Hard times book review(艰难时世书评)

The Journey of Hard Times
Hard Times is one of the most famous novels of Charles Dickens. Attracted by its popularity, I read it with curiosity. As a result, I lost myself in the fascinating language, the spectacular plot and especially, the profound theme.
The story is set in an industrial town, Coketown. Thomas Gradgrind is a utilitarian who is the founder of the education system at that time. Josiah Bounderby, who is a business associate of Gradgrind, rises to a high position of power and wealth from low status, though he denies admitting his origins. To please Bounderby, Gradgrind marries his daughter, Lousia, to him though he is 30 years older. Yet Mrs Sparsit, a widow employed by Bounderby, is jealous. She makes every effort to torture Lousia and finally destroys the marriage. Lousia has no choice but returns to her father’s house. At that moment, she is in an extreme state of sadness. She accuses her father of denying the opportunity to have an innocent childhood and that the strick education has taken away her ability to express her emotions. At the same time, the son of Gradgrind, Tom, is also compelled to work for Bounderby and turns to be gambling and drinking. Because of lacking money, he rob the Bounderby of money and hides in circles. Touched by the Sissy, he decides to turn a new leaf but unfortunately die in America. Bounderby also die of fit on the street one day. Louisa grows older and never remarries and Gradgrind abandons his Utilitarian stance at the end.
What impressed me most in this novel is the comparison between fact and fancy. “Eminently practical”is Gradgrind’s description throughout the book. In his model school, only analysis, deduction and mathematics are emphasized. While fancy, as the opposite, is mainly shown by Sissy and the Sleary’s circus. Sissy is first introduced as Girl Number Twenty at the beginning of the novel. She seems to be unintelligent in the school but actually she has her own set of the values and beliefs. She has a deep understanding that their way of life is not work. Besides, she also stands for creativity and wonderment because of her circus background. It is ironic that once Sissy is
driven away by Gradgrind because she cannot keep up with his extreme reliance of facts, but the moment Gradgrind’s belief in adhering solely to facts turns out useless, Sissy is the one they come to, for example, she gets Tom out of sybaritic drinking and she takes care of Louisa and helps her live a new, happy life. As one of the clue, the comparison highlight the theme that imagination if life is of great importance and that people’s life cannot be reduced only to material facts and statistical analyses.
It goes without saying that the comprehension of Hamlet varies from the reader to the reader. So does the interpretation of Hard Times. Personally, first, this novel was written to reveal the working condition of some of the factories in the industrial town in order to highlight the social and economic pressures of the times. In addition, the novel is a powerful hit of the Utilitarians at that time. By taking Gradgrind’s and Bounderby’s life experience as examples, the author tends to emphasize that in practical terms, the pursuit of a totally rationalised society where “the greatest amount of happiness is for the greatest number of people”, could lead to great misery.。