: published author.“Their individual writing gets placed in a book and becomes part of the Library of Congress,” said Superintendent Baker. “They’re officially authors at that time.”Williams said the experience in D.C. has transformed the students who attend.“It definitely gets them involved in that civics aspects,” said Williams. “When they come back, they’re more involved, they lead more, they’re not afraid to voice their opinions, and most importantly, instead of just voicing problems, they bring solutions to the table.”

‘You’re guilty!’ ‘Injustice.’ ‘Trump convicted.’ See front pages featuring historic conviction of former president.

A newspaper featuring front page coverage of the guilty verdict in former president Donald Trump's hush-money trial was read by a diner outside a cafe on May 31, 2024, in Walton-on-Thames, England.

“Trump guilty on all counts.”

“Historic verdict in scheme to illegally influence 2016 election.”

“Jury hands down historic conviction of ex-president, who decries trial as ‘rigged.’”

“NYC jury makes Donald Trump first felon president after political hit job.”

Donald Trump became the first former president to be convicted of a felony on Thursday, with a New York jury handing down a guilty verdict on all 34 counts he faced in his hush-money trial.

On Friday, the news dominated the front pages of papers across the country, and even some in Europe, with many featuring Trump somberly casting his eyes downward or staring sternly into the camera.

But the resounding message was simple and clear: “Guilty.”

After his historic conviction in the scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election, Judge Juan Merchan set sentencing for July 11 , only days before the Republican National Convention.

Trump still faces a litany of other major legal challenges in the months ahead, and it remains unclear how the verdict will — if at all — affect the presidential race in November .

Take a look at Friday’s front pages:

The Boston Globe

The Boston Herald

The New York Post

The Wall Street Journal

The Washington Post

The New York Times

The Washington Times

The Los Angeles Times

The Arizona Republic

The Irish Examiner

Shannon Larson can be reached at [email protected] . Follow her @shannonlarson98 .

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Superintendent’s Notebook: Class of 2024 took a page from Tom Brady’s playbook

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Graduation is always a bittersweet time. We celebrate the accomplishments of the graduating class with great joy while also knowing that these amazing young people are spreading their wings and leaving the nest.

The graduation ceremony represents the culmination of 12 years of hard work — from math tests and term papers to pop quizzes and science projects. Education is designed to test our students and push them to do more than they thought possible. This class did all that was asked of them and much more.

The Class of 2024 entered Brunswick High School the same year I became the superintendent of the Brunswick School Department. I think of that as my freshman year, too, just without the math tests. It was a time of hope and promise, and like them, I was excited about beginning a new chapter.

Our first year took a dramatic turn with the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in March of 2020. Instead of smiles and high-fives in the hallway, this class’s first two years of high school were marked with masks, social distancing, synchronous and asynchronous learning, and more.

But something amazing happened. Despite the enormous challenges, the Class of 2024 met the adversity with grit and determination and learned something that will serve them well in life: difficult times build strong people.

Author Gregory Williams wrote, “On the other side of a storm is the strength that comes from having navigated through it. Raise your sail and begin.” Advertisement

Yes, the pandemic was quite a storm. But our graduates – along with their families, teachers, and those in the Brunswick community — raised their sails and got to work. Four years later, these students are about to become alumni of Brunswick High School.

Tom Brady often shares this quote: “Fate whispers to the warrior, ‘You cannot withstand the storm.’ The warrior whispers back, ‘I am the storm.’ ”

That sums up the Class of 2024.

Life has a funny way of presenting us with challenges and obstacles. Dealing with the pandemic taught these young adults that they can tackle anything, adapt to change, overcome fear and push themselves through difficult times, skills that will serve them well, whether they want to be an accountant, a zoologist or something in between.

Commencement is a time for parents, teachers, the community and especially the superintendent to celebrate and tell these young people how proud we are of all they accomplished.

The Class of 2024 will always hold a special place in my heart. When I see these graduates in 10 years and hear of the great things they’re doing, I won’t be surprised. They are smart, tough, resilient and determined. I’m very excited to see what the future holds for each of them.

Congratulations to our graduates and their families, and best of luck in your next chapter.

Phillip Potenziano is superintendent of Brunswick schools.

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After Trump’s Conviction, a Wary World Waits for the Fallout

Already braced for uncertainty about the U.S. election, countries in Europe and Asia are now even more unclear about the future of American diplomacy.

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Mr. Trump, in a dark blue suit and bright blue tie, walks past metal police barricades with a group of other men.

