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Hard Times
Hard Times
Hard Times
Audiobook10 hours

Hard Times

Written by Charles Dickens

Narrated by Anton Lesser

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

3.5/5

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About this audiobook

Hard Times is Dickens’s most political novel. Set in the industrial north of England, in Coketown, he examines the lives of working people, who are taught by the capitalists Gradgrind and Bounderby to think only of the facts of life and not to indulge in imagination. Gradgrind’s own children have been so educated and as a result are dysfunctional and disconnected from their feelings. Only the travelling circus company of Sleary seems to offer any hope of humanity in Coketown. Hard Times is a deeply moving story written in anger to strike a blow for the victims of the dehumanising processes of industry.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateNov 11, 2014
ISBN9781843794448
Author

Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is the most popular and, many believe, the greatest English author. He wrote many classic novels, including David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and A Christmas Carol. Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities are available from Brilliance Audio.

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Reviews for Hard Times

Rating: 3.5744235621942697 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

1,431 ratings72 reviews

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  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, oh, Father, What have you done with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here?

    My friend Levi Stahl once noted how reading Henry James utilized the higher gears of his brain. I have always relished that sentiment, though I fear Henry James is above my pay grade. It is a different kettle with Dickens, my maudlin thoughts drift to Cassavetes on Capra, a reworking of my already repurposed grace. Get behind me, social realism.

    Hard Times is an interesting collection of set pieces collected in a smelting town with a set of characters which honestly can be seen in Turgenev. The novel doesn't afford an arc much as a series of consequences. It is here where the other (evil) Scott Walker from Wisconsin finds his nocturnal emission: organized labor chokes the life out of people. It couldn't be inhaling coal dust or toiling every day bereft of Vitamin C, no, it is collective bargaining and an improper educational system. I should note that the Governor isn't a character in this novel. Only his peculiar sentiment.

    Siblings are raised in a Spartan pedagogic environment, one which worships facts and retention as opposed to creativity. The daughter then marries a self made Scott Pruitt, while the wayward son fancies gambling and living above his station. There is no mention of an ostrich jacket. There is an honest worker. He can't abide by the union and, before Bob's your uncle, he is fingered for a robbery. Life can only aspire to transcend self-interest. It remains but an aspiration.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This is the version from 1834, as originally published serialized in Household Words. Highly recommended, as read by Phil Benson, who has the perfect accent and intonation for Dickens' only northern novel. I didn't realize till almost the end that "Hard" has a double meaning, not just difficult (as in the life of poor working people) but unemotional and uncaring. The children are taught to be hard, which puts Luisa in a bad marriage and Tom into an immoral lifestyle. Bounderby is hard on others. It is Gradgrind's turn away from being hard which helps save everyone, and the characters who were not hard at all (Stephen, Rachael, and Sissy) meet their various fates but always retain their integrity.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Justly one of Dickens' least-read novels, Hard Times is a bit of an anomaly in several ways. His 10th novel, Dickens was writing in the journal Household Words in 1854, which gave him a lot less space than usual - this is perhaps a third the length of your average Dickens work. It's also a fairly straightforward story that strikes one more as a moral treatise than anything else. Aside from the famous circus sequence, the novel feels dry and a little perfunctory. The Lancashire characters' accents are also questionable at best, and indecipherable at worst.

