Reflections on July 6 Class

Who is this Dickens of ours?

In reflection and discussion on an article by John Gardiner, we considered what "version" of Dickens we present to our students...is it one of hardships? Is it one of charming characters?  Is it a version that emphasizes empathy or a more self-centered approach?

One debate we had considered whether to provide students with autobiographical information prior to teaching a novel such as Hard Times.  Does this merely end up suggesting that the information and scenes of the novel become coloured in a sort of "psychological" profile of the author? Does doing this colour our own ability to understand and to connect to the text on a more personal level?  

Throughout the article, several themes emerged including the danger as GK Chesterton describes of "coziness" in terms of Dickens, which is to relegate him and his work to the charming corner.  Likewise, themes such as "Dickensian", "Victorian", and even "Britishness" become problematic in terms of Dickens, his work, and the manner in which generations which followed have encountered, understood, and often appropriated his text. This suggests the richness of Dickens and the variety of possibilities in understanding the text and exploring its vast themes.

This led to a lively discussion of perhaps making a mistake in isolating Dickens as "British". Certainly this begs the question as to why he is worthy of study in a government sponsored NEH seminar.  We concluded that he not only belongs to the entire anglosphere but, as with Shakespeare, he has universal value in exploring "global" themes.  This provides not an "either/or" perspective on understanding Dickens but rather a "but also" approach which is valuable in the classroom.

Our conversation then moved on to Richard Moye's article on the ways in which both history and literature provide us with narrative and are not profoundly different.  In terms of Hard Times, this is seen as the balance between Facts and Fancy. Both History and Literature involve a construction of a narrative and thus involve a combination of fact and fancy to be created and in reality are not really separate at all.  Fact involves fancy.  Having students reflect upon this and the awareness of language in the novel or in any piece of work will have major transfer-ability to anything they do.  Ultimately, the marriage between fact and fancy is an unhappy one and a concern which must be explored via perspective.  This is Stephen Blackpool's "muddle".  This led to a consideration of Sissy Jupe: is she good? flat? a vehicle? a symbol? a foil? simple?

What socially constructed fictions do we take on as "fact"?

This discussion of Sissy Jupe, led to a connection to Hilary Schor's work and analysis.  The novel is about systems and the systems of thought which sustain it.  The goal of the novel is both to remove the roofs from houses to allow the reader (a Middle Class one) to peer in, understand, and care about individuals he or she has thought little about. In exploring the problems of his age, Dickens suggests that the role of women, and especially Domesticity in general, can be an important force to fix what is wrong with the world. Schor notes that it is individuals who will fix institutional wrongs.  Ultimately, the statistics are too cold and there is a necessity for us to care about individuals which can give the novelist power to create change through empathy.  The Victorian was used to the way in which melodrama would provide them with strong, emotive characters for them to empathize with and this manipulation felt neither false nor fruitless.  

We then went and identified a series of important questions and issues for us to explore in a more minute way as we went through the rest of the novel:

1. What is Hard Times about? what are its chief social concerns, its chief objects of critique?  What does it concern? What does it celebrate?

2. How does the text articulate its critical agenda? What are the images/characters/discourses through which this critique is made? What does the text offer by way of resolution or solution?

3. How (& why) does Hard Times bring together schools, homes, factories, and circuses? How do these engage with one another to achieve or form the author's purpose? How do they make sense appearing together in this text?

4. Bounderby invents a story of being abandoned as a child. Sissy is abandoned by her father.  Louisa says her father left her without moral grounding. What are we to make of the novel's obsession with parental neglect?

5. How is this novel engaged with Victorian issues or moral concerns?

6. Is Sissy Louisa's foil?

7. What is the point/purpose/nature of school/education?

8. How does the novel construct and comprehend gender?

9. How is the writing an act of social justice?

10. Why do we expect so much of Dickens?