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| First Written | 1854 |
| Genre | Fiction |
| Origin | UK |
| Publisher | Vintage Classics |
| ISBN-13 | 9780307947208 |
| My Copy | brand new paperback, because I left my trusty shitty paperback on a plane |
| First Read | November 29, 2013 |
Hard Times
The passage where Louisa tries to convince Tom to confess is so great: it's like all the heart-wrenching scenes in The Great Divorce, where one character is nearly begging the other to be honest with themselves, confess, repent, and accept forgiveness. But very Dickensian!
Noted on December 30, 2013
I don't think I really enjoyed this the first time I read it, but liked it immensely this round. Granted, it's at least ten years later, and I'm much more familiar with what a Dickens Experience (TM) is before I start.
Noted on December 30, 2013
She did not raise her head. A dull anger that she should be seen in her distress, and that the involuntary look she had so resented should come to this fulfilment, smouldered within her like an unwholesome fire. All closely imprisoned forces rend and destroy. The air that would be healthful to the earth, the water that would enrich it, the heat that would ripen it, tear it when caged up. So in her bosom even now; the strongest qualities she possessed, long turned upon themselves, became a heap of obduracy, that rose against a friend.
Quoted on December 31, 2013
‘Tom, have you anything to tell me? If ever you loved me in your life, and have anything concealed from every one besides, tell it to me.’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Loo. You have been dreaming.’
‘My dear brother:’ she laid her head down on his pillow, and her hair flowed over him as if she would hide him from every one but herself: ‘is there nothing that you have to tell me? Is there nothing you can tell me if you will? You can tell me nothing that will change me. O Tom, tell me the truth!’
‘I don’t know what you mean, Loo!’
‘As you lie here alone, my dear, in the melancholy night, so you must lie somewhere one night, when even I, if I am living then, shall have left you. As I am here beside you, barefoot, unclothed, undistinguishable in darkness, so must I lie through all the night of my decay, until I am dust. In the name of that time, Tom, tell me the truth now!’
‘What is it you want to know?’
‘You may be certain;’ in the energy of her love she took him to her bosom as if he were a child; ‘that I will not reproach you. You may be certain that I will be compassionate and true to you. You may be certain that I will save you at whatever cost. O Tom, have you nothing to tell me? Whisper very softly. Say only “yes,” and I shall understand you!’
Quoted on December 30, 2013
It was but a hurried parting in a common street, yet it was a sacred remembrance to these two common people. Utilitarian economists, skeletons of schoolmasters, Commissioners of Fact, genteel and used-up infidels, gabblers of many little dog’s-eared creeds, the poor you will have always with you. Cultivate in them, while there is yet time, the utmost graces of the fancies and affections, to adorn their lives so much in need of ornament; or, in the day of your triumph, when romance is utterly driven out of their souls, and they and a bare existence stand face to face, Reality will take a wolfish turn, and make an end of you.
Quoted on December 30, 2013