    George Bernard Shaw liked this book, and it's not hard to see why. This is perhaps Dickens' most blatantly political book, an argument against society becoming too rational and utilitarian, too capitalist at the extent of humanity. It was an argument that had already been greatly lost by 1854, and one we are still fighting today in 2016. In that sense, Hard Times still encapsulates Dickens' core philosophies. At the same time, this is never going to be one of the works for which CD is remembered. His sheer talent is still there, in spades, but it's notable that after this work, Dickens entered the third and final act of his career, in which his novels were allowed to take their time, and he'd never sound a dull note again.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The message of Hard Times rings very true today. "...that there i[s] a love in the world, not all [S]elf-intere[s]t after all, but [s]omething very different...." However, this was by far the most difficult Dickens read that I can remember. Reading the sections where his satire of the Utilitarians is at its thickest at times feels like walking through quicksand in order to follow the plot. The story is simple and you cannot miss his point, but everything slogs.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Hard Times by Charles Dickens explores and exposes the working conditions in the factories of Northern England in the 1850’s. Dickens was obviously a forward thinker and many of his novels point out conditions that needed improving, in Hard Times he turns his attention on the ambitious businessmen, the educators, the gentry and the would-be gentry who take advantage and exploit the workers. First and foremost, Hard Times appears to be a critique of the politics and economics of the day. Contrary to the Temperance Leagues and Sabbatarians, he believed that hard-working people deserved recreational pursuits to relieve the tedium and stress of their workaday lives. It is also apparent that he felt that children need to be encouraged to use their imagination, that fairy tales and make believe are important to their development. This is the shortest of his novels and is set in the fictitious industrial town of Coketown where the factories belch smoke all day and soot covers the landscape. The subject matter is as dark as the setting, as we read of abuse, suppression and betrayal. This is not a book to read for it’s happy ending, being much darker than David Copperfield or Oliver Twist. The characters on these pages do not get a chance to turn their lives around. I read Hard Times in installment form just as it was originally published in 1854 and although it is a socially conscious, agenda-drive book, there is also a good story here about the citizens of Coketown, many with the wonderfully descriptive names that Dickens bestows upon his characters. Being a shorter book kept the focus on moving the story along and, rather than pages of description or long winded asides, the prose was stylish and clever. As a fan of Dickens, I enjoyed both the fine writing and the sharp social criticism that one comes to expect of this author.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Dickens shows us the lives of several characters in Coketown, from a father who teaches strict belief in fact and will brook no wonder in his children, to children themselves who lead tortured lives because of this theory of education, to a blustering banker who is always too happy to brag about his humble beginnings, to a handful of the humble but good working folk of the town. Their lives intermesh in various ways over the course of several years.Although there's barely one character in the novel whom I could think of without a good eyeroll, Dickens still weaves a tale that I couldn't resist following through to the end. I love that the wicked don't necessarily get their comeuppance, and the happiness due the good guys isn't completely pure - the complexities of the plot see to that - and despite my misgivings at the beginning, I'm glad that I stuck with it and quite enjoyed it by the end.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ee n van de betere van Dickens, vooral als historisch-sociaal document.De sociale aanklacht staat voorop, vooral via Stephen Blackpool, symbool van de oerwijsheid van de arbeider; vakbondsleider Slackbridge wordt sarcastisch beschreven.Maar dieperliggend wordt ook de arrogantie van de burgerij aan de kaak gesteld (vooral via Bounderby en Harthouse), maar ook het opkomend positivisme (het systeem van Gradgrind). Boven dat alles zweeft de oerwijsheid van bijbelse figuren als Cecilia en Rachael.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    A short, readable Dickens that includes Dickens' usual inimitable indictment of modern education and domestic abuse.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Dickens at his didactic worst, assembling a cast of paperthin caricatures and prodding them to play out a sledgehammer moral pantomime.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Ee n van de betere van Dickens, vooral als historisch-sociaal document.De sociale aanklacht staat voorop, vooral via Stephen Blackpool, symbool van de oerwijsheid van de arbeider; vakbondsleider Slackbridge wordt sarcastisch beschreven.Maar dieperliggend wordt ook de arrogantie van de burgerij aan de kaak gesteld (vooral via Bounderby en Harthouse), maar ook het opkomend positivisme (het systeem van Gradgrind). Boven dat alles zweeft de oerwijsheid van bijbelse figuren als Cecilia en Rachael.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The entrance of kind, caring, and imaginative little Sissy into the fact dominated Gradgrind family surprisingly does little to change the older children, Tom and Louisa. Tom becomes more of a selfish and self-indulgent hypocrite, while Louisaoddly stays distant from the carefree and creative life that Sissy could open for them.Louisa remains so flat in this "eminently practical" existence that she comes across as a depressive.She must have been strikingly beautiful for the handsome, intelligent, willful, rake and villain James Harthouse to be attracted to her even as a passing conquest.The plot evolves so boringly slowly that Harthouse emerges as the only halfway exciting and intriguing characteronce good man Stephen Blackpool has left Coketown. Their names could be reversed since the hero is a sturdy house of heart and the other boasts of a pool of darkness where his heart felt morals should be.Other characters are simply too good to be true or just plain old Dicksonian caricatures.Worse still is that translations are needed for Stephen's noble dialect and Stearly's lisp -they are both like reading paragraphs of baby talk.Only a few memorable quotes among all the admirable descriptions of smoke and fumes: "What does he come here cheeking us for, then?"
