Time in Hard Times

I wanted to talk about a theme I saw throughout the first book of Hard Times, the notion of time.  Dickens refers to time as the Great Manufacturer; its products are people.  Louisa and Thomas Gradgrind, Jr. enter and come out as a young woman and young man, both altered in some way or another thanks to the passage of time.  Time as a factory is an interesting analogy, since time is also a very important commodity in Victorian life.

For instance, Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind continually speak of not wasting time.  They call the showmen and horse riders idle because they spend their time in amusement and not in business.  Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind live by idea that time is money.

Also, in Victorian England, time is continually hurrying on.  There is a sense of rushing in every aspect of Coketown.  The working class go to and from work, the machines whir, the trains run all day.  A worker named Stephen Blackpool remarks to an older woman that Coketown is a busy place and she replies, "Eigh sure!  Dreadful busy!"  Only a short while later, Stephen notices the time, and quickens his pace.  "He was going to work? the old woman said, quickening hers, too, quite easily.  Yes, time was nearly out" (63).  This is the general feeling of the Industrial Era.  Everything has a schedule, and time must be used wisely to make the most out of it.  People like Gradgrind and Bounderby see little use in leisure, since it profits them nothing, and is, essentially, a waste of time.

However, Mr. Sleary, who runs the horse show, says that people must be amused somehow; they can't always be working or always learning.  He understands that time must be balanced, and life cannot be focused on only one thing.  Then again, Sleary makes his money by amusing others, and so perhaps he would rather have people always spending their time in leisure instead of work.  Still, as we will see in later books, those who do not have a balance end up falling.

Our digital age seems to be in a rush similar to Victorian England.  Last year's technology is out of date.  We're disgruntled if it takes a webpage longer than five seconds to load.  Information is communicated so quickly, you can either be immediately informed, or you can fall behind in a matter of minutes.  Check out this commercial from AT&T, where 27 seconds is enough time to distinguish those up on the times from everyone else:

Additionally, we now seem to have a similar problem with balancing our time, though instead of spending too much of it in work and learning, we spend too much on leisure.  Some are addicted to surfing the internet or playing video games.  Procrastination is easy to do when there's so much to occupy our attention.

As Sleary said, we cannot always be working or learning, be we cannot always be playing, either.  Balance is needed.  I think that's the message for our digital age.  Where we spend our time makes us into the people we'll be.  Therefore, we need to balance our time on and offline, and between leisure and work.