The mood of Hard Times is melancholic. In line with both the conventions of Realism, and much of Dickens’s work after David Copperfield, Hard Times does not operate under any illusions about the difficulties faced by its characters and the unlikelihood that they will fully surmount them.
The lack of neat resolution in the novel lends the work a realistic complexity. When Louisa finally unpacks the effects of utilitarianism on her life and personal development in Book 2, Chapter, 12, she confronts her father:
“Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by my sense of touch, and had been free [...] to exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to them; I should have been a million times wiser, happier, more loving [...] and more human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have.”
The damage Gradgrind has done to his daughter emotionally is incalculable and irreversible. Had she been totally without any instruction at all (“stone blind [...] groped my way by my sense of touch”), she could not have ended up more emotionally and spiritually lost.
This damage is never completely reversed, nor does Louisa rectify, break, or heal the cycle of emotional damage within a family of her own (as the novel reveals, she never has children, though she helps raise Sissy’s). Louisa copes with her personal struggles as much as she can, but she is never really free of them. Likewise, Tom never returns home, but dies regretting that he never reconciled with Louisa; Stephen is killed in an accident without being freed from his marriage; Rachael spends the rest of her life without the marriage she wants, taking care of Stephen’s invalid wife. The realistic, bitter end to these character arcs enforces a pessimistic mood within the work.
Likewise, the subject-matter itself (the struggles of the working class) and Dickens’s commitment to a realistic portrayal of it, necessarily lend a melancholy mood to the novel. Book 1, Chapter 5 describes Coketown as follows:
It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever…It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye [...]
The city has no aesthetic value; it is built totally around its factories, and is riddled with pollution. Coketown exists to no end but making money, and the people within it are valued only for their economic output. Dickens’s willingness to frankly discuss and explore the ugly effects of unchecked capitalism on the lives of workers lends the work a sense of gloom and misery. These conditions are never abated, but remain constant throughout the novel.
The mood of Hard Times is melancholic. In line with both the conventions of Realism, and much of Dickens’s work after David Copperfield, Hard Times does not operate under any illusions about the difficulties faced by its characters and the unlikelihood that they will fully surmount them.
The lack of neat resolution in the novel lends the work a realistic complexity. When Louisa finally unpacks the effects of utilitarianism on her life and personal development in Book 2, Chapter, 12, she confronts her father:
“Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by my sense of touch, and had been free [...] to exercise my fancy somewhat, in regard to them; I should have been a million times wiser, happier, more loving [...] and more human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have.”
The damage Gradgrind has done to his daughter emotionally is incalculable and irreversible. Had she been totally without any instruction at all (“stone blind [...] groped my way by my sense of touch”), she could not have ended up more emotionally and spiritually lost.
This damage is never completely reversed, nor does Louisa rectify, break, or heal the cycle of emotional damage within a family of her own (as the novel reveals, she never has children, though she helps raise Sissy’s). Louisa copes with her personal struggles as much as she can, but she is never really free of them. Likewise, Tom never returns home, but dies regretting that he never reconciled with Louisa; Stephen is killed in an accident without being freed from his marriage; Rachael spends the rest of her life without the marriage she wants, taking care of Stephen’s invalid wife. The realistic, bitter end to these character arcs enforces a pessimistic mood within the work.
Likewise, the subject-matter itself (the struggles of the working class) and Dickens’s commitment to a realistic portrayal of it, necessarily lend a melancholy mood to the novel. Book 1, Chapter 5 describes Coketown as follows:
It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever…It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye [...]
The city has no aesthetic value; it is built totally around its factories, and is riddled with pollution. Coketown exists to no end but making money, and the people within it are valued only for their economic output. Dickens’s willingness to frankly discuss and explore the ugly effects of unchecked capitalism on the lives of workers lends the work a sense of gloom and misery. These conditions are never abated, but remain constant throughout the novel.
