Spoiler warning.
After reading and being utterly blown away by Great Expectations in 2023, I set a goal of reading at least one work by Charles Dickens every year. In 2024, that was A Tale of Two Cities, which I enjoyed far less, merits aside. This stalled my momentum and led me to second-guess whether my experience with Great Expectations was a one-off. I dropped the ball on my goal in 2025, so in 2026 I decided that Hard Times, Dickens’ shortest novel, might be as good a novel as any on which to pick up the pieces and get some answers. The result? Inconclusive.
On the whole, I enjoyed Hard Times a fair bit more than I did A Tale of Two Cities, but there was seldom, if ever, a moment that really captivated me—and to A Tale of Two Cities’ credit, it had a few of those.
As a story, Hard Times is pretty average: a simple tale of family drama set in a fictional industrial English town. The characters are worthy members of the Dickens canon, especially the rambunctious Mr. Bounderby and the endearing Stephen Blackpool. But the real value of this novel lies in Dickens using it as a vessel to explore his concerns about the industrialization of the human mind and the flattening of the soul in the name of modern values like rationality. The novel begins with Mr. Gradgrind instructing that the boys and girls of Coketown be taught “nothing but Facts,” but as the years go by, Dickens shows readers how this hyper-rational approach to teaching, parenting, and running a society comes undone in tragedy. Mr. Gradgrind himself, in his old age, learns the value of human emotion and spirituality the hard way, as he sees his son, Thomas, devolve into a life of crime, addiction, and violence, and his daughter, Louise, wallow unhappily in her loveless marriage to Mr. Bounderby. Bounderby himself—who shares Gradgrind’s ideology—is unveiled as a fraud and a hypocrite. In principle, he is all about facts when it suits him, but he will conveniently toss aside the laws regarding divorce, denounce his family, and lie about his heritage, all to create the manufactured image of a self-made businessman. Meanwhile, the working class, best depicted through the character of Stephen Blackpool, bear the brunt of all of this.
There is quite a bit in Hard Times that I found interesting. Thematically, it’s great, and the message Dickens is trying to send is one that resonates strongly today. The characters are well-realized, and the mysteries and twists were entertaining despite being predictable. That said, Hard Times was not anywhere near as incredible as Great Expectations or my other favorite classic novels. I chose to read this book at this time because it was fairly short, but I think that if I want to truly fall in love with Dickens, I will probably have to take the plunge and read one of his sprawling heavy-hitters like David Copperfield or Bleak House next.
The Once and Future Lit 