7
They can't alwayth be a-learning, nor yet they can't alwayth be a-working,
they an't made for it, Do the withe thing and the kind thing too, and
make the betht of uthnot the wortht
"People mutht be amuthed"Dingle Foot adds that it is not easy to
find any other moral. But he seems totally unaware of how important that one
is - and in the context of Hard Timesin a utilitarian world, amusement (in
this case Mr. Sleary's Circus) is essential to the maintenance of a fully
human existence. But Mr. Dingle Foot seems to have little notion of what a
fully human existence is. Just as he has very little notion of the signifi
cance of what is dramatically enacted in Hard Times
The weakest part of Hard Times is no doubt the part where the trade
union leader Slackbridge does his bit. I think we could agree that Dickens's
presentation of Slackbridge looks rather like propaganda - anti-trade-union
propaganda (though not everyone will agree with me). Dickens, like most great
literary artists, seems to have had a bias against most forms of organised
institution. But Foot has a question here: "What", he says, "is the alternative
to trade unions, then? How are the problems of the industrial working class
to be remedied? The answer, when it comes, "he argues, "is simple in the extreme.
It appears from Hard Times that employers must learn to treat their workers
with kindness and patience... They must, it seems, constantly bear in mind
that working people also have loves and memories and inclinations and human
feelings. The question inevitably poses itself how Dickens could arrive at
so banal a conclusion".
Now you see this is what I meant when I said that Mr. Dingle Foot seems
to have little notion of what a fully human existence is. He wants an answer
from Dickens in which better relations between employer and employee are
enforced, not realising that what Dickens is saying - in dramatic and symbolic
form - is about the pre-conditions of organised labour. You can't have good
work-contracts if people in power behave like Bounderby, for instance. Isn't
he repeating in artistic form, something like what Aristotle rather depressingly
said, rather long ago, viz. that you can't have a good man in a bad society? The
individual must be improved, or at least society must be reminded of what
matters for the well-being of the individual. It is not for nothing that
Dickens confronts Bounderby, and all those who, like him, in their different
ways, deny the value of the human heart, with intimations of the Gospel message,
with scattered hints reminding the reader of these most powerful sanctions for
human behaviour - of Faith, Hope and Charity for instance. It is not that
Hard Times is a religious novel. But we hav for instance, Mr. Gradgrind
