Charles Dickens had Great Expectations for himself
during Hard Times
By: Alexa Burr and Kristina Montaperto
Charles Dickens: Great
Expectations and Hard Times
II. Great Expectations Summary
III. Hard Times Summary
IV. Charles Dickens’
Style Elements
i. Biographical
ii. Historical
iii. Reader-Based
iv. Feminist
v. Archetypal
VI. Quiz on Website
VII. Works Cited
VIII. Extra Dickens Related Links
Charles John Huffam
Dickens, or “Boz”, was born on February 7, 1812 to a family burdened in
financial turmoil. At the tender age of
twelve, Dickens was forced to leave school to work at a boot-blacking factory
until his family was sent to a debtor’s prison for three months. Once released, he became a solicitor’s
clerk---a person who provides assistance to a judge in researching issues
before the court and in writing opinions (Wikipedia)--- before moving on to
become a Parliamentary reporter. Soon
thereafter, Dickens started to put out stories and sketches of life in
Charles Dickens reached
unsurpassed popularity in the literary world with the publication of The Pickwick Papers, solidifying his
reputation in society as one of the greatest novelists of his time. He began writing in monthly installments
before publishing full-fledged books.
Dickens’ writing style transformed as he matured in age to become dark,
morbid and began to expose his views on poverty. Some books of that period include David Copperfield, Hard Times and A Tale of Two
Cities.
Dickens’ marriage to
Catherine Hogarth fell apart when he committed adultery with Ellen Ternan, an
actress twenty-seven years his junior, whom he ended up leaving his life savings
to when he collapsed and died on
Phillip “Pip” Pirrup was an impoverished young boy raised by his sister
and her husband. One day while he was
visiting his deceased parents’ graveyard, an escaped convict attacked him,
demanding food and a metal file from him, and threatening his life. He returned home frightened to retrieve the
requested items. He brings the fugitive
what he asked for. From that moment on
he is tormented by guilt for aiding the convict. Some time later his is asked
to visit a wealthy spinster, Miss Havisham. There he falls in love with her foster
child Estella, who treats him like an inferior.
He received a fortune from an anonymous benefactor. He then moved to
Pip
is then revisited by the convict of his regretted past, Magwitch, and realized
his true character although running from the law. Magwitch is also his benefactor; thus
influencing him to refuse the fortune and help him escape abroad. Estella married one of Pip’s wealthy peers,
plagued with unhappiness until his death.
Pip returned home for Miss Havisham’s funeral and meets Estella, then
widowed, in the gardens of Satis House where they used to play; the final
chapter closes with them hand-in-hand, his love finally requited.
Thomas Gradgrind is a man
who bases his ideals in “facts, nothing but facts,” an ideal rejected by his
two children, Thomas and Louisa, who strive to live in a carefree world of
adolescent imagination. Gradgrind opens
a school in industrial Coketown. One
day, he interrogates young Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a circus performer, and
demands she disregard imagination after she could not answer a question
factually. Gradgrind catches Thomas and
Louisa at a circus and becomes outraged at their desire to take part in
something relating to creativity, or Fancy, as he calls it. At this stage of the novel, we are introduced
to Josiah Bounderby, a friend of Gradgrind’s that makes a big deal of being a
“self-made” man. Gradgrind and Bounderby
together inform Sissy that she is no longer welcome at the school because her
Fancy with corrupt the intended teachings.
Sissy explains that the only reason she is at the school is because her
father left her so she could live a better life. After Gradgrind’s ultimatum of education or
the circus, Sissy returns to the school.
The readers are now introduced to Stephen Blackpool, a worker at one of
Bounderby’s mills, who is a simple man in love with a woman named Rachael. As they walked 
to Stephen’s house, they discover his drunken wife
whom he plans to divorce. Stephen asks
Bounderby for the annulment but Bounderby refuses. Meanwhile, Gradgrind
forwards to Louisa Bounderby’s marriage proposal; Louisa accepts but only to
pleas her father.
