Hard Times
Absolutely, not what I was expecting, which explains why the book stared at me for so long, practically daring me to put down the noir and get some culture. It looks exactly like it is going to preach at you, in that self-righteous crusading manner, that the Victorians became so rightly laughed at for. The benevolence and altruism of the cultured Englishman telling the heathens around the world what was good for them.
Dickens disrobes the educated upper classes and the upstart self-made men of industry, equally. He writes, in metaphor, about their baseless superiority and new found "scientific" method, for improving the lives of others. This is a very acidic satire. The word, satire, is more apt because it reads like a Monty Python sketch half the time. The monstrous Bounderby, brought up in an egg box by a grandmother; the most evil woman in the world, is the fool that launched a thousand sketches. The teachers, Gradgrind and M'Choakumchild, damned in the naming; filling the children with facts is a brilliant and hilarious opener. It bites subtly. Dickens, in fact, is very direct in how he condemns. He doesn't leave it to the reader to decide. He starts referring to one wretched character, very early on as "The Whelp". This books is marvellous for the characterisation of dozens of people. It reminded me of I Know Where I'm Going and how people represent factories or other institutions. He boils the hypocrites in oil by the end. Nobody in our cynical modern world does it better.
The melodrama and pathos lay thick like Coketown chimney smoke. For Dickens this is a very light read, with enough plot to keep the fires stoked. An entertainer of a writer, disguising his vilification of a world turned to iron and coal, in funny story-telling.