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Wonderful reading of this great Dickens story. Be transported to Coke town and follow hope and happiness in their rencontre with logic and reason.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Excellent reader of an awesome novel of the great Dickens.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Loved it all Charles Dickens never fails to capture me
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This novel is peculiarly short for Dickens, sandwiched sequentially between the bulky Bleak House and longer Little Dorrit. It doesn't make for faster pacing. The introduction to my edition bemoans how slow it is through the first two thirds, blaming that for its dull reception upon publication. Perhaps Dickens knew he had a less popular work on his hands and decided to cut his losses with a shorter work. Or perhaps he sensed how much dark was being reflected as his marriage was in the throes of collapse and he needed a quicker escape from it.The social message targets here are primarily education and the industrial age, paired nicely since Dickens paints them both as tarnished by unrelenting repetition and regimen, drained of colour. He doesn't draw a direct line between them, but it isn't hard to imagine Gradgrind's system as the perfect factory for churning out mindless drones and aspiring businessmen as grist for the more literal version. The tone feels more didactic than his other novels to this point, filled with portents and warnings. Dickens dispenses with any budding romance in the wings, and the typically happy fates he dispenses to his characters are drawn thin and pale. Mr. Sleary stands as the lone representative of Dickens' lighter novels, but his presence is minimal. His slurred speech feels symbolic, as if Dickens holds him retained behind a frosted glass. There's some maturity in this novel, a staying of sentimentality that could be read as a more serious literary effort. It can also be read, ironically, as Dickens giving in to some of the Gradgrind school himself, at the cost of his more joyful indulgences.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    This novel is timeless and anyone reading it in anytime can relate to many parts of it. The narrator did an amazing job conveying the story with all its feelings and did every character justice. I really enjoyed it!!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    From Hardy's Victorian England of gentle walks amongst the furze on the heath to Dicken's Victorian England of dark, polluted skies above smoky industrial northern towns. Ah, Dickens loves a bit of dreariness! Hard Times is a right hook in the face of class snobbery and prejudice. It opens with a couple of pompous middle-aged men delighting in pontificating on the merits of facts in the total absence of feelings, fancies or fun. Their lives are governed by arrogant decisions and judgments made on their skewed version of facts, with their assessments of people's characters clouded entirely by their class prejudice around the honesty and capability of those less fortunate than themselves. Ruling their families and homes with a cold and efficient lack of sentimentality, Dickens ultimately teaches these old fools a harsh lesson in what's actually important in life (although sadly one is too far gone with his own sense of self-worth and importance to ever change).Although quite bleak in places, and in true Victorian style faintly ridiculous at times (pass me the smelling salts - again), I loved the ultimate message of this book. Dickens is very clever at engineering an exposition of the truth that real wealth lies in goodness and happiness, and rounds off the novel nicely with the very people who were most looked down on at the beginning of the book being the characters who ultimately are proven to have the truest riches.This is only my second Dickens novel, and I didn't love it just as much as Great Expectations, but once I got into the swing of it I still enjoyed it.4 stars - some particularly unlikeable characters, but a great jaunt all the same.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This is my 10th Dickens novel, read in rough chronological order of publication. I've read worse, and better. Mercifully a single deck and not the normal triple. There are a few genuinely touching scenes of reconciliation and the theme of the need for love over facts is somewhat modern in this age of information and answers. I don't think this novel will stick in my memory for very long, there is a lot of cliche Dickens, although the quality of the writing - choice of words and sentence structure - as always elevates it above genre fiction.I was bemused by the association of "Roman" with the evil characters (easily searched in an electronic edition). Mr. Bounderby has a "Roman nose", Mrs. Sparsit also has a Roman nose and eyebrows Coriolanian. She is a "Roman matron going outside the city walls to treat with an invading general." Mr. Slackbridge is compared with a "Roman Brutus", and Mr. Bounderby plays a "Roman part". There were many stereotypes wrapped up in the word "Roman" for a Victorian reader. Dickens seems to blame the upper-class Aristocratic association with Enlightenment ideals who allied with bankers (big-nosed Mediterraneans ie. Jews, foreigners) that then exploited the good people of England, literally sending them down the "hell pit" to die. It's simplistic and ultimately racist in a 19th century way, but overlooked since the message is humanitarian to improve the condition of the working poor.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    The first Dickens novel I read it put me off him for several more years. And re-reading it many years later I am not much fonder of it. It is overly didactic, not particularly humorous, the plot feels relatively basic, and the depiction of the industrial revolution is more stereotypical and less imaginative than the fog, dust and red tape of Bleak House, Our Mutual Friend and Little Dorrit respectively. That is not to say there are not good passages and the evolution of Mr. Gradgrind, his son Tom, and their relationship is particularly well done. But Tom's sister Louisa is much more cardboard and the humorous characters like Mr. Sleary and Miss Sparsit are both somewhat annoying.

