Title-Hard Times

SIGNIFICANCE OF TITLE HARD TIMES was serialized in Dickens’ magazine HOUSEHOLD WORDS in the winter of 1853 -54. Before the publication of the novel, Dickens took great pain with the title of the book. He experimented with as many as 24 titles Like ' According cooker the grindstone ' ' something tangible ' ' Rust and Dust’, ‘Hard Heads and Soft Hearts’ etc. Later on those whittled down to just four : ' Two and Two are Four ' ,‘A matter of calculation’ , ' The Gradgrind philosophy ' and ‘stubborn things’ of these the first three admittedly pointed to the utilitarian apotheosis of facts , figures and averages . The last one however, indicates the unbeatable nature of fancy and imagination. But these titles too were left out in favour of the present one - Hard Times. Understandably Dickens intention is not, to figure at the irrational reverence for fact in Victorian society but to outline the dystopia to which this leads. The present title implies that the novel's principal thematic preoccupation is the hard times which Dickens argues are the logical backlash of fact ' -- worship to the total neglect of tender human impulses.

Dickens powerfully demonstrates the crisis that the educational institutions of this time had faced owing to madding fact - orientation. He has satirized the theories of political economists through exaggerated characters such as Mr. Bounderby, the self-made man motivated by greed, and Mr. Gradgrind, the schoolmaster who emphasizes facts and figures over all else. Encouraged by the Benthamite fact - craze the educationists took pains to reduce everything to statistical and measurable data. In an important chapter Tom and Louisa are admonished for peeping into circus show which amounts to inculcation of fancy. Mrs. Gradgrind takes them to task for their misdemeanour and instructs them to be something logical. Promotion of this fact stuff, fancy - starved curriculum is sowing a poison seed. It is difficult to overlook the ironic evocation of