Hard Times readalong 2022

[Piggywaspushed]

Hello and welcome to the selected Dickensalong of 2022 : Hard Times.

This is Dickens' shortest novel (yay!) but was still serialised in instalments running from April to August 1854.

I propose shortening this slightly:

January BOOK ONE Chapters 1- 6
February Chapters 7–12
March Chapters 13 -16
April BOOK TWO Chapter 1- 5
May Chapters 6-12
June BOOK THREE Chapters 1 - 5
July Chapters 6 to end.

Some version number chapters consecutively but I have gone for the Wordsworth edition numbering. Hope that is OK.

So this is kind of a pint sized readalong! Might be more manageable for some of those who fall by the wayside normally (naming no names...)

I enjoy Dickens when he does social commentary so am looking forward to this one and to eventually meet Gradgrind.

I like a bit of Dickens in campaigning mode - good choice of book, Piggy, so different to David Copperfield and OMF. You can feel his righteous indignation at the treatment of the children and the refusal to let them be children. But funny too.

I’m interested in the fact that he went to Preston to research and used it as the basis for ‘Coketown’.

Oh yes, Merrylegs is a great dog name!

Yes, I am interested n him wandering away form London too. This is more of a Mrs Gaskell zone , isn't it? He could sound like a patronising urban elite , Dickens, but he absolutely doesn't.

Ooh can I join?

I liked the opening chapters too, much easier to get into than LD or OMF, no wondering if someone is a human or a table a la Twemlow.

Bounderby was good value too. I highlighted this bit:
“ ‘You may be astonished to hear it, but my mother ran away from me.’
E.W.B. Childers replied pointedly, that he was not at all astonished to hear it.”

I think Dickens really captured the ick factor when Bounderby kisses Louisa too. Her father stills sees her as a child, but clearly she’s on the cusp of womanhood and Bounderby has an unhealthy interest.

That line was excellent LadybirdDaphne and the scene mentioned by StColombofNavron where Mrs Gradgrind looked sympathetically at the tongs was also very funny.

I was delighted to hear that Mrs Gradgrind had 'no nonsense about her'.
Sparkler would have been delighted. Little Dorrit was written directly after Hard Times, Dickens must have thought it was a verbal tick that had more mileage in it.
Agree that Bounderby is vomit inducing with his nefarious interest in Louisa, and couldn't help but think he may have 'jumped the shark' on names with M'Choakumchild!

Welcome @Bunnybunny1 of course you can join!

@Bunnybunny1

Ooh can I join?

Welcome Bunnybunny1!

Mrs Gradgrind seems completely ineffectual. I wouldn't say she would ever stand up for her children against her husband. 'Mrs Gradgrind, stunned as usual, collapsed and gave it up.'

Just checking in as I am only on Ch4 - but determined to catch up to Ch12 by the end of Feb.

Also loving the characters so far.

It’s up to chapter 16 in Feb now @YnysMonCrone - we agreed upthread to make the instalments a bit bigger!

Oh right! That teaches me to skim read! Ch16 is doable

Thanks

Yikes! I'd forgotten I joined this thread (doh!)
Orders paperback, breaks spine, gets reading.
Where do I need to catch up to by end of Feb, please?

Chapter 16 52andblue. Most chapters so far have been short-ish so reading pace is being sped up.

Piggy I believe Dickens did the dirty on Mrs Gaskell actually - he had her writing for his magazine Household Words and North and South was due to be published serially in it in 1854. Then he scooped her by rushing out Hard Times in the magazine a few months before her. Not very gentlemanly. I’m going to look the exact details up in Jenny Uglow’s biog of her, I think I’ve got it somewhere.

Oh, how interesting! Might explain its length!

Like others, I am also taken aback by how different this is to the standards (e.g. Davd Copperfield, Great Expectations). The humour from the off was surprising. Although if I was younger and at school studying it I reckon it would have passed me by and I'd hate it (I remember doing Great Expectations for O level and finding the Aged P and Mr Pumblechook intolerably tedious back then)

I've learnt some new words too! such as graminivorous and fistic.

Hello all! Just reviving the thread, ready for tomorrow!

I hope everyone has remembered! This thread constantly falls off my lists!

This was an interesting instalment for a consideration of women and marriage ,as with so many Dickens books. The age gap – pretty much seeming OK in Bleak House, for example- is horrifying in Hard Times. Poor repressed Louisa. I hadn’t really spotted straight away how awful her brother is, basically pimping his sister out for an easy life. Poor Louisa again.

And then the oddly named Stephen Blackpool trapped in a working class marriage with no means of escape with his wife fallen victim to alcoholism. Dickens couldn’t make his angel by the hearth trope more evident in Rachael , could he?!

Seen across the dim candle .. she looked as if she had a glory shining round her head

And if that wasn’t enough, Stephen calls her an angel 763, 822,386ty times a couple of pages later ( I have Priti Patel’s numerical aptitude).

When was Dickens’ divorce in relation to Hard Times?

On a side note, where does the spelling of Rachael with an ae come from? I assumed over the years it has got muddled with Michael. But seeing Dickens, who had abundant Biblical knowledge , do it makes me wonder. I am assuming the reference to Biblical Rachel is deliberate.

I really want to know who the mysterious old lady is and want Sissy to rise up !

Place-marking for later on :)

Placemarking whilst I read the chapters this morning.

It’s a novelty to read a Dickens that's so compressed, isn’t it, after the leisurely pace of DC and OMF? We've positively whipped through Louisa being a child, growing up and now being married off to the creepy 30-years-older-than-her Bounderby.

Piggy, Dickens separated from his wife in 1858, and Hard Times was published in 1854, so it's a bit earlier, but by his own account he’d been unhappy for some time.....and of course he then formed his attachment to Ellen Ternan who was, errrrm, almost 30 years younger than him

I think the name ‘Stephen Blackpool’ might be a hint at the regional setting - Coketown is loosely based on Preston, 15 miles from Blackpool. I was quite impressed with Dickens rendering of dialect - if you read it in your head with a modern Lancashire accent, it came out quite sensibly. There’s an element of a Londoner’s stereotyping in there, but I didn’t think it was too bad.

I have a strong suspicion at who the ‘old woman’ might be, but don’t want to be spoilertastic (or wrong).

And I really thought Louisa’s sense of disgust would stop her marrying Bounderby, but, yuck, no.

I’m a bit tired and busy this week (and it’s bedtime here) but if I have any more useful thoughts tomorrow I’ll post again.