Yet it did seem (though not to [Gradgrind], for he saw nothing of it) as if fantastic hope could take as strong

a hold as Fact.
Charles Dickens, Hard Times

Introduction Be realistic: Demand the impossible shouted the young men who started the May 68 uprising in France. The iconic quote, apparently contradictory, contains within itself a duality extensively discussed several generations before the French revolutionaries took the streets. The Age of Enlightenment rejected tradition but brought new gods for humankind: knowledge, rationality, fact. The heirs of this school of thought considered that they could live exclusively under their guidance and deny the opposite counterparts: feeling, imagination, fancy. In a crucial highlight of the debate, Charles Dickens wrote Hard Times, a novel that contains this very same debate within its core. Dickens was contemporary of a thriving era for the novel, when the thirst for empirical thought and a realistic depiction of the world had apprehended many novel writers. In the current essay we will try to shed some light on the characters and events that represent models of the empirical way and models for the idealist way of looking at reality in Charles Dickens Hard Times. We will focus on two key characters - the young Cecyl Jupe and her mentor Thomas Gradgrind - and the events surrounding the initial quote. Facts and fancy The initial quote is taken from the 8th chapter of Charles Dickens Hard Times which dwells with the education of Sissy Jupe. The young girl is adopted by the head teacher of the local school, Thomas Gradgrind, after discovering that her father left her in mysterious circumstances. In a rare moment of compassion, the head teacher decides to look after the abandoned child and take care of her education. Under his protection, Sissy is bombarded with an endless string of raw facts. It is what Thomas Gradgrind calls education. But the young girl is not one that can take in so many chunks of figures, statistics and categories. Instead, she is quite the imaginative type, and often escapes from reality. She prefers to think herself as a person capable of changing the

world rather than sticking to conventions, even if she can only do that by any stretch of the imagination. The antagonism between the two characters is introduced at the very first scene of the book. Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls noth ing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else ; a taste of the doctrine one has to deal with in Mr Gradgrinds school. The character has firmly constructed his life philosophy upon these principles and neglects all interference of anything that doesnt originate in reason, such as art, taste, empathy, feeling... What Mr Gradgrnid does in the school is some kind of social engineering while breeding his own blindness into his pupils. Sissy Jupe, a new pupil in school, is the daughter of a horsebreaker and has been educated by circus people, who lack the kind of cold and strict knowledge that Gradgrind cultivates, but are generous in the world of senses. She represents their values: humanity, compassion, comradeship, empathy Sissys imagination is never questioned in her household, while Gradgrind sees the young girls feature as a bad seed, something to root out from her character and her society. Through imagination, and probably also because of her social status, Sissy has built up a capacity to imagine a better world. Sissys father mysterious disappearance is left to the readers own imagination. Gradgrind and Bounderby believe that he has left because he does not love Sissy anymore; in their minds another proof that you cannot trust the lesser people. In contrast, the girl remains hopeful that her father left her for a good reason and that he might come back someday. Therefore, she keeps the bottle of the unguent for her fathers muscles, a token of her faith. When the drama unravels, Dickens seems to indicate that Sissy is some sort of remedy for the preponderance of Gradgrinds utilitarianism in society. She is continuously kind towards Lisa, Gradgrinds daughter and even admires her cold knowledge; even though in the beginning Lisa does not seem to care much for Sissy. Lisa herself encloses the tension between cold rationalism and warm imagination. Through the course of the novel, she will come to terms with her utilitarian upbringing and realize that there is a

missing cog in the wheel; imagination. She is like an iceberg that melts parsimoniously into a sea of self-awareness. In another key scene of Hard Times, Sissy convinces the amoral Mr Harthouse to leave town, given the pernicious consequences of his presence. Harthouse is shocked by Sissy`s determination and he ultimately agrees to her demands. The scene represents the ultimate triumph of Sissys skill: the good and innocent girl is able to shape the established events as she convinces Harthouse, a key piece in the drama, to leave. It is the established order being transformed through the willpower of an idealist. . As Peter Brooks points out in Realist vision, Sissy becomes the moral standard of the Gradgrind household. Its an effective transvaluation of values. The duality implicit in the relationship between Gadgrind and Sissy can be understood through a broader scope, outside the fictional world. The same discussion was taking place in art during the 19th century. Realist artists, those who prefer to interpret the world in an empirical way - and believe that objects are independent from sensatory experience took the opposite stand to idealists, those who prefer to interpret the world through consciousness, feeling and mind. Aesthetic Realism As Pam Morris explains in his book Realism, the first realist writers (mainly Stendhal and Balzac) focus on detail and categorization in their descriptions with the aim to give a feeling of authenticity to the readers. Novelists embraced the art currents derived from John Lockes empirical knowledge, which replaced spirit and mind as guiding principles. The word Realism has several meanings depending on the discipline. In Charles Dickens Hard Times, many different kinds of Realism seem to converge. We have spoken above of Realism understood as a philosophical and political concept, which is encapsulated in Thomas Gradgrind character. In philosophical terms, Realism is defined as the belief that reality is ontologically independent from our perception and, in consequence, everything can be measured, qualified and classified. In political

discourse, Realism means to stick to existing structures and work within their limitations, instead of trying to altering them. Although Dickens is often categorized as a realist writer, he was not willing to abandon literary techniques from other art currents such as metaphors, creative comparisons and caricatures. This can be exemplified in different passages of the book: Gradgrinds description, Stephen Blackpools love for Rachel, etc. Lets focus on the description of Coketown: It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and
ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled

