FEMININITY IN DICKENS'S HARD TIMES

FEMININITY IN DICKENS'S HARD TIMES

1.       FEMALES IN DICKENS – Hard Times (1854), subtitled “For These Times”, is one of the ‘state of the nation’ novels of Dickens. Here he presents a critique of the Poor Law Act of 1833. Again, it criticizes the Utilitarian philosophy of Jeremy Bentham – “the greatest good of the greatest number”. One of the shortest novels, Hard Times presents another well familiar motif of Dickens. He portrays femininity in not much various ways. His female characters are generally of two types – an indifferent mother and an angelic young woman. This pattern is observed in David Copperfield, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, etc.

2.       MRS GRADGRIND – In Hard Times, the character of Mrs Gradgrind is portrayed in an unsympathetic way. She is an invalid, a permanently sick – both physically and mentally. Dickens’s own experience of cruel, nonchalant treatment by his mother haunts him throughout his entire life and it echoes in his novels too. Mrs Gradgrind is a dull person who only agrees with whatever Mr Gradgrind says. She has no active role in bringing up her children. She only sits affixed on her chair permanently to listen to Bounderby’s lies and only to complain against her children’s activities and to comply with her husband. However, this picture of hers reflects in a way the character of Miss Havisham and Mrs Joe in Great Expectations, who have in fact taken vicious roles in deforming the mentalities of the protagonists.

3.       SISSY – Again, the angelic roles of young women echo in the figures of Sissy and Rachael. Cecilia Jupe belongs to a father who is a circus performer. Her humble origin also dreams of social mobility. Therefore, she has been admitted to Gradgrind’s Fact school. But she, having an imaginative quality of infancy, can never suit herself with the rigid fact-oriented environment of the school. His father’s escape eventually brings her to Stone Lodge, Gradgrind’s house. Here she shows herself as an influential, accommodative figure. Due to the devastating marriage of Louisa with Bounderby and Mr Harthouse’s illicit advances towards her render Louisa devastated. It is Sissy who saves her from further depression and discreetly manages to keep Harthouse away from her life. She stands as a redeeming figure too to Tom, ‘the Whelp’. She sends him to Mr Sleary wherefrom he escapes through Liverpool. Mr Gradgrind’s pathetic gratitude is expressed thus: “It is always you, my child”. She always rescues the endangered characters, ‘like a good fairy’. Under her care and lessons of fancy, the other three Gradgrind children – Adam, Jane and Malthus – can become humane and sympathetic.

4.       RACHAEL – Rachael, another woman character, works in the factory of Coketown. She is one of the miserable, poverty-ridden ‘Hands’. Still, she retains her humanity intact. She loves Stephen Blackpool, yet her care and nursing towards Stephen’s drunken and ill wife takes her character to the pinnacle of magnificence. Her treatment epitomizes the virtue of pure love, mercy and forgiveness. She has become rather an ideal, utopian character in her beauty and simplicity. Stephen’s passionate, grateful exclamation bears a testimony to such claim: “Thou art an angel. Bless thee, bless thee!” (Ch. 13, Book I). Her ideal love for Stephen is displayed in her utter endeavour to clear his name of defame. Even she holds his hand until his death – “I will hold thy hand, and keep beside thee, Stephen, all the way”. (Book III, ch. – 34)

5.       MARY-LIKE – This presentation, of two young unmarried woman with the heavenly qualities of love and kindness, precipitates these characters synonymous with Virgin Mary. Such a trope of Christianity is recurrent in the characters of Dora and Agnes in David Copperfield, the character of Biddy in Great Expectations, Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop and many others.

6.       OTHERS – Dickens’s complex and subtle imagination is engaged in this novel in the inner lives of these women. Besides them the character of Mrs Sparsit is also portrayed like a snobbish woman whose interference in others’ affairs would bring shame only to herself and Mr Bounderby. Besides, the character of Mrs Pegler and Josphine, the daughter of Mr Sleary are also there, but not that significantly. Josephine would marry E. W. B. Childers later. These various characters again show the typical Dickensian tendency of sympathizing with the poor. 

By Dipanjan Kundu