Education - Hard times

INTRO to any essay.

Charles D was a great author of the 19th century and his books are recognised and loved nation wide. Many people understand the meaning to his books , as they are not just plain fiction. In the novel Hard tims Dickens intensely criticises the british system of education and how it had evolved over the years : 19th century philosophy of 'Utilitarianism'. Dicken beleived this system was a failure, as it changed childrens minds and morals , and it is this novel he attempts to show the horrors that this system has created.

Principle formed by Jeremy Bentham - 18th century philosopher , calculating 'the greatest good for the greatest number'. This theory explained that self intrest was the primary motivating force behind all human conduct : people strived for pleasure and tried in vain to avoid pain.

Dickens feared that the factory system geared only to poroductivity and profit , was reducing people to mere machines- like entities , devoid of feeling and imagination.

Explored in Dickens description of Gradgrinds school where 'fancy' is outlawed , where children r referred 2 as 'reasonable animals' and 'little pitchers' to filled with 'facts' and identified by numbers.

Bitzer and 2 gradgrind children , Tom and Louisa are standard products of this philosophy. E.g. Bitzer is able to define and classify facts about a horse but unable to describe reality of one + Sissy who is complete contrast to this is unable to define one but has practical knowledge and experience of them + unlike other children in the novel , she is able to feel for those not in 'the greatest number', she possesses a capacity to feel and imagine.

In 1829 Carlyle wrote sighn of the times , which criticises the effects of industrialisation. Carlyle argued that people were being reduced to mere machines and that their individual identities were being eroded.

Throughout Hard times Dicken referres to workers as 'hands' , men and women who are only important to their masters because they can manage machines. He says they have lost any sense of importance and value of the individual - that 'unfathomable mystery'- that contrasts so vividly with the insensibility of the machine.

'sophisticated' utilitarian system of education robs the children of their childhood = takes away all imagination , wonder and prosperity for them and replaces it with cold calculation and mathmatical thought. Not good as childhood is the gresatest part of a persons life and this system isnt teaching them life skills but only how to be clinically humane.Exposed to statistics at an early age and therfore have a 'cold' mathmatical future as they are constantly fed facts without any imagination to escape to.

Children = cold and mechanical - all they have been tought and imagination and creativity = locked away from them. Grow up 2b just like machines.

If the philosophy of utilitarianism had continued , the world would have continued industrialisation not only with machines but also with people. As the teachings of utilitarianism make humans mechanical , as cold calculation + 'moral arithmatic' does not make humans , but a continuous running of machinery and industrialisation.

Town environment in novel = attacked. Dickens sees town of coketown as opressive + destructive ; it is a prison from which no one can escape: 'Nature' is 'bricked out' of coketown = Dicken suggests that the factory/mill domination of the town is unatural. People arent mean to be confined and kept away from nature. The industrial process emits 'killing airs and gases' which produce 'dead' people; life is slowly being drained from the poeple of coketown - they are being murdered by industrialisation + the owners' desires for profit and productivity.

SISSY - Dicken also explores how an environment can shape behaviour. Sissy is borought up in an imaginative + ammusing world of circus where play and imagination r encouraged. Also an environment that fosters emotions + compassionate behaviour. The circus is free and not restricted to one area. Sissy therefore grows up to be compassionate , imaginative and free; unable 2b educated by Gradgrinds untilitarian school coz she possesses capacity to feel.

HOWEVER ....... BITZER on the other hand, is exposed 2 the utilitarian philosophy from a young age. He has only known the bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom + adheres to the direction that he musnt fancy. He grows up 2b a cold calculating , selfish man.
 He is devoid of compassion and pity.

SUBTITLES OF THREE PARTS OF THE NOVEL- SOWING , REAPING AND GARNERING- call to mind biblical words 'As ye sow , so also shall ye reap'.These words would have been familiar to victorian readers + could be found framed + displayed in many a middleclass victorian home. Had speciel meaning to the upbringing + education of children = ground children recieved in formative years would directly affect adult live;seeds sown in childhood would bear fruit in later years.