A man named James Harthouse
comes to Coketown looking to work as an MP for Bounderby when he meets Louisa,
Bounderby’s wife at the time, and is instantly taken by her. Tom Gradgrind, Louisa’s brother, who has
become very thoughtless and rebellious, is working for Bounderby but takes a
liking to Harthouse. Meanwhile, Stephen tells
Bounderby that he will not join a union to work for him. Bounderby becomes outraged, reminding Stephen
that he had pledged secrecy to the
Ms. Sparsit relays her
observances of Harthouse and Louisa to Bounderby, who finds and gives Louisa an
ultimatum to either stay at her father’s house or the marriage is over; she
chose the latter. Sissy advises
Harthouse to leave town and he does so while Gradgrind and Louisa contemplate
the possibility of Tom robbing the bank and framing Stephen. Stephen comes back to town in an attempt to
clear his name. On his way back, he
falls into a large pit, is rescued, speaks with his love, Rachael for the last
time, and dies. Louisa thinks that Tom
made a fake offer to Stephen to keep him outside the bank. Sissy plans an escape for Tom to go to her
old circus. Tom says the robbery was his
only way of getting any money and is offered a trip to
Charles Dickens’ Style
Elements
- Symbolism:
- Hard
Times – The Staircase: The
vindictive Mrs. Sparsit imagines Louisa running down a staircase into a
“dark pit of shame and ruin at the bottom.” This symbolizes Mrs. Sparsit’s
manipulative nature of wanting to tear Louisa from Bounderby for her own
personal gain. Mrs. Sparsit’s imagination is what she would
subconsciously want to happen to Louisa.
- Great
Expectations- The Mist on the Marshes: symbolize danger and uncertainty, he
was encountered by Magwitch here, kidnapped in
the mist, and he traveled in the mist on the way to
- Tone:
- Hard
Times- When Dickens writes
about the relationship between Stephen and Rachael, his tone is
empathetic. He evokes sympathy
when describing Stephen’s heartbreaking decision to stay with Rachael or
run away from the law. When
describing other characters, his tone is one of irony. It is ironic that Gradgrind preaches
“facts, nothing but facts,” while many other characters use their
imagination to fuel their actions, like when Mrs. Sparsit imagines Louisa
running down the staircase into an abyss of ruin.
- Great
Expectations- The tone tends
toward being satirical and comical when describing the empty and insane
characters such as Mrs. Joe, Miss Havisham, Drummle,
and Compeyson. However, it is also dark in that it
describes the conditions in poverty and the sad empty life of Miss
Havisham. It also has a
sympathetic tone when it describes Pip’s unrequited love for Estella and
for Herbert and Claire.
- Imagery:
- Hard
Times- “The emphasis was
helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows
for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark
caves, overshadowed by the wall (page 1).”
- Great
Expectations- “my first
fancies regarding what they were like were unreasonably derived from
their tombstones. The shape of the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd
idea that he was a square, stout, dark man, with curly black hair. From
the character and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,”
I drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly.(page
3)”
- Anaphora
- Hard
Times- “NOW, what
I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts
alone are wanted in life” is Mr. Gradgrind’s principle throughout the novel
and actually stifles the imagination of his daughter
- Great
Expectations- “on
the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in
the light, in the darkness, in the wind, in the woods, in the sea, in the
streets” shows the repetition of the prepositions “on” and “in”
- Aphorism
- Hard
Times- “Some persons hold that there is a
wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart”
refers to the difference between a scientific, fact-filled mind and a
moral, faithful mind.
- Great
Expectations-”… it is a principle of his that no man who was not a
true gentleman at heart, ever was, since the world began, a true
gentleman in manner. He says, no varnish can hide the grain of the wood;
and that the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will express
itself” refers to the risk one takes to hide behind a façade.
