Hard Times

Title: Hard Times

Author: Charles Dickens

Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy retired merchant who was known to be a "fanatic of the demonstrable fact", raises his children in the same manner, forbidding them any pursuit of imagination and grounding them to the factual truths in all subjects. Gradgrind also runs a school on the same principles and philosophy of rationalism. One day, he allows Cecelia(Sissy) Jupe, an imaginative girl, admission into the school on charitable grounds after her father disappears from the circus he was working in.  Gradgrind's two children grow up in their own confused manner, thanks to his active suppression of the imagination. Many events take place and the story meanders through the lives of Gradgrind, his children, their husbands and wives, the people in the town, Miss Sissy Jupe, and has wonderfully descriptive takes on the worker unions, the philosophy of rationalism, and so on. By the end, there is a classic turn around of Gradgrind and his fact-factory of a school by the gentle, imaginative, and kind-spirited Sissy Jupe. 

So, what makes this classic Dickens novel any special? 

1. It is a brilliant story. Dickens has always been an author whose descriptions I absolutely love. Reading a paragraph or two out of his books can literally paint the scene in front of your eyes. His novels are always of infinite, minute details that make it such a pleasure to read. 

2. It satisfies the classic-hunger for the classic-lover. Old school classics have a way with how they take the story, and usually have dramatic set-ups. The language is another pleasing oddity with Dickens' classics, and you get enough of it here. 

3. This book is incredibly short, considering that it's written by Dickens! Hard Times is a quick read compared to any other novel of Dickens. It is also has a different setting in the small, grim, industrial backdrop of Coketown, in contrast to the usual London country set up of most of his novels. And, this brings a fresh change to how we have usually seen the descriptions in his books, and also how the storyline is maneuvered. I really enjoyed it. 

Hard Times is typical and atypical of Dickens, both at the same time. And this, according to me, is the best part about this book. We get our familiar Dickens, yet it is adapted to a different backdrop and stimulating storyline, and this freshens up our exposure to classics in a very wholesome manner! I loved it, and so will you (especially, if you love Dickens)!

Today, incidentally, happens to be the 150th anniversary of this grand and legendary author and litterateur. I feel happy and honoured to be co-incidentally finishing this wonderful tale today, and putting up this post. If you want to read more on the life and works of Charles Dickens, check out my post on this man who lived his great modern life!

Great Modern Lives: Charles Dickens

On any day, for any given reader, one of the most commonly familiar names that pop up at the mention of the word 'classics' is Charles Dickens. Dickens splurged the world with wonderfully touching classic tales that are to last for generations together and stay truly time immemorial. 

Born in Portsmouth in 1812, he went to a school in Chatham till when he was twelve. And, on the fateful day of his twelfth birthday, the force of inevitable circumstances pushed this young and brilliant twelve year old to quit school and work in the blacking factories of Warren. Turmoil surrounding him, with an overworked aching childhood, a father who was arrested and sent to the debtor's prisons in Marshalsea for a debt of £40, and a prolonging and never-ending struggle against abject poverty, greatly influenced Dickens' early writing as a child. 

After a brief stint with the job of a reporter, Dickens made the decision to turn full-time on what he knew and loved the most- writing. On his 24th birthday, he published Sketches by Boz, through which he threw a great deal of light illustrating the everyday life of the common man, his magnificent and captivating writing reaching to a wide audience who saw themselves in his words. It struck a chord in all those who read it, and it gained popularity with common sentiment.

Dickens completed writing The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, The Old Curiosity Shop, and Barnaby Rudge before going on his first ever trip to America. After his return, there came another spell of marvellous novels that were a pleasure to read, which include Martin Chuzzlewit, Dombey Son, David Copperfield, Christmas stories, Bleak House, Hard Times, and Little Dorrit. The gems of his career, the ones that he is undoubtedly popular for, came at a later stage when he gave to the world A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend, and the incomplete sotry of Edwin Drood.

In 1870, after two years of ill health, Dickens, who by that time had established himself as one of most proficient, classic authors, died at his home in Kent. Earlier the day of his passing, he had worked on his mystery story Edwin Drood. 