In this passage we find categorization of the elements that form Coketown (the chimneys, the bricks, machinery), but also the intention to communicate through metaphors and imagery (smoke as serpents, black like the painted face of a savage). In a way, it is as if Charles Dickens had anticipated the imminent visual revolution that would arise with the development of photography. It is accepted knowledge that vision is the most powerful sense; therefore we often say Ill believe it when I see it. When Charles Dickens and other realist writers describe and object or scenery, they pretend to create the visual image of a whole through the atomized depiction of detail. A renowned example is Balzacs excruciating description of a cap in Madame Bovary. So powerful is the visual imagery to the senses that, according to Susan Sontag in On Photography, photography created a new meaning of Realism: What is written about a person or an event is frankly and interpretation, [] Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire. Realist writers seemed to anticipate this shift in literature. Nevertheless, Charles Dickens doesnt avoid creative and imaginative metaphors in description of reality like some of his colleges did. Characters are crucial in every fictional form and realist novels are no exception. In Realism Pam Morris claims that realists tend to individualize characters as much as possible to create the sense of truthfulness and uniqueness of a real person. The search for a particular voice becomes of primary importance in the quest for depicting reality truthfully. In Hard Times, Charles Dickens attributes a great deal of symbolism

to his characters, which inevitably undermines their uniqueness. The critic John Raymond Williams said in his book The english novel from Dickens to Lawrence that Dickens porpuse is to dramatize those social institutions and consequences which are not accessible to ordinary physical observation As we said, Sissy Jupe represents Idealism, while Bounderby and Gradgrind represent rationalism and utilitarianism. James Harthouse represents some sort of amoral nihilist who only works for personal gain and Mrs Sparsit symbolizes the decadence of the aristocracy in an era dominated by the rational bourgeois. This strong character-concept association takes control of the characters and doesnt leave space for the development of more unique voices. They feel like functional cogs of a big machine, instead of real live characters. Charles Dickens and his era It becomes obvious as we read the novel that Charles Dickens is sympathetic with the set of characters which can be defined as idealists. In a way, they win the match. This is evidenced in the resolution of the different threads that form the plot: Lisa and Gradgrinds self-realization, Toms downfall as someone who is not aware of his imperfections, Sissy forcing Harthouses exile and even we can interpret Stephen Blackpools death as the ultimate victim of a utilitarian society. Stephen Blackpool, a typical English factory worker, represents a desire of prosperity to which the 19th Century working class aspired. His is the most tragic outcome of Hard Times. Opposed to Stephen, we are presented with Slackbridge, the unions representative in Bounderbys factory, who seems to pursue a selfish agenda when igniting an uprising. Their confrontation causes Stephen layoff and sets in motion the events leading up to his death. In the present essay, we have focused in the literary and philosophical side of Hard Times, but many authors have outlined several analysis of the novel focused on its social intricacies. In Dickens Genera Mixta: What Kind of Novel is Hard Times? Nil Clausson attributes the adjective dystopian to Hard Times. The novel might then be understood as a hyperbole of the countrys social situation in the 19th Century. Benjamin Disraeli, a Prime Minister himself, defined it as two-nation; thus conveying the great inequalities between the capitalist foe and the working class mass. The social

interpretation of Hard Times, combined with the anti-utilitarian assertion of the novel makes us think that Charles Dickens thought that 19th Century England had undergone a harmful utilitarian course and that simple folks like Stephen or Sissy where either a cure for the status quo or the last remnant of a better era. Conclusion So far we have established the tension between Idealism and Realism as a philosophical discourse in the core of Hard Times. We have also conveyed its strange mixture of the aesthetical effect typical of Realism and the imaginative prose by Charles Dickens. Then we have established Charles Dickenss critique of utilitarianism and social inequality in 19th Century England. We might ask, as a conclusion, whether there is a connection between all these observations. Charles Dickens used to put his written word at the service of social change. As Peter Brooks points out in Realist Vision regarding Dickens the narratorial language is constantly saying to Coketown, as to Gradgrind and company, I am not a prisoner of your system, I can transform it, soar above it, through the imaginative resources of my prose. In Hard Times one of the most quoted authors among the realist gang rebels against aesthetic Realism itself, the same way his characters rebel in the plot against political and philosophical Realism and its most exaggerated expression; utilitarianism. We can establish Dickens as a playful writer and Hard Times as some sort of moral tale. Art as mimesis or representation often drifts among many different concepts and aesthetical possibilities. Its part of the readers challenge and the writers skill. There are endless possible combinations by which one can express a particular meaning. Hard Times plays with different concepts and mixes discourse and aesthetics to tell a moral tale. It contains a timeless discourse that was used in the French communes in 1968 and still echoes into the present day. It is tale that seems old, but reveals itself as universal.