HARD TIMES（ISBN=9780553210163）pdf/txt下载_在线阅读全文

内容简介

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Written deliberately to increase the circulation of Dickens’s weekly magazine, Household Words, Hard Times was a huge and instantaneous success upon publication in 1854. Yet this novel is not the cheerful celebration of Victorian life one might have expected from the beloved author of The Pickwick Papers and The Old Curiosity Shop. Compressed, stark, allegorical, it is a bitter exposé of capitalist exploitation during the industrial revolution–and a fierce denunciation of the philosophy of materialism, which threatens the human imagination in all times and places. With a typically unforgettable cast of characters–including the heartless fact-worshipper
Mr. Gradgrind, the warmly endearing Sissy Jupe, and the eternally noble Stephen Blackpool–Hard Times carries a uniquely powerful message and remains one of the most widely read of Dickens’s major novels.

作者简介

Charles Dickens was born in a little house in Landport, Portsea, England, on February 7th, 1812. At the age of eleven, Dickens was taken out of school and sent to work in a London blacking warehouse, where his job was to paste labels on bottles for six shillings a week. When the family fortunes improved, Charles went back to school, after which he became an office boy, a freelance reporter, and finally an author. With Pickwick Papers (1836-7) he achieved immediate fame; in a few years he was easily the most popular and respected writer of his time. It has been estimated that one out of every ten persons in Victorian England was a Dickens reader. Oliver Twist (1837), Nicholas Nickelby (1838-9), and The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-41) were huge successes. Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-4) was less so, but Dickens followed it with his unforgettable A Christmas Carol (1843). Bleak House (1852-3), Hard Times (1854), and Little Dorrit (1855-7) reveal his deepening concern for the injustices of British society. A Tale of Two Cities (1859), Great Expectations (1860-61) and Our Mutual Friend (1864-5) complete his major works.

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CHAPTER I
The One Thing Needful

?Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing butFacts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and rootout everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoninganimals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service tothem. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children,and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stickto Facts, Sir!?

The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, andthe speaker?s square forefinger emphasized his observations byunderscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster?ssleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker?s square wall of aforehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes foundcommodious cellerage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall.The emphasis was helped by the speaker?s mouth, which was wide,thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker?s voice,which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helpedby the speaker?s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his baldhead, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shiningsurface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, asif the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts storedinside. The speaker?s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs,square shoulders,?nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him bythe throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, asit was,?all helped the emphasis.

?In this life, we want nothing but Facts, Sir; nothing butFacts!?

The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown personpresent, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes theinclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order,ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until theywere full to the brim.

CHAPTER I 
The One Thing Needful 
 
?Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but
Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root
out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning
animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to
them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children,
and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick
to Facts, Sir!? 
 
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and
the speaker?s square forefinger emphasized his observations by
underscoring every sentence with a line on the schoolmaster?s
sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker?s square wall of a
forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found
commodious cellerage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall.
The emphasis was helped by the speaker?s mouth, which was wide,
thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker?s voice,
which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial. The emphasis was helped
by the speaker?s hair, which bristled on the skirts of his bald
head, a plantation of firs to keep the wind from its shining
surface, all covered with knobs, like the crust of a plum pie, as
if the head had scarcely warehouse-room for the hard facts stored
inside. The speaker?s obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs,
square shoulders,?nay, his very neckcloth, trained to take him by
the throat with an unaccommodating grasp, like a stubborn fact, as
it was,?all helped the emphasis. 
 
?In this life, we want nothing but Facts, Sir; nothing but
Facts!? 
 
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person
present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the
inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order,
ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they
were full to the brim. 
 
CHAPTER II 
Murdering the Innocents 
 
Thomas Gradgrind, Sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and
calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and
two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into
allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, Sir?peremptorily
Thomas?Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the
multiplication table always in his pocket, Sir, ready to weigh and
measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it
comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple
arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief
into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John
Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent
persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind?no, Sir! 
 
In such terms Mr. Gradgrind always mentally introduced himself,
whether to his private circle of acquaintance, or to the public in
general. In such terms, no doubt, substituting the words ?boys and
girls,? for ?Sir,? Thomas Gradgrind now presented Thomas Gradgrind
to the little pitchers before him, who were to be filled so full of
facts. 
 
Indeed, as he eagerly sparkled at them from the cellarage before
mentioned, he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with
facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of
childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too,
charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young
imaginations that were to be stormed away. 
 
?Girl number twenty,? said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with
his square forefinger, ?I don?t know that girl. Who is that
girl?? 
 
