Auden: Dear though the Night is Gone: Love Poem by Auden: Summary

This poem, surely a serious one with complications, is undoubtedly very tough for the readers with some single interpretation to carry on. One can say it draws a picture of prostitution; someone can figure it out as the love story of the poet, which was a failure. Moreover, some new interpretations may come into play too. 
However, to summarize the poem as a whole with some definite idea is difficult. Still, if you read the poem carefully, you will come through the ideas of faith, revelation, illusion, and disillusion etc. too. The poet describes of a night spent with someone in a place where there are other couples too. (It might lead a mind to think of some brothel.) Moreover, other couples have hostile eyes for this couple which poet forms with his beloved/partner. The poet and his beloved/partner are making love and the other couples are sad, inactive, though in each other's arms. This situation might take us back to the 'wasteland' of Eliot where 'exploring hands encounter no defence.'
The situation in the poem is dense and sad. Love has been not at all a pleasure. 
The last part/stanza of the poem is very significant and most complicated. It's true that I am also unable to find something definite in that. However, we must make some ideas about the lines. So, the poet seems (to me) making a question to himself. Was he trying to taste the depth of love? Was he not ready to indulge in physical contact? 'That you then, unabashed, did what I never wished,' this line raises questions of dispute in the poem. Whom is he addressing to? To himself, or to his beloved/partner? 
One idea arises and that veers the other idea. 
Or it was some truth that the poet finds through the course of the night and falls aside of the conventional way? 

Dickens as Social Reformist: Was Dickens a Reformer?

Dickens as a Social Reformist

Victorian age is very important for the English country in many ways. She saw the flourishing of industrial revolution; she saw her people engaged in mechanic development; she saw her great sons Adam Smith, Ricardo, Malthus, J. S. Mill etc. imparting new theories to run the prospering economy of England. Moreover, the inventions in the Victorian period made the life of English people very luxurious and comforting. Some developments were meant for the people in general, while most of them were only meant to serve the ends of the rich. Railways, Electric Telegraph etc. were for the welfare of rich as well as poor. While the others like Telephone, Radio, Electricity were only for the people with good possession. Besides these, some major transformation came in existence is the field of education also. With these developments and transformations, where the English society seemed happy and satisfied, there was a class of the “have-nots” who were in search for their existence in the society growing with fast speed.

Dickens, novelist of the Victorian Period England, was highly unsatisfied with these rapid changes in the society. He did not like the interference of mechanic schedule in the life of people. He did not like the exploitation of the poor classes of the people. He did not like the child labour practice. In his novels, we can have the apparent examples of these disliking and hatred. Oliver Twist is a novel that deals with the problems of child labour. One very popular, Hard Times deals with the problems of education, utilitarianism, and unhappy marriage; it throws good light upon these problems and highlights the effects, indeed bad, that a selfish education can bring in life. Louisa does never realize what the meaning of blushing is! Tom does never know what the real education is. The Stone-Lodge represents the English Society that has become stony in the matters of heart and sentiment. Dickens did never like the society that only has the mind to think and not a heart to feel! He wanted a change; he kept trying for this to happen.

Dickens, as a child, himself has faced the situations that were not favourable. He had to face financial problems too. He had, at the soft age of 12, had to work in a shoe-blacking company. This experience, probably, made the idea of the great work Oliver Twist. Dickens says very much in the short sentence in this book, that is:

“The hardest and best-borne trials are those which are never chronicled in any earthly record, and are suffered every day!”

This simple sentence utters the numberless groans of many thousands of people who suffer the pains without any complaint or claim to be recorded! Dickens has a value and understanding for the problems of common and downtrodden.

In his great work, Hard Times, Dickens takes up the life of the poor circus persons and presents to us an ironic picture. He shows sympathy with the poor clown of the circus, Signor Jupe, who escapes from the troupe only to secure a better future to her daughter. The problems of bearing the expense of education is there reflected. Moreover, with this, Dickens adds the problem, rather a robbery that the circus troupe represents. He presents the commercialization of education, as well as he paints the commercialization of the leisure of the people. The phrase “melancholy elephants” adds to our heart a sympathy for the animals who are targeted brutally for the purpose.

Dickens, except these, takes up the problem of unhappy marriage in the Victorian society. For instance, in Hard Times, the marriage of Stephen Blackpool represents the agony of all the suffering husbands or wives. He is forced to live with or in with the fear of his drunkard wife who now and then comes to disturb his life and house. When Stephen goes for some advice from the master Bounderby, he aids to his pains only with the remark:

“Now I tell you what! (said Mr Bounderby, putting his hands in his pocket.) there is such a law…”

“But it’s not for you at all. It costs money. It costs a mint of money.”

Besides these, Dickens is undoubtedly a social reformist. He takes up the causes of the middle class people, and not as a detached novelist, but as one of those very people. To quote Cazamian, 

“No novelist before dickens has treated the lower middle classes on such broad lines or in so frank a way. He studies them not as a detached, superior kind of observer, but as one on their own level; a sympathy, an immediate community of impressions, and, as it were, an instinctive fraternity, thus impregnate his study.”