Dickens suggests that exclusuion of imagination and the mere persuit of facts is inhumane and will, given time , produce disastrous results. Novel explores consequences of planting a utilitarian philosophy in chilhdhood. Tom , louisa and bitzer r all products of a system that is ultimately shown 2b a failure.

-The irony of the agriculture metaphor or sowing and reaping gains considerable significance , given the novels preoccupation with with industrialisation.

Central theme = conflict of fact and fancy in childrens education. Grim persuit of fact is contrasted with rich colourful life of imagination as expereinced by the circus folk. When 1 of them is subject to the rigours of gradgrinds educational philosophy her human nature naturally rejects the attacks made on it; see later , her own essential goodness is instrumental in educating those suffering from the inadequacies of the gradgrind philosophy.

The children r denied the natural persuits of childhood such as play , fantasy , fun and entertainment. They are 'dead' as children and r forced , by gradgrinds system 2 become unatural children. They are therefore without essential qaulities needed in adulthood and as of this they become in humane.

FIRE/SPARKS/ASHES

-two strands to this image. One is for fires in the fireplace, which send up little burning ashes that extinguish and fall. The second is for the fires inside the factory chimneys, which lie dormant all day and then suddenly burst forth at night.

-Is Louisa the ashes – her life's energy will be used when she is still very young, and she will spend the rest of her life as ashes, a waste product?

OR.......is she the fiery chimney – seemingly very quiet, reserved, cool, and detached, but secretly waiting for the right moment to burst forth with all her passion aglow?

FAIRY PALACES AND ELEPHANTS (A.K.A. FACTORIES AND THE THINGS INSIDE THEM)

This one is from the narrator and runs throughout the novel: the idea that the ugly, square, fact-based, oppressive mills look like fairy palaces with elephants in them when they are lit up at night.

= What someone who doesnt know the reality of coketown might say.

=Idea dripping with irony coz we know there aint anything beautiful or magical about the factories.

="Fairy Palaces" becomes kind of a nickname for the mills, and is used whenever Dickens needs to poke readers awake and yet again quickly remind them how awful life is for the factory workers.

MRS. SPARSITS STAIRCASE

She is completely immersed in trying to get Louisa to cheat on Bounderby with Harthouse. In her mind, she pictures the process of seduction and, hopefully, illicit sex, as Louisa walking down a long staircase into a giant pit of doom and sin.

The staircase imagery is pretty powerful. It contrasts the civilized world (someone had to build that staircase, and architecture tends to be manmade) and the bestial nature of sex and desire (the hole of despair at the bottom is shapeless and not of this world).

Could link it + contrast it to Jacobs ladder as Mrs sparsits staircase to Hell compares with the Biblical image of Jacob's ladder to Heaven (Jacob sees it in a vision in the Book of Genesis), and the similar ideas about it taking small, incrementally staggered steps to get to these places.

OLD HELL SHAFT-

STEPHEN = nearly killed coz he walks into massive hole in ground.

=could be symbolic of him being emotionally and psychically trapped in his terrible marriage.

=Or maybe it's the legal system that he is trapped inside – the legal system which won't let him get a divorce?

=Or maybe it's not his marriage that is the pit of doom, but the way he is treated by the workers who shun him for not joining the union? Are there other possibilities?

FAMILY DRAMA

Despite all the stuff about factories and workers, this novel is primarily about the way the decisions of a father (Gradgrind) play out in the lives of his children (Louisa and Tom). He experiments with their upbringing, depriving them of any understanding of emotions, the imagination, and basic morality. They turn into broken and wasted human beings. Almost everything else that happens in the novel comes from this central conflict

One of aspect of his signature style is the building up of description through repeating a word or a phrase for emphasis. For instance, here is our first birds-eye view of Coketown, from Book 1, Chapter 5:

It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next. (1.5.2)

=Repition throughout whole para e.g.phrases that are used over and over again: "like one another" (3 times), "same" (5 times). Not only are the words repeated, but the sentence is also made to have a rhythm, almost as if it is no longer prose but actually poetry. When reading, you actually fall into the kind of droning, every-day-like-the-next lull that the people of Coketown are living.