- Characters deep in debt and poverty (i.e. Pip
and his family, Stephen Blackpool, etc)
- His family was steeped in poverty to the point that
they were thrown in debtors’ prison; he criticized poverty in all his
novels
- Pip (Great Expectations) and Bounderby (Hard
Times) both started off as poor, Pip received a fortune and Bounderby was
a self-made millionaire
- Mirror his humble beginnings and his
self-improvement of status and wealth, although he still was not
immensely wealthy
- Young adults with no parental supervision or aid
such as: Pip’s deceased parents and
sister (G E), Sissy’s missing father (H T), Estella was a foster child (G
E), and Louisa and Tom’s father who provided no emotional support but
rather “cold hard facts” (H T)
- Since his family was in prison he had to fend
for himself without their guidance
- Social criticism on industrial Victorian England
- Dickens encapsulates into the novel the
struggles of poverty and debt with characters like Pip and Stephen
Blackpool
- Social gap between the classes
- Bounderby acts as though he is superior to his
workers in the mills
- Mr. Gradgrind acts as a superior at his school
and is given too much power to mold young minds
- Stephen Blackpool is treated like dirt because
he is a Union worker and is, in many people’s eyes, less important on the
social scale
- Pip is at first treated badly by Estella
because of his inferior wealth, but later once he receives his fortune
she treats him more as an equal besides her tormenting his emotions
- Pip’s sister and his brother-in-law are
peasants and Miss Havisham and company are far above them; Pip is torn
between belonging to each of these classes
- The reader is encouraged to pity Pip although he
has rejected the people he loved the most and who loved him regardless of
his wealth
- Although Estella was very cruel to Pip, the
reader still roots for her success and her realization of her love for Pip
- As the other characters hate Mr. Bounderby and
are resentful of Mr. Gradgrind, so is the reader
- When Louisa is about to have an affair with
Harthouse, the reader is almost led to encourage the infidelity, even
regretting her inaction
In Hard Times,
Charles Dickens effectively encapsulates the societal stance of women in
industrial Coketown, using several characters, mainly Louisa, to exemplify the
de facto authority of a man over a woman, and the dynamic of the coexistence of
the sexes, thereby sparking much criticism from feminists and equal rights
activists defending on the woman’s behalf.
Dickens challenges the
ideals of modern society in the way Bounderby treats Louisa, to whom he intends
on marrying regardless of her desires.
In Chapter 4 of Hard Times, he demands a kiss from an
unsuspecting Louisa and asks her father, with no intention of taking “No"
for an answer, for her hand in marriage.
This ridiculous act of selfishness shows that in Dickens’ time period,
women were treated more as a toy than as a human, as something to be used to
play with and be aroused by but express no opinion of their own. Bounderby’s outrageous behavior enrages women
today, who believe they deserve to be treated with the utmost respect, and not
as an inferior!
The era of the 1850’s in
which Hard Times was written was a time in which women did not have
civil liberties or rights, but were treated as pawns of male superiority. In Chapter 14, Louisa’s father, Thomas
Gradgrind, decides to arrange her nuptials to Mr. Bounderby, a man to whom she
has not formally accepted a proposal, nor she loves. The relentless disregard for her wants
epitomizes the concept of male dominance and acts as her impetus for adultery
later on. Her affair with James
Harthouse in Chapter 3 of Book 3 provokes Bounderby to show himself as the
paragon of the anti-feminist regime, threatening to send all of Louisa’s
possessions back to her home at Stone Lodge with her father without another
word. During this era of
industrialization, women had very few privileges, leading men to believe that
since they carried the rights of the government, they were able to exert these
rights over their women, exuding the predominance of male superiority.
Why does Louisa go along
with all of the outrageous social ideals going against her? According to Freud’s theories of
psychoanalysis, she falls into the category of an Oedipal
complex. Her lack of maternal affection
has diverted her to the affections of the males in her family, being her father
and her brother. Growing up with a close
relationship with her brother, with whom she shared a desire for imagination,
and a quasi-distant relationship with her father has made her believe that it
is ok to be controlled by a man, giving an unconscious, but very real authority
to both her father and brother, along with Bounderby and Harthouse.
Social class, true love,
guilt, redemption—these are some of the themes common to the works of Charles
Dickens. The rigid class distinctions of
the Victorian Era, from which Dickens drew his novels, spawned the confusion of
societal guidelines with true love and nobility. Dickens novels, Great Expectations and Hard
Times, exemplify use of these archetypes which appear in the works of countless
authors since they represent basic human experiences.
The themes of social
hierarchy, as well as the pursuit of wealth and elevated social status, take on
monumental roles in both Great
Expectations and Hard Times. The main character of Great Expectations, Pip, is an orphaned
peasant raised by his elder sister who finds himself in love with Estella, the
foster child of the extremely wealthy Miss Havisham. Pip achieves a large fortune from an
anonymous benefactor and begins to assimilate to the upper class mentality,
thus shunning his closest friends, Biddy and Joe, out of shame. He subscribes to the common misconception of
good character being synonymous with wealth high social status. However, he realizes the fallacy of this
assumption when he reflects on the reproachable character of Drummle, one of
his wealthy peers, and the noble disposition of the fugitive Magwich and his
brother-in-law Joe. Estella succumbs to
the pretension of the upper-class in her rejection of Pip for Drummle based upon
his superior circumstances; however, there is the implication that she too has
this epiphany at the end of the novel when she, now widowed leaves the gardens
of the desolated Satis House of her childhood, hand-and-hand with Pip.
