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What is the moral of Hard Times?

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The major moral lesson Hard Times teaches is that living a life of utilitarian material calculation, rather than a life of empathy, feeling, and imagination, leads to misery.

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The moral of Hard Times is that a life built completely on the basis of facts and statistics is limited and unhappy. Gradgrind raises his children, Tom and Louisa, to value only money and to live entirely by practical values. As a result, Tom robs a bank, and Louisa marries the older Bounderby, a man she doesn't love, to gain money and security. She is miserable and nearly runs off with James Harthouse.

Through Tom and Louisa, Dickens shows the limitations of the philosophy of utilitarianism, which defines happiness as the greatest good for the greatest number. In contrast to the Gradgrinds, Dickens introduces Sissy Jupe, the abandoned daughter of a circus clown, who represents the world of creativity and caring that Gradgrind wants to eradicate as worthless. She is a kind and compassionate person who prevents the elopement of Louisa and Harthouse and helps Tom out of his predicament...

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with the bank theft. Through her, Dickens shows the importance of such "worthless" parts of life as imagination, love, and compassion for individual human beings.

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What is the major moral lesson in Hard Times by Charles Dickens?

The main moral lesson in Hard Times is that industrialization, if unchecked, can turn human beings into machines, into cogs in a vast system of production. Such a process involves the deliberate suppression of human emotions and the imagination. Under such a system, education exists to cram children’s heads full of facts; there is no place for imagination or empathy. Mr. Gradgrind isn’t concerned with broadening the horizons of his pupils, or encouraging them to think about the world around them. He simply wants to prepare students to be the next generation of industrial automata, robots toiling away for long hours in the factories that are springing up all over the length and breadth of the country.

Utilitarians like Gradgrind have a very impoverished view of human nature, which they see as being readily quantifiable, as something that can be measured, calculated, and controlled. The idea that there are always hidden depths to human nature doesn’t occur to him for a moment. As far as he’s concerned, if something cannot be measured or quantified then it either doesn’t exist, or it’s simply not worth wasting one’s time over. This one-dimensional view of human nature finds its ultimate expression in the soulless factories of Coketown and many places like them, where human beings, including small children, exist to serve the interests of the industrial capitalist. In doing so, they are stripped of their basic humanity, a process that begins in educational institutions like those approved by Mr. Gradgrind.

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The major moral lesson is that a life of hard-hearted calculation leads to misery. Gradgrind raises his two children, Tom and Louisa, to be selfish and to think primarily of financial calculations and material needs, dismissing love and creative endeavors as childish illusions and distractions that pull people away from what is really important in life.

Because she has been raised to believe that money is all important, Louisa marries a wealthy older man who she doesn't love, Josiah Bounderby. She has money, but her life lacks passion and joy. Playing by her father's rules has left her rich but deeply unhappy and unfulfilled--ripe for seduction and disgrace.

Tom, who lacks ambition, is attracted to material things, especially vices. He lacks moral values. He works for Bounderby and steals money from him, then has to flee to avoid prison.

Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a circus performer, who spends her early years experiencing the wonder and magic of the circus, turns out better, despite Gradgrind's attempts to indoctrinate her into a world in which money and a utilitarian calculus of pleasure and plain is all that matters. She has feelings and an imagination. This gives her a moral center from which to make decisions.

Dickens worried about a world increasingly fixated on money, practicality and a factory model for living. He felt the world would become a cold, cruel, miserable place if people did not live with empathy and imagination.

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For me, the major moral lesson that Charles Dickens hopes readers take away from Hard Times is that Utilitarian values are not only impractical, but are also immoral and calloused. Utilitarianism is a philosophy that was especially prominent at the time Dickens wrote the tale, and it is centered on practically and methodically calculating what does the most people the most good, while disregarding the human component of their felicitous calculus. Dickens exaggerates the tenets of Utilitarianism through iconic characters such as Mr. Gradgrind and the loathsome Bounderby.

Gradgrind specifically best represents the moral lesson that Utilitarianism is a narrow, restrictive philosophy after he grows to appreciate the human condition. Initially, Gradgrind harps on about facts and statistics, and ignores others’ thoughts and emotions. He finds his children's use of imagination to be a sign of weakness and mental deficiency. One striking instance is when his daughter Louisa asks if she should marry Bounderby, another Utilitarian caricature:

“I would advise you (since you ask me) to consider this question, as you have been accustomed to consider every other question, simply as one of tangible Fact.... You are, we will say in round numbers, twenty years of age; Mr. Bounderby is, we will say in round numbers, fifty.... In considering this question, it is not unimportant to take into account the statistics of marriage, so far as they have yet been obtained in England and Wales. I find, on reference to the figures, that a large proportion of these marriages are contracted between parties of very unequal ages, and that the elder of these contracting parties is, in rather more than three-fourths of these instances, the bridegroom.... The disparity I have mentioned, therefore, almost ceases to be disparity, and (virtually) all but disappears” (77).

Gradgrind emphasizes the facts of the potential relationship, but overlooks how his daughter actually feels toward Bounderby. He treats the marriage as a business transaction. The marriage is a bitter affair for Louisa, and she eventually leaves him a broken woman. It is only after Mr. Gradgrind witnesses the depth of his daughter’s agony that he understands that his Utilitarian values have failed. This experience changes his perspective:

“Aged and bent he looked, and quite bowed down; and yet he looked a wiser man, and a better man, than in the days when in this life he wanted nothing but Facts” (205).

Thus, through the character of Mr. Gradgrind, Dickens shows the ineffectiveness of Utilitarian values, and provides readers with a blunt moral lesson on treating others as humans rather than numbers or statistics.

All textual evidence is pulled from the Norton Critical Edition of Hard Times, 3rd Ed.

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What is the main moral or message in Hard Times?

Well, I take issue with any one work having a major theme, as you describe it. I think it is clear that any work opens itself open to a number of different possible themes and to identify one as "major" is to possibly ignore the full impact of the others. However, for me, one of the obvious themes is the way that this work explores the conflict between fact and fancy.

Fact is clearly the biggest component of the educational philosophy of Mr. Gradgrind, however, it is important to note how the cause of fancy is championed as being incredibly important, particularly through the character of Sissy Jupe. Consider how, throughout the novel, fact and fancy are set in opposition with each other, with Mr. Gradgrind championing the forces of fact and the circus folk, of which Sissy Jupe is clearly a member, marshalling the forces of fancy.

Also, let us consider the results of these two different approaches. Clearly Tom and Louisa, who have been brought up on Mr. Gradgrind's maxims of focusing on "nothing but the facts," show that they are able to integrate into society, although in different ways from each other. Sissy Jupe, on the other hand, although she has done so "badly" in Mr. Gradgrind's opinion, is clearly a child of fancy, and as a result is a much healthier individual who is able to care for and support Louisa in a way that neither of her parents did. However, note that facts are still seen as being important. Sissy needed the direction and guidance of Mr. Gradgrind, adequately yoked to her fancy to help her develop into a mature individual. One without the other is bad for anyone.

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