Hard Times

Mark called to tell me his youngest uncle, the one who is not much older than me,  is dead. So I'm at Elinor's,  a place I've never been before, listening to him playing Susanna I'm crazy loving you.  Nursing a margarita after a Baileys.

It's a dark place illuminated by Christmas decorations. People sit around drinking. They're in a convivial mood. Or at least that's how it seems. Maybe they drink to forget. Maybe they nurse their own dark secrets.

Which has all or nothing to do with Hard Times. Which I got through over a week ago. I've just put off writing this because I've been busy trying to decide what I should do.

I loved it. When Dickens relaxes into a story and it becomes about people rather than politics, he's a joy. Young Tom Gradgrind ended badly as supremely selfish people do. The bounder was exposed in all his fat pseudo humility that was another form of arrogance. Look how I struggled to come up. Look where I am now. Look who I'm married to. Ugh. . The thought of Louisa and Bounderby in bed together is beyond repulsive.

Typically there was only one happy ending. Sissy Jupe. The natural girl who thought with her heart rather than her head. The one who withstood the assault of facts no matter how many times they assailed her with them.

They all started out as caricatures and softened into human beings somewhere in the middle.

Stephen Blackpool's story was tragic. No joy in life and the ending such as it was. With death came rest.

Hard times indeed.

And now in keeping with the season I move on to his Christmas books.

The Sacrifice of Louisa Gradgrind

I object to this. To the sacrifice of Louisa Gradgrind, a beautiful young girl brought up by a hard fact-based man to a bounder like Bounderby. Everything Dickens could do to build up a picture of just how disgusting this man was, he did. And then, he marries this girl who had a soul, though her father did his best to purge it out of her...I don't know how Dickens could have described Gradgrind as a kind man. That seems to be akin to describing Arthur Clennam's mother (in Little Dorrit) as a kind woman. How come narrowness in one instance is forgiven and not in the other? Sure, he did take in that poor girl, Sissy Jupe. But still....

This is why I like Rosa Bud and Lizzie Hexam who refused to sacrifice themselves for the sake of their brothers or friends. Who refused to marry where they did not love, no matter what. Those are heroines worth having. As for Louisa, she married saying, "it doesn't matter" and it blighted her whole life. 30 years older but even that's not as bad the fact that he's, well, Bounderby! A bounder through and through. His stories (which if I remember were not true) of what he had to struggle through to grow up. Ah.

Anyway, I am sort of halfway through the book. In other words, I have completed Book the First. I wanted to take it up as soon as I put down Edwin Drood because this time, I wanted to get through the remaining books with no space in between.

Facts, facts, facts - Coketown. Dickens's description of Coketown and its inhabitants - the sarcasm that runs through the narrative - not the gentle humorous sarcasm that ran through Pickwick, but something harder, less forgiving and less forgivable.

I also have a few words to how he describes Stephen Blackpool's wife - the creature. She is a drunk and a degraded human being, not even a human being, less than an animal, a thing not worthy of living, a thing that ties down this good man who has been patient and forgiven her over and over. And yet, when he describes a man who is a drunk (like the one described by Dismal Jemmy in Pickwick) there is still some saving grace and he is still with his wife (whom he abuses) and his child. The wife is no longer a being but an object of loathing here. I feel sorry for Stephen Blackpool and doubly so, because he cannot marry his love and the stay of his life.

When the narrative moves from Bounderby (who is all caricature) to Blackpool, it gains life. Then he leaves off being so bitingly sardonic and starts to be human....more like the Dickens I love.Anyway, I hate Louisa's brother who is selfish and self-involved to the last degree. How could she love him? Well, who else did she have to love.

And I can't remember what happened to Sissy...I read this book twice before, and I still can't remember.

Never the mind...when I finish it I will write another update and hopefully, move on to the Christmas books (in keeping with the season).

And then, I will end with Sketches by Boz. I have to say, that as funny as they may have been at the time, I really dislike reading his sketches - I didn't like the Mudfog Chronicles or the Uncommercial Traveller. I love Dickens best when he is telling a story and not when he is commenting on someone or something or describing someone or something.

The offices of circumlocution.

Ah well....

The Mystery of John Jasper

I read this book faithfully after Dombey and then just didn't write about it. Sort of fitting that my ardour would have cooled with the unfinished novel. And yet, the novel itself was interesting and exciting. Rather strange to call it The Mystery of Edwin Drood when Dickens made it clear almost from the first page who was going to be the murderer.

The opium addict; in his opium den; consorting with lowlifes and having no control whatsoever on himself. The one thing I'm glad about is that Rosa Bud, unlike the majority of Dickens's heroines, did not succumb to Jasper's threats and suffer in silence. Instead she ran to her guardian (the Angular man who had been in love with her pretty mother) and threw herself on his protection and mercy. And everyone rallied around her and sayanged her and protected her. And in that time she even managed to fall in love with a sailor who had come into a fortune, not bad for the dear little doll.

I would have liked to have known a bit more of how the war between the two formidable females, Miss Twinkleton and the Bilikin would have played out. It was light relief during a heavy time. I would have also liked to have known who Datchery was and who sent him to investigate Jasper.

"Yer lie!" Deputy Winks was always good for a few laughs though I would have dearly loved to give him the drubbing of his life.

And so the narrative breaks off where the net is closing in around John Jasper. I am still curious to know how Dickens would have disposed of him. And what happened to Neville Landless since he clearly did not get the girl. And whether the beautiful Helena Landless would have married Crisparkle.