And further,

“… Such is the permanent foundation of his realism. But below it, in in the inner realms of consciousness, we feel the quivering image, the anguish of soul- debasing poverty.”

Therefore, on our own and upon the studies of these great scholars, we see that Dickens, whole his life, has devotedly worked as a writer whose works are always busy in solving or at least trying to solve the problems of the society. 

Hard Times: A Study of the Theme, Characters, and the Motive

 

Tennyson in his In Memoriam taught the Victorian world the lesson of Soul and tried successfully to pacify his own aching heart. So did the great scholar of that age, Arnold. He escaped with his gypsy and left the world exposed to material pursuits and selfishness. However, Dickens only could do what they could not do; Dickens showed the world the truth- the real figure of life. He tried to bring in what was expelled out from the mechanic life of the Victorian people.

Hard Times, one of the many masterpieces by Dickens, torches the growing utilitarianism in the Victorian society. Moreover, Dickens exposes the commercialization of education, manpower and even the leisure of people in the form circus. However, Dickens, the one ranked next only to Shakespeare in appeal, does not leave the world astray in the dry world of mechanism; he shows the way towards a better life with all the virtues of heart instead of the facts and figures world. For this purpose, Dickens draws the three noble and humble character in his novel- Louisa, Sissy, and the poor fated Rachael. These three ladies are tender heated, affectionate towards goodness and the aesthetic values in life and abhors the selfish people who are in the guise of goodness and welfare. On the other side, there are characters like Mr Gradgrind, Bounderby, M’Choakumchild, Tom and Harthouse. These characters, when unified together, take a pose of storm and are ready to slay the noble and gentle souls, crush them within an eye’s blink with the imposing education, loveless affection, ingratitude and faithlessness, and selfish ends.

When we examine from the beginning, where the innocents are being murdered, we can point that all attempts of blowing the little candles are in vain. Gradgrind, as a man as his name is, is always ready to crush the rose buds under his legs. In his school, in Stone-Lodge, everywhere he is reinforcing the facts and figures theory upon his children Tom and Louisa. His doctrine, however, cannot hold the knots of restriction upon the hearts of children fastened; very soon he finds Tom and Louisa ‘peeping with all might’ the circus act. His facts taste the first defeat:

“Thomas, though I have the fact before me, I find it difficult to believe…”

The tiny hole in the circus camp represents a ray of hope in the life of Louisa, as she very soon finds Sissy in her home to accompany her in the loneliness. Now, the stone man of Stone-Lodge, Gradgrind attempts every possible way to poison the heart of Sissy with facts and figures. Sissy, however, with a single ray of hope in life that a day her father would return, bears everything but keeps herself unchanged. She does not let the venom of dry facts and colourless figures enter inside her heart.

“… to the question, “What is the first principle of this science?” the absurd answer, “To do unto others as I would that they should do unto me.”

Sissy returns the golden rule from the Bible for the questions of science. She only accepts education and does not welcome the ugly selfish knowledge to grind one’s own axe. Here also, the little candle inside the heart of Sissy cannot be blown dark by Gradgrind and Choakumchild. Later, with only hope that Tom can get better position, Louisa, despite her all broken dreams, accepts the bully, Bounderby as her husband. She loves Tom and sacrifices her life almost for his good only! However, during the conversation of marriage proposal by Bounderby, when Gradgrind asks Louisa if she had some secret proposal from anyone else, she very humbly utters:

“… What other proposal can have been made to me? Whom have I seen? Where have I been? What are my heart’s experiences?”

This reply from Louisa exposes all about the dry and emotionless life of the girl at Stone-Lodge. Yet, the ray of hope that her brother could do well, wins over the virgin heart of this innocent lady…

Loveless marriage, wooing of a countryman, Harthouse and the faithlessness of Tom, the brother whom she loves, aids to the growing morbidity of Louisa. She returns back to Stone-Lodge, but only to change the once tender heart of the now stone man to softness once again. Moreover, the ray of hope again comes from the tiny hole, conspicuous in the discourse of Gradgrind and Bounderby.

“… The enlightenment has been painfully forced upon me, and discovery is not mine…”

“I-I had intended to recommend, my dear Bounderby, that you should allow Louisa to remain here on a visit, and be attended by Sissy, who understands her, and in whom she trusts.”

At last, we see that the pride-pyramid of Gradgrind’s facts and figures falls down and accepts its loss near faith, hope and charity. Another, one Rachael, I’d like to quote at last, nurses the mad wife of the thorn and thorn won Stephen Blackpool. Rachael becomes the friend to Sissy. Louisa is nurtured and loved by Sissy and her children grant Louisa the tender love that she lacked. Tom, the faithless brother is forgiven and sent away by the clever Sissy to save the cap of Gradgrind. It is Sissy, the sole solace, who pardons the refuge to everyone trapped in the world of facts and figures. Thus, the candle light horns the triumph over storms and keeps the world warm with a ray of hope from the tiny hole.