"What Does it Matter?": Reading Within Architectural Spaces in Dickens's Hard Times

Abstract:

In this article, I analyze the progression of Louisa Gradgrind's imaginative and emotional interior life in Charles Dickens's Hard Times. I integrate Gaston Bachelard's theory of the intrinsic relationship between imagination and architectural spaces in The Poetics of Space (1958) with Cassandra Falke's theoretical approach to learning empathy through reading literature in The Phenomenology of Love and Reading (2016) in order to create a critical framework. This framework then illustrates Dickens's use of domestic spaces to guide his readers experientially through Louisa's interior healing and development throughout the novel. I argue that Dickens desires his readers to believe by the end of Louisa's story that this inner wholeness is also possible and achievable for them through reading literature.