F. R. Leaviss Description of Hard Times as a Moral Fable - Essay Example

F. R. Leavis’s of “Hard Times” as a ‘Moral Fable’ Introduction Frank Raymond Leavis was a renowned British literary critic of English literature and he had expertise upon the literature of the early-mid-twentieth century. He was very influential person and he dedicated his entire life to the academics and criticism. To delve deep into the contention of this great man regarding one of the all time masterpieces in English literature, “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens and to examine the contention of Leavis regarding “Hard Times” as a moral fable, it become mandatory at the outset, to analyse and explore the subtle aspects operating through the novel’s scheme of things and the background and social conditions in which it was produced.

Since the publication of the novel, it has been widely received and criticised by different critics across the globe and from different age. Apart from Leavis, George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Macaulay had criticised the novel on the aspect of Dickens’ delineation of the Utilitarian, trade unions and post-Industrial Revolution which neatly divided the capitalist mill owners and worker class in the British society during Victorian Era. Hard Times as A Moral Fable: Through the Eyes of Leavis ‘Hard Times - For These Times’ or popularly known by the name of only Hard Times is the tenth novel authored by Charles Dickens and was published in the year 1854.

To understand the contention of F.R. Leavis in coining the novel as a moral fable, it becomes essentially important to understand the literary term ‘moral fable’ in the first place. Moral fable is a kind of a story that involves the imagination and logic and combines them at the same platform. Generally in fables, the characters appear as animals, birds or insects and through them any virtue or vice of the human society is precisely displayed with a particular instruction or moral at the end.

But the novel by Charles Dickens more than containing any particular moral, evidently portrays the contemporary social class struggle in British society during the Victorian era or the era of post-Industrial Revolution. “Hard Times” unlike other novels of Dickens is not set against the backdrop of London city and its surroundings. Instead of it completely deviating from his general trends, the events of the novel, “Hard Times” take place against the background of the fictitious town of Coketown which is presented as a typical Victorian industrial township.

This Coketown is a generic Northern English mill-town in its characteristics and the prevalent school i.e. the utilitarian school of thought was one of the major targets of the novel. Also, the novel clearly depicts the irony imbibed behind the theory of Utilitarian ethics and society. Being a complete pragmatic, Dickens at the practical term could never accept the theory and believed that the quest for the ultimate rationalized society can lead the society to great misery. Leavis’s contention of the novel “Hard Times” focuses basically on the Chapter 5 bearing the title “Found” contained in the Third Book , “Garnering” of the novel.

“The Murder of the Innocents” acts as a kind of prelude to the novel “Hard Times”. The structure of the novel displays a clear transition most pertinent in the chapter 5 of the Third Book. Here, ultimately every action changes from Gradgrind’s lesson to the anti-lesson rendered by Slaery clearly invites its readers to accept the novel as a straightforward ‘moral fable’ According to Leavis, the ‘intention and nature of the novel are pretty obvious’. The readers can find that Gradgrind is a changed man now.

In the place of an ‘intensely whitewashed vault’ located in the sepulchre classroom where the tiny innocents were brutally murdered are ‘now being replaced by the vault of a circus’. And it seems that the place is now lighted up with the subdued light through which the guilt and redemption try to find their vent out towards the way of salvation. Sleary’s celebration of amusement with poetry and Gradgrind’s unforgettable dialogue “you mustn’t fancy” carries out in the form of an antidote lurking large in the novel.

Here the characters change, the atmosphere change and the entire course of action change for something positive and optimistic. The characters are able to restore their faith and happiness in their own land and in the particular chapter 5 of the third book, the myth about the Bounderby is revealed and very entwined with the faith of Dickens who almost takes the role of an educator with the didactic mode in the chapter “Found” and explores that no man in the society is self-made and lies never get hidden for a long time.

In this chapter, thus it gets revealed that Mrs Peglar is Bounderby’s mother and as he says she has never abandoned him in the gutter. Rather she took the pain to raise him, nurture him with love, education, care and affection. And Bounderby after becoming wealthy has turned out to be an unfaithful child who has abandoned his mother. Every component in the society is interdependent and as a scathing attack to the Utilitarian ethics and concepts, Dickens puts forward that no individual man can attain the totalitarian state and cannot get self-made.

On the contrary, it is the society which like a co-operative unit looks after and nurtures every component comprising it. Conclusion The novel “Hard Times” takes the shape of a fable with all its characters’ representatives of the virtues and vices that Dickens tried to portray. The novel has a particular set of morals incorporated in the scheme of the plot operating at the same tone throughout the book. With all these typical characteristics the novel “The Hard Times” takes the shape of a hard core ‘moral fable’ where the trajectory of individual characters begins with pessimism and anti-lessons of life and they overcome through the purgation of experience to end up with optimism, faith and good lesson in life.

The tone of the novel is didactic which precisely make the novel a hard-core fable with a moral central to the plot of the book which focuses on the role wealth and materialism play to divide the society in two half of haves and have-nots. Bibliography Sadrin, Anny. A Plea for Gradgrind. 1973. JSTOR. March 20, 2011.