By Hannah Beech and Paul Sonne

May 31, 2024

The world does not vote in American presidential elections. Nor do its jurors play a part in the American judicial system. Nevertheless, the conviction of Donald J. Trump on all 34 felony counts in a hush-money trial in a New York court on Thursday has again made clear how consequential what happens in the United States is for the rest of the planet.

Many America-watchers are grappling with the same questions posed by people in the United States: Can Mr. Trump still run for president? (Yes.) And if so, will the guilty verdicts cut into the support from his political base? (Unclear.)

Foreign observers also began wondering if Mr. Trump, already a volatile force, would become even less likely to stay within the guardrails of normal politics and diplomacy if he won the presidency again in November.

Mr. Trump’s supporters in anti-immigrant, right-wing nationalist circles abroad quickly jumped to his defense. Viktor Orban, Hungary’s Kremlin-friendly prime minister, called Mr. Trump “a man of honor” in a post on X and said the American people should deliver their own verdict in November.

Matteo Salvini, Italy’s deputy prime minister and the leader of the hard-right League party, expressed “solidarity and full support,” and called Mr. Trump a “victim of judicial harassment.”

“This verdict is a disgrace,” Nigel Farage, the pro-Brexit campaigner and Trump supporter, who is honorary president of Reform UK, a small right-wing party in Britain, wrote on social media. “Trump will now win big.”

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia did not immediately respond to the verdict but has seized on the situation more broadly to undermine American influence. Mr. Putin last year called the various proceedings against Mr. Trump political “ persecution ” and said they had revealed the “rottenness of the American political system, which cannot pretend to teach others about democracy.”

His spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, reiterated the point on Friday in response to the verdict, saying it was clear to the entire world that the U.S. authorities were trying to eliminate political rivals “by all possible legal and illegal means.”

The convictions by a Manhattan jury come as the question of American engagement has become central in several global crises.

In Ukraine, the war effort against Russia has been stymied after Republicans in Congress delayed American military aid for months.

In Europe, leaders reliant on the United States for their defense are jittery about a return to a more acrimonious relationship with Washington and a possible withdrawal of American support for hardening defenses against Russia.

In Asia, where the Biden administration perceives a growing Chinese threat and worries about a possible invasion of Taiwan, American allies are concerned about the sanctity of defense treaties that have long girded the regional security order.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Trump has said he would encourage Russia to attack any NATO member that doesn’t pay sufficiently for its defense and has questioned whether the United States should defend South Korea, a treaty ally that hosts a large American military presence. He is considering the Ohio senator J.D. Vance, one of Washington’s most vociferous opponents of military aid for Ukraine, as a possible running mate.

Foreign analysts worry that Mr. Trump’s favored currency, unpredictability, could again shake up the global order.

Concern about his possible return to the White House is particularly palpable in Germany, the object of Mr. Trump’s ire for much of his first term and the host of more than 35,000 U.S. troops.

Andrea Römmele, vice president of the Hertie School, a public policy-focused graduate school in Berlin, said many Germans watching the Trump verdict were relieved to see that even a former president was not above the law in the United States. But she said Germans remained very anxious about a Trump victory.

“I think everyone is much more prepared to think the unthinkable,” she said.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, whose right-wing domestic opponents accuse him of using the judiciary to settle political scores, hailed the conviction of Mr. Trump in New York as “an American lesson” for Polish politicians.

“The law determines guilt and punishment, regardless of whether the perpetrator is a president or a minister,” Mr. Tusk said in a message posted on X. A veteran centrist, Mr. Tusk took office after an October election that ousted a nationalist government that cultivated close ties with Mr. Trump during and after his time in the White House.

Still, on Friday, most foreign governments, forced to surf every shift in the American political mood, reacted cautiously.

“I would like to refrain from commenting on matters related to judicial procedures in other countries,” Yoshimasa Hayashi, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.

In Britain, where a national election campaign is underway, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak refused to discuss the Trump case. His Labour Party opponent, Keir Starmer, a former top prosecutor, said he respected the court’s decision and called the situation unprecedented.

“Ultimately whether he is elected president will be a matter for the American people and obviously, if we’re privileged to come in to serve, we would work with whoever they choose as their president,” Mr. Starmer told BBC Radio Scotland.

Mao Ning, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, declined to comment on the verdict. She said she hoped whoever was elected president would “be committed to developing healthy and stable China-U. S. relations.”

The possibility of Mr. Trump’s return to the White House is a source of anxiety for U.S. allies in Asia that rely on Washington for their defense.

When Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan made a state visit to Washington in April, President Biden called relations between the countries the most important bilateral alliance in the world. With American concern rising over China’s expanding military footprint, Mr. Biden has strengthened American defense partnerships with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and others in Asia.

By contrast, while president, Mr. Trump called for Japan, which hosts more than 50,000 American troops on its soil, to pay $8 billion for the upkeep of American bases there. (It never happened.)

Still, the fundamental tension in regional geopolitics — the contest between the United States and China — will continue no matter who wins the American presidential election.

“Beijing has no illusion about Trump or Biden, given their anti-China solid stance,” said Lau Siu-kai, an adviser to the Chinese government on Hong Kong policy. “Beijing is all set for a more intense confrontation with the U.S. over technology, trade and Taiwan.”

Officials in China’s embassy in the United States and its consulates around the country are most likely scrambling to assess how the verdict could affect the election, said Willy Lam, an analyst of Chinese politics at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington.

“The majority of Xi Jinping’s advisers now think a Trump presidency might be worse for U.S.-China relations,” Mr. Lam said of China’s top leader. “If Trump were to win, given the now peculiar circumstances of his victory, he might gravitate towards unpredictable actions to assert his authority.”

There is a sense in Asia that the region is perennially overlooked and underappreciated by U.S. presidents, particularly as crises in Europe and the Middle East have monopolized Mr. Biden’s attention. That sentiment was also felt acutely during Mr. Trump’s presidency, and for American partners in Asia it was made worse by his affinity for regional strongmen.

In addition to occasional expressions of admiration for Mr. Putin and Kim Jong-un of North Korea, Mr. Trump invited to the White House a former army chief who led a coup in Thailand and installed himself as prime minister. Mr. Trump drew accolades from Rodrigo Duterte, formerly the president of the Philippines and now under investigation by the International Criminal Court over his deadly war on drugs.

The Philippines is now led by the son of the longtime dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, who died in exile in Hawaii. He has reoriented the country away from China back toward the United States.

In at least one regard — the prosecution of former leaders — the rest of the world is far ahead of the United States. South Korea, where four former presidents have been convicted of corruption and abuse of power, has made something of a national sport of imprisoning disgraced leaders. The former French presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac were convicted of corruption.

Jacob Zuma, the former president of South Africa, has been charged with money laundering, among other crimes. And Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was sentenced to years in prison for corruption after leading Brazil. His convictions were eventually annulled. He is again president of the country.

Reporting was contributed by Stephen Castle, Elisabetta Povoledo, Roger Cohen, Zixu Wang, Andrew Higgins, Camille Elemia , Choe Sang-Hun , Motoko Rich , Alexandra Stevenson , Sui-Lee Wee and Sameer Yasir .

An earlier version of this article misstated the length of Rodrigo Duterte’s term in office. It was six years, not eight years.

How we handle corrections

Hannah Beech is a Times reporter based in Bangkok who has been covering Asia for more than 25 years. She focuses on in-depth and investigative stories. More about Hannah Beech

Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine. More about Paul Sonne

Our Coverage of the Trump Hush-Money Trial

Guilty Verdict : Donald Trump was convicted on all 34 counts of falsifying records to cover up a sex scandal that threatened his bid for the White House in 2016, making him the first American president to be declared a felon .

What Happens Next: Trump’s sentencing hearing on July 11 will trigger a long and winding appeals process , though he has few ways to overturn the decision .

Reactions: Trump’s conviction reverberated quickly across the country and around the world . Here’s what voters , New Yorkers , Republicans , Trump supporters and President Biden had to say.

The Presidential Race : The political fallout of Trump’s conviction is far from certain , but the verdict will test America’s traditions, legal institutions and ability to hold an election under historic partisan tension .

Making the Case: Over six weeks and the testimony of 20 witnesses, the Manhattan district attorney’s office wove a sprawling story of election interference and falsified business records.

Legal Luck Runs Out: The four criminal cases that threatened Trump’s freedom had been stumbling along, pleasing his advisers. Then his good fortune expired .

The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI) , 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year , with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Alex Singla , Alexander Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Michael Chui , with Bryce Hall , representing views from QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and McKinsey Digital.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.

