What the Dickens? Hard Times
Vložit
- čas přidán 8. 09. 2024
- In which I talk about Charles Dickens’s Hard Times…
Hard Times was Dickens’s tenth novel, published in 1854; it is my tenth favourite Dickens novel. (Or is it? Who knows? Perhaps we'll never know.)
Hard Times: / 5344.hard_times
Catch up on What the Dickens? • What the Dickens? An I...
--General links--
My blog: justbooksandthi...
Find me on Facebook: / justbooksandthings
Follow me on Twitter: / katiejlumsden
Follow me on Instragram: / katiejlumsden
Add me on Goodreads: / katie-lumsden
Add me on NaNoWriMo: nanowrimo.org/p...
I read Hard Times several years ago and it is on my list for a reread. A passage in the book that really stood out for me was when Mr Choakemchild asked Sissy about a city where a million people live and 25 are starved to death in the street, and if that was a remarkable proportion? Her response was that it must have been just as hard on those who starved whether a million lived there or a million million. The contrast between cold statistics of a city where an amount of starvation seems acceptable, and Sissy's response of heart, empathy and wisdom was striking. Of course Choakemchild thought she was wrong. It was a masterfully put-together scenario where Choakemchild and Sissy, because of their world views, would never be able to understand eachother. Absolutely brilliant! Thank you again for your insights into Dickens.
One of my favourites. Unusually for the time you actually get two working-class people as main characters in the story, Stephen and Rachel. Mr. Bounderby obliges as the mean old businessman and villain. Unlike many Dickens novels this ones actually a little shorter which can help too. As with a Christmas Carol it's a story about moral redemption, characters paying for but learning from their mistakes and blindness. It's a warning about the dangers of being emotionally distanced and blind too which is an every relevant problem. Mr. Gradgrind is not a bad man, he wants the best for the world, but he just seems to believe that science and rationality alone can deliver it.
Thank you girl. I'm from Colombia and I've been reading it lately. I find it so interesting, but my biggest problem is that I get lost very frequently because of the language (as you may know, my mother tongue is Spanish). I have to go to my dictionary, like, twice in a sentence... I want to finish it though. I love it. Thanks for your insights.
Thanks! I hope you enjoy the book.
If you get far e ough why not translate into Spanish
Thank you for entertaining me during my morning cereal. If you could spend the rest of your life uploading daily, early morning videos, that would be great.
+parsnip 1 Haha I'm glad you're enjoying the series. And if you can find a way to stop time every evening for about two hours I'll happily oblige :P
Hard Times was the first Charles Dickens book that I read and it was with Hard Times that I completely fell in love with the author. I am currently reading The Bleak House and I'm loving it so far, I can't put it down!
So glad you're enjoying it!
BLEAK HOUSE IS THE ULTIMATE DICKENSIAN MASTERPIECE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This sounds like a wonderful novel! I love being able to read a book and really study it, this sounds like I wonderful book to do so. I'm so ready to start reading more Dickens! You're making me excited :)
+ElizabethAnneBooks Brilliant, that was the plan! :P It's a fascinating book and has a lot to interest in it.
"They were ruined, when they were required to send labouring children to school; they were ruined when inspectors were appointed to look into their works; they were ruined, when such inspectors considered it doubtful whether they were quite justified in chopping people up with their machinery; they were utterly undone, when it was hinted that perhaps they need not always make quite so much smoke."
Reading this one now and enjoying it so far. Ever since you did your What the Dickens video series , I decided to read through all his novels over the next couple of years.
Thanks - I hope you're enjoying Dickens so far :)
Hey girl! I just want to say how much I like your videos! I am from Germany and I am studying English to become a teacher and in March I have my state exam in literature of the 19th (british novels) and your videos are helping me sooo much. For the time after my exam I am planning to read so many of the novels that you made videos about!! I know, I should do it before, but I don't have the time :(
I just finished it and came to watch this video. The only other Dickens' novels I've read are Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. I certainly want to check out more of his work now!
Hard times is a wonderful novel..but the thing which made me watch your video continously 2-3 times was your cuteness..🤗😊
I'm currently reading Hard Times as my first book by Dickens. I wouldn't say that I'm loving it, in fact when I started reading it took me almost 2 days to read first 50 pages, but as I progressed I started liking it.