Dickens was a strong voice against the social evils of his time. His books recorded for eternity on the sufferings of the common people, and raised the hope for a better future. His pragmatic thoughts in helping the poor and educating children came much from his own experience. Written from a personal understanding of the societal issues, not just for the art of story telling but with a passion to turn the attention on to the looming loopholes that can be fixed, Dickens served as an emboldened voice to those who did not have their own. There were many political and social reforms after his death. Schools became better than those he depicted in Nicholas Nickleby, and hospital nurses improved than what the world saw through Mrs. Gamp from Martin Chuzzlewit. 

My first introduction to Dickens was Oliver Twist, and that may just be the day I developed a permanent soft-spot, and eventually a hopeless drool, for classics! Dickens really deserves to be put in the category of one of the greatest modern lives, with his endearing and invaluable contribution to both literature and society!

If you have never read Dickens, maybe you could start with A Tale Of Two Cities!

The Old Curiosity Shop

Image from Goodreads

Title: The Old Curiosity Shop

Author: Charles Dickens

Nell Trent is a beautiful, young girl who is described as the perfect, angelic and kind being. Nell spends all her time with her grandfather, her closest family alive, in his “curiosity shop” that sells “odds and ends”. Nell’s grandfather adores her, and gets into the habit of gambling hoping to hit it big someday so that Nell could inherit the wealth after his death. But the bad habit, even though for a good cause, goes wrong and Nell’s grandfather loses all the little money he has by gambling. Nell’s grandfather also taken heavy sums as loan from the evil moneylender Quilp, a “a malicious, grotesquely deformed, hunchbacked dwarf”. Seizing this opportunity, Quilp takes control of the shop and throws out Nell and her grandfather for not paying back the loan amounts. 

The grandfather is heart broken, and highly traumatised by the turn of events. Nell embarks upon a journey with her grandfather to take him to a “safe place”. Meanwhile, Frederick Trent, Nell’s older brother, convinces the good-natured but easily manipulated Richard Dick Swiveller to help him track Nell down, so that Swiveller can marry Nell and share the “inheritance” which he believed the grandfather would have left her. In a chance meeting, they encounter Quilp, who is aware of the fact that there is no such inheritance, but still misleads them to believe he would help track down Nell. 

And, a series of events lead to the death of Quilp, and the realization of Dick that he is being manipulated, and finally tracking down Nell’s location only to find that she has died due to a sickness encountered during the journey, and the grandfather had become mentally unstable and sat near the grave of Nell believing she would come out, until after a few months he dies too. 

It is a pure tale of an innocent, kind-hearted girl who helps in the journey of her grandfather from risk to safety, without bothering about what it would do to her. It is a classic Dickens novel. 

Bleak House

Image from Britannica

Title: Bleak House

Author: Charles Dickens

I had started reading Bleak House long before, but gave up when it was too heavy for me to handle. But, after a semester of classes on Law and Equity in my law school a year back, I picked it up again a few months back and read it through. And, I enjoyed every dig, every syllable that Dickens had to say about the Chancery and its court of Equity.

There was always a problem about law not delivering justice in time. Sayings such as ‘justice delayed is justice denied’ is popular and known to all of us. Dickens captures the essence of it throughout his book. 

“The good ships Law and Equity, those teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing clippers are laid up in ordinary.”

“Over all the legal neighbourhood there hangs, like some great veil of rust or gigantic cobweb, the idleness and pensiveness of the long vacation.”

If the whole narrative of Bleak House has to be simply put, we just need one of the most preliminary paragraphs of the novel to get on point with the theme and the storyline. It is also one of the most pleasurable and enjoyable descriptions I have come across. 

“Jarndyce and Jarndyce drones on. This scarecrow of a suit has, in course of time, become so complicated that no man alive knows what it means. The parties to it understand it least, but it has been observed that no two Chancery lawyers can talk about it for five minutes without coming to a total disagreement as to all the premises. Innumerable children have been born into the cause; innumerable young people have married into it; innumerable old people have died out of it. Scores of persons have deliriously found themselves made parties in Jarndyce and Jarndyce without knowing how or why; whole families have inherited legendary hatreds with the suit.”

It is a common fact of basic knowledge to all those who have Equity as a subject that the first and the most important principle on which the whole concept of Equity is founded is that- “Equity will not suffer a wrong to be without a remedy.” Want to know the truth of Dickens’ times? Here’s an extract that’ll clearly give you the answer.