This theme surfaces in Hard Times through several of its
characters. The main character Louisa
has an experience similar to Estella’s in that she married purely for material
gain. She agreed to marry the enormously
wealthy businessman, Bounderby, at the biding of her father and brother; which
led to her unhappiness and later his abandoning her. Stephen Blackpool, a desperately poor factory
worker felt the effects of the class system.
His growing poverty not only affected his relationship with his
alcoholic wife who he wanted to divorce, but also the budding relationship with
his love Rachel who he wishes to marry.
He is later framed for the burglary of the bank owned by Bounderby, who
also was his employer. He forced to flee
from
The archetypes of guilt and
redemption are also very relevant in both of these works. Mr. Gradgrind, Louisa and Tom’s father in
Hard Times, experienced such guilt in upbringing his children solely in cold
hard facts, suppressing all emotions. He
realized the failure of this method when he encounters the unhappy state of
Louisa following her contemplated affair which she never committed. He then decided to channel his money and
skills into charity, as well as the restoring of Stephen Blackpool’s good
name. Pip, of Great Expectations,
battles with the guilt of first, helping an escaped convict, but also shunning
Joe due to his low social status. At the
finish of the novel he returns home to apologize to Joe and to marry Biddy; but
discovers that Joe and Biddy married already.
He overcomes his guilt of helping a convict when he discovers Magwitch’s
redeeming attributes. Miss Havisham,
Estella’s guardian, faces the guilt of
leading Pip to believe she was the source of his wealth and intended for Pip to
marry Estella, and agrees to help Pip fund his friend, Herbert’s, career since
Pip refused continuation of funds from Magwich.
Interestingly enough, Magwitch gave his fortune to Pip in order to thank
him for bringing him a measly portion of food and a file.
The motif of the pursuit of
true love is evident in both Great
Expectations and Hard Times, thus
giving the implication that is a theme presented in each of Dickens’
works. Pip, of Great Expectations, spends much of his adolescence and young
adulthood in pursuit of circumstances that would please his love, Estella; who
returns his love at the close of the novel.
Herbert, Pip’s peer, also based his life choices on creating a
comfortable environment for Clara, his love.
Miss Havisham represents the results of being denied true love since she
was left at the altar on her wedding day.
She wore her wedding dress everyday, stopped all her clocks to twenty to
nine (the time she received a note stating her abandonment), had a wedding
feast prepared every night, and constantly encouraged Estella to break every
man’s heart in reaction to her pain; qualifying her as insane. Louisa, of Hard Times, also is a character
who was denied of true love, both by her materially advantageous marriage and
her failure to follow through with her affair with James Harthouse, the man she
may have love. As in the case of Miss
Havisham, she never married. Stephen
Blackpool was also in a loveless marriage, but sought to marry his true love
Rachel.
The existence of these
common themes in the works of Charles Dickens qualify them as classic pieces of
literature since they capture true human nature in a way that is familiar to
all regardless of the readers’ background.
The reason these motifs come up constantly in literature is because they
are relevant to every generation of man, no matter the lapse of time; which
constitutes Dickens’ novels as timeless.
Humans like to read about the emotions common to their own, those that
make them feel comfortable and normal.
Even novels about other creatures draw on human attributes, as is
necessary to maintain the interest of the reader. Charles Dickens succeeded in crafting his
works in a way that has made them remembered generations after his death with
the same bearing as in his own time period.
(Choose the BEST
answer)
Biography
1. What was Charles Dickens’ pen-name?
a.
John Huffam
b.
Boz
c.
Hogarth
d.
Dude
2. Which of the following novels does NOT express
Dickens’ views on poverty?
a.
David
Copperfield
b.
Hard Times
c.
A Tale of Two
Cities
d.
The Mystery of
Edwin Drood
3. Which childhood experience most likely led Dickens to
express his criticism on poverty?
a.
Family debt
b.
Child labor
c.
All of the above
d.
None of the
above
4. Which of Dickens’ publications gave him immense
popularity?
a.
Great
Expectations
b.
The Pickwick
Papers
c.
A Christmas
Carol
d.
Our Mutual
Friend
5. Which young actress did Dickens leave his fortune to
when he died?
a.
Catherine Hogarth
b.
Fanny Kemble
c.