I'm at the Book Second now and hoping to finish the book this week. 😊
I loved your review of Hard Times! Thanks 😇
I hope you like Hard Times more as you go through it :)
@@katiejlumsden I loved it! The Book Two and Three were so interesting and I'd got the hang of Dickens, so that made it further easy! I must say Dickens' writing is very different from others of his time and that I loved it. 😍😁
I am thoroughly enjoying this series! Dickens and I haven't always been friendly, but I respect his work immensely.
+Austin K. Thank you so much Austin :)
Thanks for your input. I read this for my English literature class and this helps me understand it better to write my analysis
Thanks! Glad it was helpful.
I think somehow I had conflated Hard Times and Bleak House in my mind. Thanks for telling me about this book! The central imagination/facts idea seems really interesting, and it reminds me of what I know of North and South. :)
+BooksandQuestions I am enjoying all your comments today :P Hard Times does have quite a lot in common with North and South, in terms of themes, even if not in plot - I reckon Dickens was probably a little inspired by Elizabeth Gaskell. He published her in his magazine, although apparently she wasn't that fond of him as a person!
Thank you so much!
Hard Times was the first dickens novel I've ever read I'm Happy that I read it I only read it for a book report(8th grade) one of the reasons why I like the book is that it did not have so much of a happy ending and it was quite dark at times I tend to like books that are on the darker scale of things I like that it explored problems that normally people don't tend to talk about I think that that's really the whole point of books is to talk about problems that you wouldnt generally talk about to someone face to face but I definitely recommend doing some research on the Victorian error because if not you might be a little bit lost in the book also I recommend to get a book that has footnotes in it so you can understand everything a little bit better😊😊 also I really enjoyed your review I like how you talk really really fast!!
Thanks. Also, it's a pleasure to hear you enjoy how quickly I speak as I know a lot of people struggle with it and I do try very hard to slow down but it's so hard! I enjoy the darker side of Hard Times too, and the unusual focus on education.
Thanks for this entertaining review of Hard Times. I just finished reading it tonight, and it was my 4th Dickens novel. I decided that during some of my free time during the pandemic it would be a nice challenge to read some Charles Dickens. I read Great Expectations, Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield, and then Hard Times. I didn't really dislike it, but the first three I certainly liked better. I appreciated the way Dickens wanted to bring to light some of the social problems in England of the 1850s. But sometimes the story seemed so contrived and unbelievable. The Gradgrind educational system was so silly. His daughter Louisa eventually rebels, but when she does, the dialog/soliloquy is so stilted and contrived. I could not believe anyone would actually speak like that! However, as you mention in your video, some of the characters are very well done. Both Stephen and Rachel are heartwarming individuals from the overworked working class. Thanks for your enlightening comments on the circus and how the characters from the circus provide a great contrast to the Gradgrind school of thought.
Thanks! Hard Times is a fascinating novel but it's not as much about the characters and the plot so much as the themes, which does make it quite different.
I loved reading Hard Times. It was such a fun yet powerful book 📚
It is a great book - I'm glad you enjoyed it.
thank you for this review!
Hi Katie and Happy Easter! Reading Hard Times now and so far it is hilarious. Mr. Bounderby must be the biggest windbag in the Dickens cannon! The wit in Dickens descriptions of character traits is wonderful. I'm actually laughing out loud.
I'm glad to hear you're enjoying it. Dickens does create such hilarious characters.
Excellent video.
Amongst the best openings to a book ever. That is a hell of a quote as well.
It really is.
I loved the 'speaker's geometrically symmetrical description.' it was just so hilarious
Agreed!
Excellent. Thanks very much.
Though I finished the book .Very hard to read and understand. So I am going through all the reviews to get the correct message
“He does like Dickens, he just pretends he does not” 🤣🤣🤣
I just started to read it.. it is my fourth dickens , I think.
Absolutely loved Our Mutual Friend and Bleak House.. tried reading Dombey and sons... but could not get into the flow.. will try again.. after Hard Times...
What happened to Sissy?
Great review! I have had this book sitting on my shelf for nearly two years. I plan on reading it soon, though it seems a bit of a challenge.
It's not the easiest Dickens, but it is a great read.
this was helpful, because I'm studying Hard Times for my A levels. thanks!
+RoseEirwen I'm glad it was helpful for you :)
Another one that I have actually read! Huzzah! I read this when I was in school, and didn't really get on with it, but it sounds like something I would enjoy more now than I did at the time of reading.