“This is the Court of Chancery, which has its decaying houses and its blighted lands in every shire, which has its worn-out lunatic in every madhouse and its dead in every churchyard, which has its ruined suitor with his slipshod heels and threadbare dress borrowing and begging through the round of every man's acquaintance, which gives to monied might the means abundantly of wearying out the right, which so exhausts finances, patience, courage, hope, so overthrows the brain and breaks the heart, that there is not an honourable man among its practitioners who would not give—who does not often give—the warning, "Suffer any wrong that can be done you rather than come here!"”

Bleak House is an absolute pleasure to read. With Dickens, it is never just about the story, but the nuances of his narrative plays a very important role. Bleak house is a must read for all, and most definitely all law students. And, here’s a good suggestion from a fellow-reader: do some homework on equity before you get to Bleak House, I’m sure the fun will be doubled!

The Pickwick Papers

The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club. Tracy Tupman, Nathaniel Winkle, Samuel Pickwick and Augustus Snodgrass. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Title: The Pickwick Papers

Author: Charles Dickens

Main characters: Mr. Samuel Pickwick, Alfred Jingle, Mr. Wardle, Mr. Nathaniel Winkle, Mr. Tony Weller, Samuel Weller, Mr. Tracy Tupman, Mr. Snodgrass, Arabella Allen, Emily Wardle, Isabella Wardle, Rachael Wardle.

Description of one of the main characters: 

Mr. Samuel Pickwick is a retired businessman. He is the founder of the Pickwick Club. He travels around with his friends Mr. Tupman, Mr. Snodgrass and Mr. Winkle to the interiors of England. He gets to meet different kinds of people and also understands their behavior. He makes new friends while travelling around. Then, when his friends slowly get married and get other jobs, he dissolves the club and start living peacefully.

Whom I like and why: I like Mr. Wardle very much. He is hearty. He is the hospitable owner of Manor Farm in Dingley Dell. His elderly mother lives with him. He has two daughters – Emily Wardle and Isabella Wardle. He also has a spinster sister named Rachael Wardle. He is a very fun-loving person and is always ready to help.

Whom I dislike and why: I dislike Alfred Jingle. He is an itinerant actor. He refuses to tell his name in the beginning to Mr.Pickwick, Mr. Snodgrerss, Mr.Tupman and Mr.Winkle. He speaks in broken sentences with abrupt pauses. He is a very strange man.

Setting/theme of the story: Mr. Samuel Pickwick, the founder of the Pickwick club travels around with the "Pickwikians" – Mr. Snodgrass, Mr. Winkle and Mr. Tupman to explore the rural areas of England. They first meet Alfred Jingle who is an itinerant actor. They have a few adventures with him. Then they meet Mr. Wardle, his elderly mother Mrs. Wardle, his two daughters Emily Wardle and Isabella Wardle and Rachael Wardle. They dine and stay with them for a few days. They have do partying and the Pickwikians thoroughly enjoy themselves. They meet Allen, Benjamin Allen and his sister Arabella Allen. Miss Allen is Arabella Allen’s aunt. Nathaniel Winkle marries Arabella Allen. Mr. Pickwick finds a servant for himself named Sam Weller. Sam Weller is very loyal to Mr. Pickwick. So, Mr. Pickwick frees him and gives him a houe in the back garden of his house. Then he decides to dissolve the Pickwick Club because of two reasons – one because the Pickwick Club has suffered much from internal dissensions during Mr. Pickwick's long absence; second, because all his friends had settled down and got other jobs. After dissolving The Pickwick Club, Mr. Pickwick says:

“I shall never regret having devoted the greatest part of 2 years to mixing with different varieties and shades of human pursuit of novelty may have appeared to many.”

Part I enjoyed the most: I enjoyed the part when Mr.Pickwick, Mr. Tupman, Mr.Winkle, Mr. Snodgrass, Mr.Wardle, Mrs. Wardle, Rachael Wardle, Emily Wardle and Isabella Wardle come in fancy dresses and costumes to the dinner, dressing up as someone else. Mr. Pickwick alone doesn’t dress as someone else as the others say he is a man of character himself and does not have a need to dress up as someone else.