AI adoption surges

Interest in generative AI has also brightened the spotlight on a broader set of AI capabilities. For the past six years, AI adoption by respondents’ organizations has hovered at about 50 percent. This year, the survey finds that adoption has jumped to 72 percent (Exhibit 1). And the interest is truly global in scope. Our 2023 survey found that AI adoption did not reach 66 percent in any region; however, this year more than two-thirds of respondents in nearly every region say their organizations are using AI. 1 Organizations based in Central and South America are the exception, with 58 percent of respondents working for organizations based in Central and South America reporting AI adoption. Looking by industry, the biggest increase in adoption can be found in professional services. 2 Includes respondents working for organizations focused on human resources, legal services, management consulting, market research, R&D, tax preparation, and training.

Also, responses suggest that companies are now using AI in more parts of the business. Half of respondents say their organizations have adopted AI in two or more business functions, up from less than a third of respondents in 2023 (Exhibit 2).

Gen AI adoption is most common in the functions where it can create the most value

Most respondents now report that their organizations—and they as individuals—are using gen AI. Sixty-five percent of respondents say their organizations are regularly using gen AI in at least one business function, up from one-third last year. The average organization using gen AI is doing so in two functions, most often in marketing and sales and in product and service development—two functions in which previous research determined that gen AI adoption could generate the most value 3 “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” McKinsey, June 14, 2023. —as well as in IT (Exhibit 3). The biggest increase from 2023 is found in marketing and sales, where reported adoption has more than doubled. Yet across functions, only two use cases, both within marketing and sales, are reported by 15 percent or more of respondents.

Gen AI also is weaving its way into respondents’ personal lives. Compared with 2023, respondents are much more likely to be using gen AI at work and even more likely to be using gen AI both at work and in their personal lives (Exhibit 4). The survey finds upticks in gen AI use across all regions, with the largest increases in Asia–Pacific and Greater China. Respondents at the highest seniority levels, meanwhile, show larger jumps in the use of gen Al tools for work and outside of work compared with their midlevel-management peers. Looking at specific industries, respondents working in energy and materials and in professional services report the largest increase in gen AI use.

Investments in gen AI and analytical AI are beginning to create value

The latest survey also shows how different industries are budgeting for gen AI. Responses suggest that, in many industries, organizations are about equally as likely to be investing more than 5 percent of their digital budgets in gen AI as they are in nongenerative, analytical-AI solutions (Exhibit 5). Yet in most industries, larger shares of respondents report that their organizations spend more than 20 percent on analytical AI than on gen AI. Looking ahead, most respondents—67 percent—expect their organizations to invest more in AI over the next three years.

Where are those investments paying off? For the first time, our latest survey explored the value created by gen AI use by business function. The function in which the largest share of respondents report seeing cost decreases is human resources. Respondents most commonly report meaningful revenue increases (of more than 5 percent) in supply chain and inventory management (Exhibit 6). For analytical AI, respondents most often report seeing cost benefits in service operations—in line with what we found last year —as well as meaningful revenue increases from AI use in marketing and sales.

Inaccuracy: The most recognized and experienced risk of gen AI use

As businesses begin to see the benefits of gen AI, they’re also recognizing the diverse risks associated with the technology. These can range from data management risks such as data privacy, bias, or intellectual property (IP) infringement to model management risks, which tend to focus on inaccurate output or lack of explainability. A third big risk category is security and incorrect use.

Respondents to the latest survey are more likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider inaccuracy and IP infringement to be relevant to their use of gen AI, and about half continue to view cybersecurity as a risk (Exhibit 7).

Conversely, respondents are less likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider workforce and labor displacement to be relevant risks and are not increasing efforts to mitigate them.

In fact, inaccuracy— which can affect use cases across the gen AI value chain , ranging from customer journeys and summarization to coding and creative content—is the only risk that respondents are significantly more likely than last year to say their organizations are actively working to mitigate.

Some organizations have already experienced negative consequences from the use of gen AI, with 44 percent of respondents saying their organizations have experienced at least one consequence (Exhibit 8). Respondents most often report inaccuracy as a risk that has affected their organizations, followed by cybersecurity and explainability.

Our previous research has found that there are several elements of governance that can help in scaling gen AI use responsibly, yet few respondents report having these risk-related practices in place. 4 “ Implementing generative AI with speed and safety ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 13, 2024. For example, just 18 percent say their organizations have an enterprise-wide council or board with the authority to make decisions involving responsible AI governance, and only one-third say gen AI risk awareness and risk mitigation controls are required skill sets for technical talent.