Ellen Ternan
d.
He was a loner,
none of the above
Great Expectations
6. Which of the following made Pip (Great Expectations)
ashamed of his past?
a.
Rejection of close
friends
b.
Stealing food from his sister
c.
Helping an
escaped convict
d.
Both A and C
7. In what ways does Estella torment Pip?
a.
She beats him up
b.
She steals his
tea and crumpets
c.
She makes him
dress up in her clothes
d.
She treats him
very condescendingly
8. Why did Pip believe that Miss Havisham wished for him
to marry Estella?
a.
She favored his
company
b.
His extreme
wealth
c.
He believed she
was his benefactor
d.
His superior
connections
9. In which of
the following ways is Pip fooled by his first impression of Magwitch?
i.
His desire only
for food and not money too
ii.
That he is his
anonymous benefactor
iii.
He is truly a
kind and noble being although a convict
a.
i only
b.
i and ii
c.
iii only
d.
ii and iii
10. Which is a symbol of
Pip and Estella’s love coming full circle?
a.
The meeting at the
gardens of Satis House
b.
Estella’s
dissolved marriage
c.
Joe marrying
Biddy before Pip could
d.
All of the above
Hard Times
11. Which of the
following is an example of Thomas Gradgrind having an
epiphany?
a.
He supported
Louisa after Bounderby abandons her, thus dissolving
their marriage
b.
He opened a
school for teaching “cold hard facts”
c.
He closed down
his school and donated money to charity
d.
Both a and c
12. Why is Tom
suspected of framing Stephen for his own crime of robbing the bank?
a.
He gave Stephen
the money that was stolen
b.
He had told
Stephen to meet him outside of the bank that night, where Tom never showed up
c.
Tom wanted to
get close to Rachel, Stephen’s love
d.
None of the
above
13. How does
Louisa react to her misfortunes?
a.
She refuses to
remarry after Harthouse leaves and Bounderby divorces her
b.
She reclaims her
lost childhood that was deprived by her fathers teachings
c.
All of the bove
d.
None of the
above
14. For which
characters is redemption achieved?
a.
Harthouse
b.
Gradgrind
c.
Tom
d.
Both b and c
15. How do the
“endings” for the characters with bad character differ from those with noble
character?
a.
The “evil”
succeed
b.
The noble
triumph and gain redemption
c.
In the end all
characters fail
d.
All characters
repent and succeed
Style Elements
16. The tone(s) present
in both novels is/are __________.
a.
Sympathetic and
satirical
b.
Resentful
c.
Euphoric and
vindictive
d.
Satirical only
17. Which of the
following did Dickens use in Great
Expectations as a symbol of impending peril or ambiguity?
a.
The staircase
b.
Rainclouds
c.
The misty
marshes
d.
The morning fog
18. Which of the following is an example of anaphora?
a.
“On
the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the
light, in the darkness…”
b.
“the speaker’s
square wall of a forehead”
c.
“the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will
express itself”
d.
“Some
persons hold that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of
the Heart”
19. Which is an aphorism?
a.
“On
the river, on the sails of the ships, on the marshes, in the clouds, in the
light, in the darkness…”
b.
“the speaker’s
square wall of a forehead”
c.
“the more varnish you put on, the more the grain will
express itself”
d.
“Some
persons hold that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of
the Heart”
20. Which is an
example of imagery from Hard Times?
a.
“The shape of
the letters on my father’s, gave me an odd idea that he was a square, stout,
dark man, with curly black hair“
b.
“square wall of
a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found
commodious cellarage in two dark caves”
c.
“From the
character and turn of the inscription, “Also Georgiana Wife of the Above,” I
drew a childish conclusion that my mother was freckled and sickly”
d.
Both a and c
Critical Reads
21. Where did
Dickens draw his social criticism from?
a.
His wealthy childhood
b.
His
poverty-stricken early life
c.
His introduction
into society
d.
Did not
criticize his peers
22. A historical
read of Dickens’ works focuses mainly on __________.
a.
Social hierarchy
and poverty
b.
The gaps between
social classes
c.
The geography of
Victorian England
d.
The value of
Victorian currency
23. Archetypal
criticism of these two works yields the motifs of ____________.
a.
Love
b.
Guilt and Attonement of sins
c.
Poverty
d.
All of the above
24. The theme of
women being forced to marry for material benefits deals mostly with which of
the critical reads?
i.
Feminist
&nbs