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.

What are we thinking of for another readalong? Anyone have any good ideas?

I’ve also found this more readable - the story is easy to follow but it does help that the chapters are shorter than in his other books!

I don’t mind what we go for as another readalong. If we stick with Dickens, I’ve read Great Expectations and Oliver Twist but years ago so would be happy to read them again. Would also be happy with any of the others I haven’t read!

Other suggestions - I’ve never read any Wilkie Collins but he might work well as a readalong? Vanity Fair is another good one (I have read it but it’s fab so happy to read again).

I'm completely easy to go along with anyone's suggestion!
I read 'Great Expectations' years ago, but would read it again. I read 'The Pickwick Papers' ages ago, but I thought it was a bit of a slog. I would read any Dickens, though, as I have lots more of his books to read.

I reread 'The Moonstone' last summer. I have 'The Woman in White' lined up on my Kindle. I remember that was good. I like Wilkie Collins.

I've never read 'Vanity Fair', so that's another interesting one.

I read The Woman In White a few years ago, it was a definite stand-out at that time and would be more than happy to read it again, plus I also have Vanity Fair unread on my kindle. Other than A Christmas Carol, I've never finished another Dickens. Started plenty, but not completed them all!

Crap I forgot to name change, it's InTheCludgie here! 😳

I'm happy to finish, it's not been my favourite Dickens but I did find the last section more interesting and wanted to read on so I'm happy to push on to the end this month.

Bumping in prep for tomorrow!!

Hi Piggy and everyone!

Place-marking for tomorrow! I just need to go read the last few chapters again to refresh my memory :)

Good Morning all!

I have to say, on reflection, I was disappointed by Hard Times. It began with considerable vim and vigour and seem to end in a bit of a fizzle(and with theveral pageth of an incomprehnthible lithp)

The women were underdrawn. I know Dickens can be accuse of mining the angel by the hearth trope but he has written some very strong female characters in his novels and Louisa ended up all good, self sacrificing and dutiful with angelic, and later beatifically child bearing, Sissy.
The messages of the book were at times strong - anti- utilitarian , anti Gradgrindian (my schooling was a bargain.. and when I came away the bargain ended is a good line) an anti self-interest as personified by Bounderby, Tom, Harthouse and Bitzer- and I like the unmasking of Bounderby's hauled up in the gutter myth but I felt the boo lacked the juiciness of come uppance seen in eg David Copperfield.

Dickens wore himself out with perpetual rushing at Hard Times. Yet, he still included a range of sub plots and a typical Dickensian cast which perhaps explains his exhaustion.I still don't really get Mrs Sparsit.

I felt sorry for Stephen and Rachael,but not really sorry enough as Stephen was in so little of the book and seem to lack fight. Tom was just a total loser and deserved a worse fate.

Any thoughts on the ending? Louisa seems the ultimate one to lose out which seems very harsh. She should have run off with Harthouse. At least she would have had some drama!

Good morning!

I think your assessment of HardTimes is very fair, Piggy.

Many characters seemed one-dimensional as if they represented either a virtue or a vice. Perhaps this is typical of Dickens, but there wasn't much nuance in how they were portrayed. Was it because the novel is shorter than usual, that they were underdrawn or was it deliberate. It felt a bit like a parable.

I agree about Stephen. He didn't feature much in the novel, only to deliver his message about the unfairness of it all, how it's all a muddle. I seem to always say 'poor Stephen' when I think of him. Poor Stephen! He had a premonition of his death during that night when he and Rachel looked after his wife. He was doomed from the start.

It's a pity that Louisa didn't get her happy ever after. It's as if she was damaged for ever after her difficult childhood and wasnt going to achieve her potential. She deserved one though. A happy marriage with somebody who deserved her, not Harthouse! He was awful. I was glad to see Sissy send him packing.Did you notice how it was Bounderby who released Louisa from their marriage? Her father was only asking for a reprieve.

I enjoyed Mrs Sparsit as a character. I liked the description of her illness towards the end, a 'classical ruin'. I'm not sure what the point of her was either, but the book would have been very dull without her. She was a bit like a sponge, using Bounderby for her own ends. An evil sponge. We never found out her first name either.

