Hard Times (Classic Fiction)

Rating:
Summary: Dickens Had a Hard Time Writing This
Review: Readers should always remember that while reading. Instead of the usual monthly periodical installments with room to spare, "Hard Times" was done in weekly installments with a very limited space allotment, for the newspaper "Household Words." Dickens found the combined pressure of time and space nearly intolerable, given the breadth and depth of his vision for needed social reform. One can only imagine how much better, fuller, and more satisfying this book would have been -- in plot, character-development, dramatic impact -- if Dickens had written it as 900 pages over two years, rather than 300 pages in five months.

Rating:
Summary: Dickens.....not at his best, but still....Dickens
Review: The fact that Dickens wrote "Hard Times" in weekly installments, more than probably means that there was a time and space constraint. It must not be a coincidence then that this is among his shortest novels. I suppose this is why at times, his characters wind up being caricaturesque, and not as complex and real as some of his other very memorable characters. By the same token, some of his subplots do not fit in to the main plot the way they do in most, if not all, of his other works.

Dickens is trying to explore and provide us with a picture of the effects of utilitarianism on different types of human characters, and in my opinion he does a good job, but only as far as individuals go. We can see the impact of the post romantic victorian social system on all of the novel's characters, and this makes the book interesting. The downside, however, is that when Dickens tries to extrapolate and paint a picture of the social struggle going on, he falls quite short. He tries to oversimplify too much, and in my opinion, fails at that.

The "nothing but Facts" system psychologically castrates most of the main characters in the book. In one way or another, they all have their share of "Hard Times", and this can surely be attributed to a dehumanizing system, where people are statistics or simply gears within the machine which represents the newly industrialized world.

It is no surprise that there are absolutely no happy people in this novel. This is definitely not one happy book, but overall it's really worth reading. If what you're looking for is a book that easy to read and to understand, and a page-turner, just stay away--read John Grisham instead ;-). If you want to read Dickens, this is more that probably not his best, but it's still good.