Literature of the Victorians

6 November, 2022

     Hello dear friends, here I am writing a blog on the male characters of the novel 'Hard Times'.         

                       Hard Times

∆ Write a note on the male characters in the novel 'Hard Times': 

     Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in England. His father was a clerk who was imprisoned for debt when Dickens was just twelve years old. In his father's absence, Dickens was forced to leave school and enter the labor force to provide financially for his family. Self-educated and experienced on the streets of London from a very early age, Dickens became the leading Victorian-era novelist. Focusing on the Industrial Revolution and its impact on society, Dickens' writing is built around themes of social change and utilitarianism.

   Dickens wrote Hard Times in 1854. He published weekly segments of the work in his Household Words journal from April to August because the journal's popularity was beginning to wane. Dickens hoped that including chapters of Hard Times would renew interest in the publication. Hard Times is a dystopian novel centered around the dangers of relying solely on facts and formulas while disregarding emotions and imagination.

∆ Mr. Gradgrind :

    Mr. Gradgrind is the intellectual founder of the Gradgrind educational system and he is also a member of Parliament. He represents the rigor of "hard facts" and statistics. It is only after Louisa's emotional breakdown that he has a change of heart and becomes more intellectually accepting of enterprises that are not exclusively dedicated to profit and fact.

    However, as he finds many years later, if you don't teach morality, the kids won't learn morality. And so Gradgrind's comeuppance is extremely appropriate. Everyone who has excelled at Gradgrind-directed studies ends up betraying or letting him down in a shattering way. His daughter Louisa makes a terrible marriage, almost has an affair, and ends up separated and childless. His son Tom becomes a thief and frames another man for his crime. In the final kicker, Bitzer, the model student, refuses every appeal for mercy and gratitude from his old headmaster. Instead he just quotes Gradgrind's own materialistic and selfish philosophies back to him.

∆ Mr. Bounderby :

  Mr. Bounderby is one of the central characters of the novel. He is a business acquaintance of Mr. Thomas Gradgrind. He employs many of the characters in the novel and he is very wealthy. He marries Louisa Gradgrind and the marriage eventually ends unhappily. In the tumult of a bank robbery investigation, Bounderby's true identity is revealed much to his shame. Throughout the novel, Bounderby is an emblem of hypocrisy.

   Mr. Bounderby is a pompous, arrogant, and successful factory owner who constantly boasts about how he is a self-made man. He is good friends with Mr. Gradgrind and lives with an elderly widow named Mrs. Sparsit until he marries Louisa Gradgrind, whom he has had his eye on since she was little. Selfish and blustering, he does not make Louisa happy, driving her to be emotionally vulnerable to James Harthouse's advances.

∆ Stephen Blackpool :

     A poor worker at Mr. Bounderby's factory, Stephen is a victim both of the industrial system and of society's restrictions on marriage. His face and body are much aged because of the grueling work he must do every day at the factory, and his heart is aged ever since his wife became a drunken prostitute and left him, occasionally returning for money. He has longed to cease to love her, and loves a gentle, kind woman named Rachael in her stead, but he cannot marry Rachael because of his preexisting marriage. His fellow workers shun him when he refuses to join the union, and Bounderby fires him after Stephen refuses to give him details about the union that his fellow workers are forming. Tom furthermore frames him in the Bank robbery, and he dies tragically, on his way back to defend his good name.

   Stephen is a power loom operator in Bounderby's factory. He married young, and his wife has since become a raging alcoholic. Stephen is in love with Rachael, another factory worker, but can't be with her because he can't get a divorce. After being framed for bank robbery, Stephen ends up dying from falling into a giant hole in the ground.

∆ James Harthous :

    A young, wealthy London gentleman, Mr. Harthouse is as bored and as pleasing as most men of his class tend to be, and he bends all his powers of pleasing and persuasion in trying to seduce. Louisa, when he sees what a fascinating, repressed, beautiful woman she is. His plans are thwarted when Louisa goes to her father's house instead of rendezvousing with him to elope, and Sissy, in her calm and pure way, confronts him the next day and succeeds in making him leave Coketown forever. The younger brother of a member of Parliament, Harthouse has agreed to spend some time teaching in the Gradgrind's school. He is lazy and immodest and finds himself tempting Louisa with offers of romance.

