SOURCE: "Polyphony and Problematic in Hard Times, " in The Changing World of Charles Dickens, edited by Robert Giddings, Vision and Barnes & Noble, 1983, pp. 91-108.

Here, Fowler discusses Dickens's use of language and dialect in Hard Times as a tool for characterization and "unresolved ideological complexity. "

The polarization of critical response to Hard Times is familiar enough to make detailed reporting unnecessary, but since this polarization is a fact relevant to my argument, I will recapitulate it briefly.

Popular reception of the novel has been largely antagonistic or uninterested. The character of the earlier novels has led to the formation of a cheerful and sentimental 'Dickensian' response which finds Hard Times, like the other later novels, cold and uncomfortable, lacking in the innocent jollity, sentimentality and grotesquery of the earlier writings. When Dickens's anniversary was mentioned in a T.V. spot on 7 February 1983, the novelist was identified through a...