Bringing gen AI capabilities to bear

The latest survey also sought to understand how, and how quickly, organizations are deploying these new gen AI tools. We have found three archetypes for implementing gen AI solutions : takers use off-the-shelf, publicly available solutions; shapers customize those tools with proprietary data and systems; and makers develop their own foundation models from scratch. 5 “ Technology’s generational moment with generative AI: A CIO and CTO guide ,” McKinsey, July 11, 2023. Across most industries, the survey results suggest that organizations are finding off-the-shelf offerings applicable to their business needs—though many are pursuing opportunities to customize models or even develop their own (Exhibit 9). About half of reported gen AI uses within respondents’ business functions are utilizing off-the-shelf, publicly available models or tools, with little or no customization. Respondents in energy and materials, technology, and media and telecommunications are more likely to report significant customization or tuning of publicly available models or developing their own proprietary models to address specific business needs.

Respondents most often report that their organizations required one to four months from the start of a project to put gen AI into production, though the time it takes varies by business function (Exhibit 10). It also depends upon the approach for acquiring those capabilities. Not surprisingly, reported uses of highly customized or proprietary models are 1.5 times more likely than off-the-shelf, publicly available models to take five months or more to implement.

Gen AI high performers are excelling despite facing challenges

Gen AI is a new technology, and organizations are still early in the journey of pursuing its opportunities and scaling it across functions. So it’s little surprise that only a small subset of respondents (46 out of 876) report that a meaningful share of their organizations’ EBIT can be attributed to their deployment of gen AI. Still, these gen AI leaders are worth examining closely. These, after all, are the early movers, who already attribute more than 10 percent of their organizations’ EBIT to their use of gen AI. Forty-two percent of these high performers say more than 20 percent of their EBIT is attributable to their use of nongenerative, analytical AI, and they span industries and regions—though most are at organizations with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. The AI-related practices at these organizations can offer guidance to those looking to create value from gen AI adoption at their own organizations.

To start, gen AI high performers are using gen AI in more business functions—an average of three functions, while others average two. They, like other organizations, are most likely to use gen AI in marketing and sales and product or service development, but they’re much more likely than others to use gen AI solutions in risk, legal, and compliance; in strategy and corporate finance; and in supply chain and inventory management. They’re more than three times as likely as others to be using gen AI in activities ranging from processing of accounting documents and risk assessment to R&D testing and pricing and promotions. While, overall, about half of reported gen AI applications within business functions are utilizing publicly available models or tools, gen AI high performers are less likely to use those off-the-shelf options than to either implement significantly customized versions of those tools or to develop their own proprietary foundation models.

What else are these high performers doing differently? For one thing, they are paying more attention to gen-AI-related risks. Perhaps because they are further along on their journeys, they are more likely than others to say their organizations have experienced every negative consequence from gen AI we asked about, from cybersecurity and personal privacy to explainability and IP infringement. Given that, they are more likely than others to report that their organizations consider those risks, as well as regulatory compliance, environmental impacts, and political stability, to be relevant to their gen AI use, and they say they take steps to mitigate more risks than others do.

Gen AI high performers are also much more likely to say their organizations follow a set of risk-related best practices (Exhibit 11). For example, they are nearly twice as likely as others to involve the legal function and embed risk reviews early on in the development of gen AI solutions—that is, to “ shift left .” They’re also much more likely than others to employ a wide range of other best practices, from strategy-related practices to those related to scaling.

In addition to experiencing the risks of gen AI adoption, high performers have encountered other challenges that can serve as warnings to others (Exhibit 12). Seventy percent say they have experienced difficulties with data, including defining processes for data governance, developing the ability to quickly integrate data into AI models, and an insufficient amount of training data, highlighting the essential role that data play in capturing value. High performers are also more likely than others to report experiencing challenges with their operating models, such as implementing agile ways of working and effective sprint performance management.

About the research

The online survey was in the field from February 22 to March 5, 2024, and garnered responses from 1,363 participants representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, 981 said their organizations had adopted AI in at least one business function, and 878 said their organizations were regularly using gen AI in at least one function. To adjust for differences in response rates, the data are weighted by the contribution of each respondent’s nation to global GDP.

Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky are global coleaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and senior partners in McKinsey’s Chicago and London offices, respectively; Lareina Yee is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, where Michael Chui , a McKinsey Global Institute partner, is a partner; and Bryce Hall is an associate partner in the Washington, DC, office.

They wish to thank Kaitlin Noe, Larry Kanter, Mallika Jhamb, and Shinjini Srivastava for their contributions to this work.

This article was edited by Heather Hanselman, a senior editor in McKinsey’s Atlanta office.

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Hard Times Study Guide
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