?Sissy Jupe, sir,? explained number twenty, blushing, standing up,
and curtseying. 
 
?Sissy is not a name,? said Mr. Gradgrind. ?Don?t call yourself
Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.? 
 
?It?s father as calls me Sissy, sir,? returned the young girl in a
trembling voice, and with another curtsey. 
 
?Then he has no business to do it,? said Mr. Gradgrind. ?Tell him
he mustn?t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?? 
 
?He belongs to the horse-riding, if you please, sir.? 
 
Mr. Gradgrind frowned, and waved off the objectionable calling with
his hand. 
 
?We don?t want to know anything about that, here. You mustn?t tell
us about that, here. Your father breaks horses, don?t he?? 
 
?If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break
horses in the ring, sir.? 
 
?You mustn?t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then.
Describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I
dare say?? 
 
?Oh yes, sir.? 
 
?Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier and
horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.? 
 
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.) 
 
?Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!? said Mr. Gradgrind,
for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. ?Girl number
twenty possessed of no facts, in reference to one of the commonest
of animals! Some boy?s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.? 
 
The square finger, moving here and there, lighted suddenly on
Bitzer, perhaps because he chanced to sit in the same ray of
sunlight which, darting in at one of the bare windows of the
intensely whitewashed room, irradiated Sissy. For, the boys and
girls sat on the face of the inclined plane in two compact bodies,
divided up the centre by a narrow interval; and Sissy, being at the
corner of a row on the sunny side, came in for the beginning of a
sunbeam, of which Bitzer, being at the corner of a row on the other
side, a few rows in advance, caught the end. But, whereas the girl
was so dark-eyed and dark-haired, that she seemed to receive a
deeper and more lustrous colour from the sun, when it shone upon
her, the boy was so light-eyed and light-haired that the self-same
rays appeared to draw out of him what little colour he ever
possessed. His cold eyes would hardly have been eyes, but for the
short ends of lashes which, by bringing them into immediate
contrast with something paler than themselves, expressed their
form. His short-cropped hair might have been a mere continuation of
the sandy freckles on his forehead and face. His skin was so
unwholesomely deficient in the natural tinge, that he looked as
though, if he were cut, he would bleed white. 
 
?Bitzer,? said Thomas Gradgrind. ?Your definition of a
horse.? 
 
?Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely twenty-four
grinders, four eye-teeth, and twelve incisive. Sheds coat in the
spring; in marshy countries, sheds hoofs, too. Hoofs hard, but
requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth.? Thus
(and much more) Bitzer. 
 
?Now girl number twenty,? said Mr. Gradgrind. ?You know what a
horse is.? 
 
She curtseyed again, and would have blushed deeper, if she could
have blushed deeper than she had blushed all this time. Bitzer,
after rapidly blinking at Thomas Gradgrind with both eyes at once,
and so catching the light upon his quivering ends of lashes that
they looked like the antenn? of busy insects, put his knuckles to
his freckled forehead, and sat down again. 
 
The third gentleman now stepped forth. A mighty man at cutting and
drying, he was; a government officer; in his way (and in most other
people?s too), a professed pugilist; always in training, always
with a system to force down the general throat like a bolus, always
to be heard of at the bar of his little Public-office, ready to
fight all England. To continue in fistic phraseology, he had a
genius for coming up to the scratch,2 wherever and whatever it was,
and proving himself an ugly customer. He would go in and damage any
subject whatever with his right, follow up with his left, stop,
exchange, counter, bore his opponent (he always fought All
England)3 to the ropes, and fall upon him neatly. He was certain to
knock the wind out of common sense, and render that unlucky
adversary deaf to the call of time. And he had it in charge from
high authority to bring about the great public- office Millennium,
when Commissioners should reign upon earth. 
 
?Very well,? said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his
arms. ?That?s a horse. Now, let me ask you girls and boys, Would
you paper a room with representations of horses?? 
 
After a pause, one half of the children cried in chorus, ?Yes,
Sir!? Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman?s face
that Yes was wrong, cried out in chorus, ?No, Sir!??as the custom
is, in these examinations. 
 
?Of course, No. Why wouldn?t you?? 
 
A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing,
ventured the answer, Because he wouldn?t paper a room at all, but
would paint it. 
 
?You must paper it,? said the gentleman, rather warmly. 
 
?You must paper it,? said Thomas Gradgrind, ?whether you like it or
not. Don?t tell us you wouldn?t paper it. What do you mean,
boy??

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