ENG 396a ~ Charles Dickens’ Hard Times
Desperation and Dreaming

“I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time,” said Louisa.
“Tired? Of what?” asked the astonished father.
“I don’t know of what—of everything, I think” (16).

The first book of narrative in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times puts into conflict the expectations of duty with the expression of love and compassion. Louisa Grangrind and Stephen Blackpool are from opposite backgrounds experiencing fundamentally the same struggle. The narrative asserts the irrelevance of class structures with the juxtaposition of these dynamics illustrating an underlying humility between the differing social backgrounds.

It is Mr. Gradgrind’s duty to educate his children, and his methods require a strict adherence to fact. No exceptions. No room for a child’s imagination. He expects decorum and duty with no time for charades or the circus. Being subject to such a deadening adherence to logic and reasoning make Louisa acutely aware of any sentiment. It is through her relationship with Sissy Jupe that awakens Louisa’s curiosity and compassion. Sissy’s hope for word from her father spills over to Louisa. She watches her “with compassion” (59) as Sissy leaves disappointed and sad. Mr. Gradgrind attests that had Sissy been educated like Louisa, she would recognize “on sound principles the baselessness of these fantastic hopes” (59). Since Louisa feels compassionately toward Sissy, and Mr. Gradgrind represents duty, this conflict forces Louisa to reevaluate the validity of her father’s methods. The narrator takes the struggle even further by suggesting how “it did seem (though not to him, for he saw nothing of it) as if fantastic hope could take as strong a hold as Fact”(59). Louisa’s reevaluation makes her withdraw into long contemplative hours watching the fire. Eventually it will also lead her to turn her father’s logic back upon him in a way that had never before been illustrated by the narrative.

When approached with a proposal from Bounderby who is thirty years her senior Louisa articulates herself with utter rationality. She places before her father a simple question that he ‘factually’ dances around while never really answering. When she asks him about “love” (92), he answers that “perhaps the expression itself—I merely suggest this to you, my dear—may be a little misplaced” (92). Her sense of duty is constructed with the rationale of her calm tone. The narrator, however, articulates the true state of her situation that suggest she “throw herself upon his breast and give him the pent-up confidences of her heart”(93). The desperation here is that Louisa’s duty has placed her in the predicament of a marriage without love.

Although he is not educated as Louisa, and works as a laborer in the factory, Stephen Blackpool is in the same situation. Unlike Louisa, he is expressively poetic, and does not deny or deduce his emotions for the sake of duty. He daydreams about his one true love. Unfortunately, Stephen is married to a woman he detests, and there is no way to free himself from his duty as a husband. His desperation is that he loves Rachel, and cannot be a husband to her. It is his duty to be a husband to a woman he does not love, and the only expression of love he wants to give conflicts with this duty.

Love and compassion conflicting with duty, all encircling the institution of marriage from persons of differing social classes asserts the irrelevance of class separations. The parallel struggles of Louisa and Stephen are equally desperate and romantic regardless of their rigid prison of fact. This symmetry of dynamics confirms the unity of their humility.