   Harthouse is a well-born young guy who is trying to get into Parliament. He's in the same political party as Gradgrind. He comes to Coketown to learn how to work the political process and get to know some money men like Bounderby. While there, he tries to seduce Louisa and almost succeeds. After she runs away from him, Sissy tells him to never show his face around town again.

∆ Bitzer :

    Bitzer is a classmate of Tom, Louisa and Sissy. As a young adult he works as a clerk in Bounderby's bank and he unsuccessfully apprehends Tom as the thief.As a boy, Bitzer is Gradgrind's best student. As a young man, he becomes the light porter at Bounderby's bank, spies on Tom and the other clerks, and only follows the economic principle of complete self-interest. At the end, he catches Tom trying to flee abroad and tries to bring him back for the reward before being outwitted by the circus performers.

   Bitzer is basically a walking, talking example of just how that phrase works. He was Gradgrind's best student, and grew up into a man who puts aside every emotion and every kind of non-selfish motivation. Slowly and surely, he paves the way for himself to rise at the bank, until the last moments of the novel when he finds and arrests the escaping Tom, Gradgrind's son. Bitzer hopes that if he turns Tom in, Bounderby will give him Tom's old job.

∆ Tom Gradgrind :

    Tom is also referred to as "the whelp." He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Gradgrind and an employee of Mr. Bounderby. He is resentful towards his sister, Louisa, though she is only kind towards him. His ultimate misdeed comes when he steals money from his safe in the bank and then announces the loss as a true theft. In the end, Tom is forced to flee the country to escape punishment. He dies overseas and is full of regret.

   Tom, the second oldest Gradgrind child, fares worse than Louisa in that his character is almost irrevocably deformed by his education of facts. He turns into a grumpy, sulky young man who ends up robbing a bank to help pay off his debts and nearly breaks the heart of his father and sister in the process.

∆ Josiah Bounderby :

   Although he is Mr. Gradgrind’s best friend, Josiah Bounderby is more interested in money and power than in facts. Indeed, he is himself a fiction, or a fraud. Bounderby’s inflated sense of pride is illustrated by his oft-repeated declaration, “I am Josiah Bounderby of Coketown.” This statement generally prefaces the story of Bounderby’s childhood poverty and suffering, a story designed to impress its listeners with a sense of the young Josiah Bounderby’s determination and self-discipline. However, Dickens explodes the myth of the self-made man when Bounderby’s mother, Mrs. Pegler, reveals that her son had a decent, loving childhood and a good education, and that he was not abandoned, after all.

   Bounderby’s attitude represents the social changes created by industrialization and capitalism. Whereas birth or bloodline formerly determined the social hierarchy, in an industrialized, capitalist society, wealth determines who holds the most power. Thus, Bounderby takes great delight in the fact that Mrs. Sparsit, an aristocrat who has fallen on hard times, has become his servant, while his own ambition has enabled him to rise from humble beginnings to become the wealthy owner of a factory and a bank. However, in depicting Bounderby, the capitalist, as a coarse, vain, self-interested hypocrite, Dickens implies that Bounderby uses his wealth and power irresponsibly, contributing to the muddled relations between rich and poor, especially in his treatment of Stephen after the Hands cast Stephen out to form a union.

∆ Signor Jupe :

   The horse-trainer or circus-performer who is the father of Cecilia. He sends her on an errand to "fetch the nine oils" as an ointment for his aching muscles. When she returns to their lodging, he is gone.

∆ Mr. Sleary :

    Mr. Sleary Is the manager of a traveling circus. After providing for Sissy at the beginning of the novel he assists Tom's escape at the novel's end.The lisping proprietor of the circus where Sissy’s father was an entertainer. Later, Mr. Sleary hides Tom Gradgrind and helps him flee the country. Mr. Sleary and his troop of entertainers value laughter and fantasy whereas Mr. Gradgrind values rationality and fact.

Thank you...

Words : 1543