The Novel Hard Times & Impressionistic Paintings

This study will analyze Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times in terms of its relationship to Impressionistic paintings. Specifically, the study will compare and contrast the novel and Impressionism with respect to their realistic portrayals of the urban landscape and middle-class city life. The study will argue that while both the book and the paintings do indeed portray these aspects of modern life realistically, Dickens' novel presents a far more critical and negative view than do many Impressionist paintings. Nevertheless, the study will include consideration of Impressionist works which do negatively portray the effects of modern city life.

Dickens is specifically aiming his barbs at the negative impact of education on the developing child, and on the negative social effects which this oppressive educational system has on society as a whole. While Dickens novel is largely realistic in style and subject matter, he nevertheless is critical of the realism ("facts") upon which Thomas Gradgrind bases his educational approach and beliefs:

"Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. . . . You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts. . . . " Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. . . . With a rule and a pair of scales . . . ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature. . . . He [was] . . . charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away (Dickens 11-13).

Dickens does not pull his punches or h

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istic portrayals of people in the modern city would inevitably expose the "psychological isolation" of people living in a world dominated by the kind of oppression he describes in his novel. Another Impressionist work showing the negative or turbulent effects of the modern city is Honore Daumier's "The Uprising," "which shows rioting figures on a Paris street" (Elsen 288). Elsen says "The Impressionists had political convictions but kept them out of their paintings" (288). Again, however, Dickens might reasonably argue that Daumier's painting, merely by portraying the haggard, angry and frightened rioters---some of whom at least appear to be middle-class---is inevitably a political statement which recognizes and honors the suffering created by the modern capitalist socioeconomic system. Daumier's lithograph "Rue Transnonian" even more graphically coincides with Dickens' novel, depicting as it does "the murder of a worker and his family by government troops in retaliation for labor's defiance of the state" (Elsen 279). As Elsen writes, "Impressionist painting . . . was intended primarily for middle-class homes" (Elsen 288). A middle-class individual might take a few hours to read Hard Times and might even whole-heartedly agree wi

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