HARD TIMES BY CHARLES DICKENS
Summary
In the industrial city of Coketown , Josiah Bounderby is a rich and
fairly obnoxious factory owner and banker. He loves to tell everyone he meets
about how he grew up in the gutter, abused by a drunken grandmother. He is
friends with Thomas Gradgrind, a rich politician and an education reformer in
whose school students only learn about facts. Gradgrind's own children, Tom and
Louisa, also grow up in this system. The kids are forbidden to be creative or
imaginative or to have too many feelings. Gradgrind is basically trying to make
kids into robots, with predictably bad results.
When a traveling circus show comes to Coketown, one of the clowns abandons his
daughter, Sissy Jupe, there. Gradgrind takes her in as a servant. She is a
natural, happy, not particularly robotic girl, and his system does not seem to
make too much of a dent in her good nature.
Louisa and Tom grow up (well, not really – she is nineteen and he is seventeen,
but everything happened faster back in the day, especially for robot-children).
Gradgrind basically gives both of them to Bounderby. Tom works for him as a
bank clerk, and poor Louisa ends up marrying the guy. Oh, did we mention that
he's a nasty and annoying? And that Louisa is grossed out by the sight of him?
And that he has been really creepily waiting to marry her? Let's all say it
together now –. But, obviously Gradgrind thinks everything is fine – because
since when do robots care about that kind of thing?
Meanwhile, in Bounderby's factory, a worker named Stephen Blackpool is the
world's most decent man and he leads a pretty sad life. He got married too
young to a woman who is now a raging, half-crazy alcoholic. He pays her to stay
away from him, which she mostly does, except when she doesn't. He is also in
love with a factory worker named Rachael, but they're both out of luck,
obviously. We know what you're thinking (Stephen should get a divorce), but
that's not the way Victorian England rolled. As Stephen finds out from
Bounderby, to get a divorce he would need to pay for Parliament to pass a law
letting him do it. Then he'd have to pay for another law allowing him to
remarry. Not happening.
A year later, Louisa is still pretty miserably married to gross Bounderby. Tom,
meanwhile, is getting into his own trouble with being a lazy bank clerk, gambling,
staying out till all hours, and generally behaving like a jerk to his sister.
Bounderby is as unpleasant as ever, and Gradgrind has now been elected to
Parliament. The four of them meet James Harthouse, a smooth operator who claims
to be trying to get into politics. He mostly just coasts on his good looks, his
wealth, and his attitude of completely not caring about anything or anyone.
Because he is a born gentleman, he is instantly the coolest, most popular kid
on the block. He decides to use that popularity to seduce Louisa. Hmm, let's
see, Louisa's husband revolts her, she has never been taught about emotions or
how they work, and Harthouse is hot! But on the other hand, adultery is a
really big no-no…. Stay tuned to see what happens!
In the factory, all the workers are being organized into a union. Everyone is
psyched to finally stick it to the man, except Stephen, who for some
undisclosed personal reason doesn't want any part of it. So, the other workers
decide to ignore and ostracize him. Then Bounderby asks Stephen to rat on the
union. When he refuses, Bounderby fires him. Stephen is forced to look for work
elsewhere. Before he leaves, Louisa gives him some traveling money, and Tom in
secret asks him to loiter in front of Bounderby's bank for a few nights. To
which the obvious answer seems "Um, no thanks," but Stephen agrees.
The morning after Stephen leaves, Bounderby discovers that
the bank has been robbed! Of only 150 pounds. But still, a crime. Suspicion
naturally falls on Stephen, who seemingly was casing the joint before he left.
People also suspect an old woman who periodically comes in to town to watch the
bank for unknown reasons. Bounderby leaves town to personally oversee the
investigation.
Seizing the opportunity, Harthouse reveals to Louisa his passion for her and
asks her to run away with him. She seems to agree to a complicated plan
involving meeting him later, but instead takes the train to her father's house
in Coketown. For the first time in her life, she confronts Gradgrind about the
unnaturalness of her upbringing. She tells him she might be in love with
Harthouse, confesses that she almost had an affair, and then faints. Gradgrind
is shocked, and he finally realizes how much he messed up his kids.
Trying to keep things civil, Gradgrind asks Bounderby to let Louisa be a
semi-permanent "visitor" at her father's house. But Bounderby is all
like, "Actually, no, because you pretty much sold her to me, remember? If
she doesn't come back by tomorrow, this marriage is over." This might seem
ideal. But it means that Louisa would no longer be financially supported by
Bounderby, but would still have to be married to him legally. She'd be totally
stuck. Sissy seeks out Harthouse , telling him to leave and never come back.
At the same time, Sissy Jupe and Rachael are worried about Stephen and try to
find him. Taking a walk across the countryside they stumble on him (literally)
lying almost dead in a huge well dug by some factory owner and not marked in
any way. He is fished out, pleads his innocence about the robbery, and dies.
Yes, sorry, no happy ending for the only decent guy in the whole book. Tom
flees, and Louisa and Gradgrind realize that he is the bank robber, and that
the only hope is to smuggle him out of the country. Tom hides as a clown in the
same circus where Sissy's father used to work. When Gradgrind confronts him,
Tom tells his father that political economy made him into a thief, and if he
hadn't stolen the money, someone else would have.
Just as Gradgrind is about to put him aboard ship, the family is discovered by
one of Gradgrind's old students, Bitzer. Bitzer is quite the economist and
refuses to be swayed by Gradgrind's begging to let them go. After all, Bitzer
has learned only to advance his own self-interest, which at this point
indicates that he should capture Tom to get the probable reward. This is the
final nail in the coffin of Gradgrind's educational theory. Still, the circus
guys help Tom get away.
In the end, Bounderby dies of some kind of fit in the street. Gradgrind lives
to old age and tries to undo the damage he did to his children. Louisa remains
unmarried and childless (which is a pretty severe punishment back in those
days). Tom eventually feels bad about being so awful, but has to remain abroad.
Rachael lives out her life taking care of Stephen's drunken widow. Sissy gets
married, has children, and seems to be the only light in everyone's lives
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