8
writing in a room with the deadly statistical clock,
proving something no doubt - probably in the main, that
the Good Samaritan was a Bad Economist, (p. 215).
That's the way these hints, these reminders of other ways of looking at life
are brought in. It is tough, and comic. In fact for me it is one of the most
comic novels he ever wrote.
But I have to be careful in saying that. At least in saying that sort
of thing in Groningen for I notice there, at any rate, among Groningen
students of English (and it was the same in Leiden) that the tendency is to
think that what is comic is not serious. Just as one might more easily believe
that what is comic cannot be wetenschappelijk. We Dutch are a serious nation,
with serious universities, and we know that if a thing is comic it cannot be
serious. Whereas, of course, true comedy is always serious, in spite of my
students. Just take this matter of Hard Times - and the side references to
the Gospels.
You will remember this Mr. Gradgrind, The philosopher. Well-intentioned, but
a utilitarian. One who recognises facts, and facts only. No Fancy. Gradgrind
is at the centre of the book: unshakably rational, yet, in a muddled way kind-
hearted, naturally kindhearted. He sees the wreckage his rational educational
system has produced in the lives of his son Tom and his daughter Louisa. And
he is shaken. The last we see of him is sitting thoughtful in his room. "How
much of futurity did he see? Did he see himself, a white-haired, decrepit man,
bending his hitherto inflexible theories to appointed circumstances? making
his facts and figures subservient to Faith, Hope and Charity? and no longer
trying to grind out that Heavenly trio in his dusty little mills?" (p. 297).
It is the most tactfully artistic indication of what society might need,
of what perhaps is lacking in Coketown. The novel is not a sermon, or a
depicting of a Utopia. It is an imaginative portrayal of two opposing attitudes,
and in the clash, the comic clash, we are given these often unexpected reminders
of deeper considerations and significances underlying the Dickensian surface
t
vision - as in this case of the near-ridiculously theoretical, but still
dangerous, Gradgrind no longer grinding out Faith, Hope and Charity in his
dusty little mills. Dickens doesn't push this kind of statement at the reader -
just a touch and away. In terms of the theme of the book, one might say it is the
basic reminder of the essence of Innocence. Of human innocence. He is reminding
us of other possibilities, shall we say. Literature, it has been said, is the
storehouse of recorded values: Dickens here is reminding us of what we know.
And there is a strong line through the whole book - and through many of
Dickens's books - of the spirit of Innocence. Sissy Jupe is of course the
epitome of it in Hard TimesBalanced against this spirit of Innocence, we can
clearly make out the Spirit of Experience - if I may use William Blake's terms -