艰难时世 (1854)

艰难时世（Hard Times）是英国作家狄更斯的长篇小说作品，发表于1854年，故事描写某工业市镇的生活。

情节

纺织厂厂主、银行家庞得贝（Josiah Bounderby）和退休的五金批发商人、国会议员兼教育家汤玛斯·葛莱恩（Thomas Gradgrind）是好朋友，他们一起控制着市镇的经济体系与教育机构。他们注重实利而且不讲情义，自命不凡，以功利主义作为生活原则。负责侍候庞得贝的是寡妇史巴斯特太太。

葛莱恩对子女的教育主张“实事求是，脚踏实地”，他们在学会走路时，就被赶进教室，终日和数字打交道，他们不允许阅读诗歌和故事。葛莱恩把年轻的女儿露意莎（Louisa）嫁给了年龄比她大得多的庞得贝，寡妇史巴斯特太太嫉妒她，使她受尽痛苦，导致女儿婚姻破裂。她责备父亲：“你的哲学和教育都不能救我了。”在葛莱恩自己的教育主张下，他的儿子汤姆（Tom）被迫协助庞得贝工作，他生活放荡且负债累累，偷了庞得贝银行的钱逃跑，躲到马戏团里，扮演一名小丑的角色。经过了一连串的惨痛教训，又受到马戏团的女孩西丝·朱浦（Sissy, Cecilia Jupe）的感化，逐渐的改变了生活态度，被父亲送到美洲。但病死在省亲的途中。庞得贝喜欢吹嘘自己白手起家，诬蔑工人由于妄想过奢侈生活才产生不满情绪。五年后庞得贝中风猝死在焦煤镇的街上，露意莎没有再嫁，但受到朱浦的孩子们的喜爱。

Hard Times: For These Times (commonly known as Hard Times) is the tenth novel by English author Charles Dickens, first published in 1854. The book surveys English society and satirises its social and economic conditions.

Hard Times is unusual in several ways. It is by far the shortest of Dickens's novels, barely a quarter of the length of those written immediately before and after it. Also, unlike all but one of his other novels, Hard Times has neither a preface nor illustrations. Moreover, it is his only novel without scenes set in London. Instead, the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial town of Coketown, a generic Northern English mill town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller. Coketown may be partially based on 19th-century Preston.

One of Dickens's reasons for writing Hard Times was that sales of his weekly periodical Household Words were low, and it was hoped the novel's publication in installments would boost circulation – as indeed proved to be the case. Since its publication, it has received a mixed response from critics. Critics such as George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Macaulay have mainly focused on Dickens's treatment of trade unions and his post-Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era. F. R. Leavis, a great admirer of the book, included it – but not Dickens's work as a whole – as part of his Great Tradition of English novels.

Publication

The novel was published as a serial in Dickens's weekly publication, Household Words. Sales were highly responsive and encouraging for Dickens, who remarked that he was "Three parts mad, and the fourth delirious, with perpetual rushing at Hard Times". The novel was serialised, in twenty weekly parts, between 1 April and 12 August 1854. It sold well, and a complete volume was published in August, totalling 110,000 words. Another related novel, North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, was also published in this magazine.

Synopsis

The novel follows a classical tripartite structure, and the titles of each book are related to Galatians 6:7, "For whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap." Book I is entitled "Sowing", Book II is entitled "Reaping", and Book III is "Garnering."

Book 1: Sowing

Superintendent Mr. Thomas Gradgrind opens the novel at his school in Coketown, stating, "Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts", and interrogates one of his pupils, Cecilia (nicknamed Sissy), whose father works at a circus. Because her father works with horses, Gradgrind demands the definition of a horse. When she is scolded for her inability to define a horse factually, her classmate Bitzer gives a zoological profile, and Sissy is censured for suggesting that she would carpet a floor with pictures of flowers or horses.

Louisa and Thomas, two of Mr. Gradgrind's children, go after school to see the touring circus run by Mr. Sleary, only to meet their father, who orders them home. Mr. Gradgrind has three younger children: Adam Smith (after the famous theorist of laissez-faire policy), Malthus (after Rev. Thomas Malthus, who wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population, warning of the dangers of future overpopulation), and Jane.

Josiah Bounderby, "a man perfectly devoid of sentiment", is revealed as Gradgrind's close friend. Bounderby is a manufacturer and mill owner who is affluent as a result of his entrepreneurial activities and capital. He often gives dramatic, fabricated accounts of his childhood.