Sleary's lisp! There was one line that I couldn't make out at all. I'll come back with it later to see if anyone got it. A bag of coal as a prize if anyone can shed light on it :)

So...highlighted below.

'This is a precious rascal and belongs to that blustering Cove that my people nearly pissed/pushed out of window/wonder'. ??!!

😂😂😂

I'd love to think Dickens sneaked in 'pissed' and nobody noticed! But do you think he meant 'pitched out of the window', and that was his approximation with Sleary's lisp?

I did find the 'comic' lisping rather hard going after a while, I have to admit, on top of the dialect ….

Ahh...pitched!

Jeez, he could just have said 'pitched'!

Yes, that was hard going alright :)

I completely agree with everything already said about the cardboard cut-out women. Louisa had to be punished by not remarrying or having children because she’d sinned, I guess, however understandable that was by modern thinking. Sissy should have gone back to the spangles and tights and immediately rejoined the circus, in my view. I sensed Dickens itching to write more about that whole colourful, magical world, and having to stop himself.

On the whole I felt it proved to me that, whatever the irritations of the traditional long Dickens novel, I actually prefer them. Hard Times just felt too short. There wasn’t enough space for Dickens to relax and be himself, and consequently he didn’t really ever get going properly. There weren’t enough layers, somehow.

Normally he stuffs his books with incidental characters that don’t need to be there, and might play no real part in the plot, and just act as a bit of colour, but they all enhance the finished product in some way - whether comic, tragic or grotesque (or all 3). I didn’t feel he was able to do that here, and the book didn’t really work for me in terms of richness and interest.

I’m still glad I read it, though!

Yes, I agree with you about the traditional long Dickens novel, Terpsichore. That's it in a nutshell.

I mentioned it already, but this was on the syllabus when I was in school, so I enjoyed reading it again. It was interesting to see what I remembered of it as I went along. Sissy's kindness to Louisa stood out in particular.

I enjoyed this one - it was easier to keep track of the story than with the longer books. I do agree though that the shortness of the book meant that characters weren’t fully developed, and this definitely felt like a book written to make a point.

The blurb on my copy was rather misleading - it mentions Sissy coming into the school from the circus and shall I g things up, so on that basis I was expecting her to be the main character and was rather disappointed at the end that she didn’t really feature that much.

I liked Mrs Sparsit as a character - I think she’s just there for the comic relief.

I noticed that a couple of times . Then he threw in words that actually had th in them. I think he may have been teathing uth.

Ha ha...yeth he wath...and it got a bit tirethome 😄

That screen shot makes me feel relieved I listened to the Audible version.
I agree Hard Times isn't Dickens at his finest. I thought it picked up in the middle but then tailed off again.
I started off feeling sorry for Stephen Blackpool and ended up wishing he'd stop monologuing already and die. He was very loquacious for a nearly dead man. And are we meant to think it was pure coincidence that Louisa and Rachel stumbled across him down the disused mine shaft? A coincidence too far for me.
Favourite characters were Bounderby (someone up thread compared him to the Monty Python four Yorkshiremen, which I thought was spot on) I too enjoyed his unmasking as a charlatan, and Bitzer, but that could have been because the Audible narrator (Bertie Carvel) gave Bitzer a wonderful oily, unctuous voice that made me look forward to his appearances.
All in all a 5/10 Dickens for me.

He was very loquacious for a nearly dead man...wasn't he just? I thought so too :)

Oh that did make me laugh! They did go to quite an effort to get the chatty man out of the hole, only for him to die shortly thereafter.

Just finished the book, my second Charles Dickens after A Christmas Carol! I enjoyed this overall, glad Louisa escaped a bad marriage but sad she never found love again. Hilarious that Josiah Bounderby Of Coketown was unmasked for the massive fraud that he was.

Do we have a plan for another readalong? I'd love to do another.

I genuinely have no idea for another readalong : I think I might be all Dickensed out.

Would anyone like to read 'The Woman in White' by Wilkie Collins?

I read it years ago and thought it was good, although I would read more Dickens or something else!

I’ve read The Woman in White and I love it. I don’t mind reading it again, though.

Would anyone fancy trying some Trollope? Barchester Towers is good, and although it’s the second of the Chronicles of Barsetshire, you can read it as a standalone.