+A Hermit's Progress It is an odd one - I think it's less enjoyable as it were than most of Dickens's other novels, though it's really interesting. It's a shame - I think it's sometimes taught in schools because it's one of the shortest Dickens but I personally think it's one of the less accessible ones. You certainly might enjoy it more now :)
I can not wait to reach it, this sounds like my kind of novel!
Maybe it should have been higher; it should have been substituted with MC ;)
Brilliant vid.
+IAmBroke It is a great one. I have a feeling it should have been one higher perhaps, but it was so, so hard to decide!
I bought it today... look forward to reading it.😁
Enjoy!
Try to tell the story slowly then only we can understand
Just put the playback speed on 0.75X
Is this a book to start with as a beginner reader, pls someone answer me. It's my first one , if there is any helpfull tips or advices or mistakes I should avoid in this journy
it will help me a lot.
I guess time limitation really gives you a real hard time. But you were amazing 👍
Is it worth reading?
I don't mean to gush but you really do have an extraordinary knack for making novel that I have previously had little to no interest in suddenly appealing. You remind me of those professors who's passion for their novels becomes infectious. Have you ever thought about teaching? (As a lit student I understand how infuriating this question is if you have no intention of ever teaching so do forgive me if that is the case.)
+LoveMeSomeSarcasm Thank you so much! I like the idea of teaching, of spreading the joy of literature, etc, and I might enjoy it at a university level - but in terms of school teaching, I have a feeling I would never be able to control a class. I used to be a girlguide leader and I couldn't cope with ten children, let another thirty XD
I've read that this book can be interpreted as a machine vs man novel.
+IAmBroke It certainly can! Or at least it's about a machine-like mind-set versus a more romantic/imaginative one. It's a great book :)
I like it!
Thanks :)
Why is the different sector given agricultural names when the book is about industrial revolution?
As a contrast, perhaps.
Aside from A Christmas Carol I've not read any Dickens. Where would you recommend I start? Thank you.
+Wendy Panton I recommend David Copperfield or Great Expectations to start; Little Dorrit is also a good starting place.
Wendy Panton great expectations is the easiest Dicken's novel to read
Towards the end, when Sleary is half-jarred, he is hard to understand in the text.
a very heartfelt and accurate analysis (but why so tense?...)
It's not "tense", but rather "enthusiasm" and appreciation.
Just a book
I have read it. I was surprised because it seemed more about education than the plight of factory workers. I wondered what people working in Asian Tiger countries like China and South Korea would make of it, because their children do long hours in school learning factual subjects (not mention the factories and pollution). I wondered also whether Dickens was having a dig in that what people like Gradgrind purported to be facts were not actually facts; they were dodgy economic hypotheses. Dickens may have had a social conscience, but he was not left wing. He portrays Slackbridge, the union leader, as a rabble-rousing troublemaker, and I seem to remember Stephen was a strike breaker. Mr Bounderby was quite funny. I wondered whether he was gay.It was quite an interesting book, but I thought it needed more editing.
+Kevin Varney Education certainly is important to the book, especially in terms of how children should be brought up and what she make up the staple of their education - facts (believed, whether real or not) or imagination. And yes, Dickens certainly wasn't left wing, and like many Victorian writers, he demonises union leaders, though not factory workers.
Wonder what CD would've thought of Night Circus?
I heard that he further developed some of the same themes from HT in his later book LD.
In his day, the social science of economics (called political economy then) was being developed, & CD hated it for being dehumanizing & railed against it.
I usually cold turkey read a novelist's toughest book first (not Joyce). For CD I read BH, for Eliot, Middlemarch, for Tolstoy, War & Peace. I turn perceived wisdom of reading first the easier books of a given author on its head. Read the toughie & it's all downhill from there. Dive into the deep end. Damn the torpedoes full steam ahead!
+TimeAndChance Interesting! I'd like to read the Night Circus, but have never got round to it.
But yes, I agree. I love Little Dorrit and think it is a stronger novel, with a very strong plot as well as strong thematic undertones.
Ha yes, it can be good to jump in at the deep end :P
You are so adorable!
Girl, take breaths between your sentences and slow down a bit. Jesus
Or just put the playback speed 0.75X
you speak so fast
I didn’t like this one very much
Slow down, you talk way too fast. BTW, I don't recommend trying to persuade people to read Dickens if they don't really want to. If you don't enjoy reading his books, you shouldn't read them, they're not for you.