    It is unfortunate that, as Dickens' shortest novel, this one is probably the most assigned in school (which is where I first read it), it really does not serve as the best introduction to the author.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Reading this back to back with Pickwick Papers this work is darker and more cynical. But still an excellent book, by turns comic, thoughtful and timely, another great novel by Mr. Dickens. Also a masterful performance by the reader, Anton Lesser.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I read this novel with the same determination a child feels when eating cold vegetables before being allowed to enjoy desert. My least favorite of the Charles Dickens novels I've read, Hard Times made for some hard reading. Dickens' displays his characteristic urban bleakness as he describes life in an emerging factory town and the despair inherent in many of the personal relationships of the characters. Read this book if you must (admitted, Dickens certainly has his moments in this novel), but I can't highly recommend this one.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Certainly my favorite of Dickens's works, and I think his best rendering of the impact of industrialism on both urban and suburban British society in the 19th century. Beautifully drawn, it's easy to see the lineage through to Orwell's works in Down and Out and Wigan Peir.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    The most depressing thing about Charles Dickens' Hard Times is how little has changed about the attitude of the rich for the working class even though it's getting closer to two centuries since it was first published.Some of the revelations were no surprise, but that didn't matter. My favorite parts were when Thomas Gradgrind, Senior, discovered the results his teaching of nothing but facts have had on two of his pupils.There are plenty of reasons to become outraged on characters' behalf and several characters well worth detesting.Mr. Tull's narration was good.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    "NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing
    but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else,
    and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of
    reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any
    service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own
    children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these
    children. Stick to Facts, sir!"
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    This was my first Dickens' novel, admittedly my choice as it is considerably shorter than any of his other major works. There were sections I found very entertaining- his reputation for conveying humor and biting social commentary is well earned. That said, I didn't find the actual story line particularly compelling and would have preferred more emphasis on fewer characters. All in all, an enjoyable but not outstanding book.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    We read an excerpt from this novel in a children's lit class as there is a scene from an extreme sort of facts only, pragmatist education. I wanted to see where the novel went from there. I was somewhat disappointed in this is a pretty straight forward criticism of industrial England in the the early 1800's. Very melodramatic. Not Dickens at his best.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    I am a big fan of Dickens, but this one was a disappointment for me. Like many of his novels, he is making a commentary on society. In this case, he is criticizing the trend of memorizing facts in education and society's movement toward industrialization. Two of the main characters, siblings Louisa and Tom Gradgrind are brought up to memorize facts and ignore stories and imaginative fancy. They end up being socially dysfunctional; in Louisa's case she is unable to build emotional ties and Tom becomes a complete selfish boor. What this novel was missing is what Dickens does so well in his other books. The characters seemed flat and one-dimensional. Where were the memorable supporting characters like Uriah Heep, or Jenny Wren? The book felt preachy, especially the ending, and lacked the usual humor and warmth for me. My least favorite Dickens so far.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Appreciate the strong criticism of reason, rationalism, and industrio-capitalism, but the tale itself lacks subtlety even by Dickens' standards. Surprisingly, it feels too short, as I barely even figured out who the main protagonists were before the climax and denouement came along. A much more developed (and IMO, consequently more scathing) criticism of modern society and living conditions can be found in Bleak House. It's 800 or so pages, but well-used. Maybe Dickens is an author who is simply at his best when writing ridiculously long novels. This isn't one of them.

