UNDERSTANDING HARD TIMES: AN ANALYTIC NOTE BY F.R LEAVIS
-By Arya James F.R Leavis in this famous essay which appears in his The Great Tradition talks about why he considers Hard Times as the best work of Charles Dickens. Right in the beginning he calls this brilliant work which is set in the fictional industrial Coketown a masterpiece. He asserts that Hard Times has, of all Dickens’ works, all strength of his genius and it is a completely serious work of art. Leavis says that it is because of the traditional approach to ‘the English novel’ that Hard Times did not get the recognition it so deserved. He observes a lot of unexacting expectations from the author by the readers of those times. He says Henry James’ The Europeans also suffered like Hard Times because of these unexacting expectations. The title of the novel confirms Dickens’ inspiration. Usually Dickens’ criticism of the world around him is casual. But in Hard Times , he has a comprehensive vision of the i...