Hard Times and Marriage

More than a year ago, I dispatched Adam to read my very favorite Dickens novel, Hard Times. After struggling a bit through the beginning of the novel--Adam doesn't share my a priori love of depressing or straight-forward literature--he returned with a surprising verdict: Hard Times is a wonderful novel about marriage.

His announcement really shocked me. I'd like to consider myself an astute literary critic, but I'd completely missed any significant emphasis on marriage. Sure, the action largely centers around two couples, but surely the novel is about the monetary poverty and suffering of the lower classes, and the mental poverty and suffering of the elite. Armed with Adam's assessment, I returned to the novel over the last couple of weeks. Though I'll stick to my Dickensonian guns about themes of poverty, I think Adam was also right.

"Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life...This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these [school]children." These words open the novel and introduce the character of Louisa Gradgrind, the daughter of the speaker and the female partner in one of the two major relationships in the novel.

From a very early age, Lousia's father encourages her to dismiss her emotions and her fancies. She completely lacks experience in love and accepts an offer that would make her father and her brother happy--she marries the much senior Mr. Boundaby, the greatest humbug in the town. Needless to say, their marriage is unsuccessful.

Their loveless marriage contrasts sharply with the tragic love affair between Stephen and Rachel. Stephen, too, is trapped in a dreadful marriage with a woman who became an alcoholic and left him. He finds a long-term helpmate in Rachel, who tends to him with a quiet devotion, knowing that Stephen will never be able to marry her--no matter how much he wants to. Dickens draws our attention to how love makes a sacramental bond far more powerful than an unfeeling ceremony. Stephen gets from Rachel what only a blessed man finds in his wife: "I nevermore will see or think o' anything that angers me, but thou, so much better than me, shalt be by th' side on't." He looks forward to the day the two will be together in the bliss of eternity.

The greatest tragedy of the novel is not this poor couple's--they have hope for the future, even if it is only after death. Louisa has no hope. Her life is meaningless, and she knows it. Her upbringing has ruined her for the vocation to marriage for which her indomitable compassion suggest she is intended. Her father ironically admits this when he discusses Boundaby's proposal with her--"You do not come to the consideration of that question with the previous habits of mind, and habits of life, that belong to many young women." The goodness within her gradually stirs, first as she strives to help Rachel and then as she falls under the influence of her foster-sister, Sissy. But even after she returns to her father's house and her husband dies, she is permanently scarred. All the time in the world left to her "better nature" cannot undo what has been done. She remakes herself as a women children love, but is never loved by a man again.

What does all of this say about marriage?

First of all, love is what makes a marriage. Stephen and Rachel may never consummate their "marriage," but they are bound in a way far deeper than Lousia and Boundaby could ever be. A marriage without love means nothing.

Second, and more importantly, God grants to each of us only one life to live. Poor Louisa's life, the vocation her loving and compassionate nature could have meant for her, were stolen by bad habituation very early in life. To love, to be capable of receiving love, requires a lifetime of continually developing good habits. There is very little in life sadder than an unrealized vocation.