    I just remembered what Dickens' criticism of modern industrialization and capitalism reminded me of: Lady Chatterly's Lover. To be sure, Dickens came first, so he should receive credit for his treatment in Hard Times. But D.H. Lawrence, in his description of the slowly disappearing countryside, the vacant estates left by forever shifting aristocrats, and the volatile class struggles, handles the theme much more powerfully, though not as humorously.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    I was assigned Hard Times in high school, and actually remembered it as one of the few works by Dickens I had enjoyed. Rereading it, I did still enjoy it on the whole, but I still found in it so many of the qualities that put me off in Dickens--although often they're closely associated with qualities I do like.What I do like is the humor. Dickens can be witty and sharp, and this satire of utilitarianism comes off in bright primary colors, and his distaste for the Industrial Revolution and Industrialists and members of Unions alike in sooty black. Yet in terms of this picture of the Industrial North of England I couldn't help contrasting it in my mind--unfavorably--to Gaskell's North and South. There are ways in which I do find Dickens the superior writer. He had the humor I remember lacking from Gaskell and goodness, Dickens can turn a memorable phrase. But Gaskell's is a much more nuanced portrait of the Industrial Revolution. She shows its dark side--she can't be accused, unlike Dickens' character Bounderby, of trying to claim the smoky, grimy air is good for your health! Or that factory work is "light" and "pleasant." But Gaskell also shows the dynamism of the new forces at work that empowered workers compared to what had come before or to the more agricultural, class-bound South. Dickens' industrialist Bounderby is no more than a caricature--Gaskell's industrialist Thornton is a rounded figure, with virtues and flaws and a point of view that doesn't represent a straw man. On the other side of the class divide, Gaskell's workingman Nicholas Higgins to me represents a much stronger figure than either Slackbridge or the sentimentalized Blackwell in Hard Times. And I hate how Dickens represents the speech of the working class, though he's hardly alone in that in his era or ours. But it was a trial trying to make out Blackwell's speech: "I ha' hed what's been spok'n o' me, and tis' lickly that I shan't mend it." It's not as if educated speakers of English don't drop sounds. How would you pronounce "thought?" But it's not as if Dickens resorts to that kind of phonetic spelling above for upper class characters. Those caricatures, over-the-top characterizations and the hectoring polemics extend even to one of Dickens' most notable characteristics--the use of character names as tags for one-sided qualities--even if I do have to smile at names such as "Gradgrind" or "Bounderby" or "Harthouse."If my rating doesn't fall below a three (and I didn't hesitate to give A Tale of Two Cities lower) it's because, reading Blackwell's dialogue aside, this is so very readable. So much of this book is very, very quotable. I also found Louisa Bounderby an interesting character. She's a much less pallid character than I usually see in Dicken's women characters--including the others within this book not out and out caricatures like Mrs Sparsit. Louisa's a kind of anti-Emma Bovary. If Flaubert's title heroine was a female Don Quixote, driven to destruction by too much fanciful reading, then Louisa is the other side of the spectrum--one made emotionally arid by strangling all imagination and playfulness out of her from an early age to suit her father's utilitarian principles. And at least in this novel I can't accuse Dickens of being verbose--this one is less than 300 pages. Worth reading, despite my reservations.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    Nearly every Dickens book I’ve read has been a disappointment. “Hard Times” is no exception.I like the author’s humour, but it doesn’t surface enough in this novel. Apart from a few good scenes here and there, most of the time I was bored with overlong descriptions, with too much “telling” and not enough “showing”.I respect Charles Dickens for his high status as an author, and I wish I liked his writing style because of this, but – alas! – I don’t.