peeps’s Reviews > Hard Times > Status Update

“It is the drifting icebergs setting with any current anywhere, that wreck the ships.” harthouse is just using louisa for his own entertainment, he’s found something interesting and takes advantage of it! at least he doesn’t have evil motives unlike tom, who has no conscience at all 😭
sparsit is trying to separate louisa and bounderby, so she’s unwittingly doing god’s work! bounderby is abysmal!

see harthouse is a weird character for me. he is manipulating louisa, but he seems to have good intentions? as he’s manipulating her, he’s managing to touch her emotions that have been long repressed by her upbringing. and he gets her brother to reciprocate sibling love, which makes her happier, but he is doing it to get close to her?? weird! also, sick of bounderby talking about his humble childhood, like idc!

tom gradgrind jr is so horrible, like the fact system has just made him a cold person! there’s still hope for louisa, she seems to have compassion!
stephen has left coketown, after being tossed around by higher powers, and manipulated by men like tom. i really want him and rachael to have a happy ending!! also no ways mrs pegler’s son is “dead”, dead to her probably but not deceased

why is everyone so horrible to stephen… like he doesn’t want to join the union but there’s no need to cast him out? especially when he is against bounderby holding so much power! he recognises how slackbridge has the same intention to get power, but won’t say because he understands why his coworkers want to strike! he defends their choices to bounderby! (also dickens linking bounderby to wind was perfect!)

why does it take a while for bounderby to refer to his wife as his wife? the people who seem happy with how coketown works always seem insufferable, also not to mention how horrid tom jr. is! he openly admits on how he manipulates his sister’s love for him to get what he wants! the narrator saying tom would’ve been a better brother if he fell and drowned in the grimly described river was kinda crazy

oh the misery of coketown! every time a “fiction” of the town is mentioned, it further shows how industrial and capitalist the town is. dickens definitely makes you resent such ideologies through coketown’s glum and grey image shrouded in thick smoke and the malicious gossip surrounding workers. the town believing in “What I did you can do. Why don’t you go and do it?” jumped out at me as a clear example!

another powerful description of how harmful and dehumanising industrialism was. bounderby refuses to help his workers and shames stephen for his issues, and that lady seems enamoured by the factories, despite the horrific monotony they fill the town with! any time i imagine coketown, i imagine it as grey and dull, and chock full of smoke. it feels emotionless and glum

poor cecilia, manipulated to leave her loving family to be put in some horrific school where she barely learns!
the gradgrind children are stone cold and miserable, and though louisa has affection for her brother, tom doesn’t reciprocate.
everyone in coketown seems to be miserable, stripped of imagination and reduced to “hands” in factories. nobody feels like a person, and when they do, they’re just horrid!

why do they have beef with horse designs on wallpaper or butterfly designs on plates, it’s never that serious! there’s a grey atmosphere around coketown & the school, it all feels quite drained, everyone is so factual and industrial that there seems to be no room for joy, and those with imagination are punished for seeing circuses or chased by “star pupils” for not being able to scientifically define a horse!