‘Hard Times’ is a wonderful story, but when one thinks about the reality that lies behind the work, the novel becomes a masterpiece. This novel becomes very important because utilitarianism was the main thought in Victorian era. Utilitarianism, “the forms of liberty and equality that will produce the greatest happiness depend on the state of the educational, political, economic, and social structure” (Harris). Everything is explained by logic and facts. It is easy for the reader to find out that Dickens teases this theory, but the exciting thing is how he does it through the characters. “Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out nothing else” (Dickens 9). These are the words spoken to the children in the classroom. Also, this is the first sentences in the novel, so the audience is directly put into an effective way of thinking and leading them to the time period it was written. The readers get most of the impressions, emotions, and their own ideas and opinions about the subject through the characters. Charles Dickens injected the characters with his own ideologies that make the characters more than just a character in the story.
Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby are the main characters that relates with utilitarianism. They both speak only facts which lead the life of others by their opinions. And these facts are taught to the children from their childhood, so to speak. Mr. Gradgrind’s daughter, Louisa is a good example. She is the character who obeys her dad and follows the fact system. The one scene which tells the reader very clearly of this system is when Mr. Gradgrind brings up the marriage proposal from Mr. Bounderby. This ...
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... revenge by making the utilitarianism looking unreasonable in ‘Hard Times’. It is the readers who to decide whether or not Dickens was a moderate or some other believer.
Works Cited
Harris, Wendell V. "The value of utilitarian ethics at the present time." Texas Studies in Literature and Language 40.2 (1998): 209+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 8 Aug. 2011.
Stiltner, Barry. "Hard Times: The Disciplinary City." Dickens Studies Annual 30 (2001): 193-215. Rpt. in Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism. Ed. Kathy D. Darrow. Vol. 230. Detroit: Gale, 2011. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Aug. 2011.
Olsen, Maigun Gaardbo. “Utilitarianism and Hard Times”. Aalborg University.
"Princeton's Gradgrind." Commonweal (1999): 5. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 Aug. 2011.
I think that Charles Dickens message was to inform the rich, rude people to change their views on people that were underprivileged because they are poor it doesn’t mean that they are not human beings you treat them the same way just the way you would like to be treated. In the Victorian times if you were rich you were rich if you were poor you were poor nobody cared for each other. Dickens message in the Victorian Era was extremely important as Dickens tried to help the unfortunate ones by trying to change rich people’s scrutiny on them so they might help them in life.
One of the strongest of these critics is George Brimley, who, in his article entitled “Dickens’s Bleak House” published in The Spectator in 1853, writes that “Bleak House is, even more than its predecessors, chargeable with not simple faults, but absolute want of construction”(161). He finds that the structure of Bleak House fails because there is no connection between actors and incidents. Brimley points to the interest of Richard Carstone in the Chancery case. The case only serves to draw out Carstone’s personality faults that would have been drawn out in any other interest he may have had. The Chancery case, then, is trivial for it fails to exert any real impact on the characters...
Gross, John. "A Tale of Two Cities." Dickens and the Twentieth Century. Ed. John Gross and Gabriel Pearson. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962. 187-97.
Mill, John Stuart. "Utilitarianism." Gendler, Tamar Szabo, Susanna Siegel and Steven M. Cahn. The Elements of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2008. 77-80.
Nielsen, Kai. “Traditional Morality and Utilitarianism.” Ethics: The Big Questions. Ed. James Sterba. Blackwell Publishers, 1998. 142-151.
Here, Dickens focuses on the word “suffering”, to reinforce the idea that being wealthy, which is related to being better than other, a materialistic view of society is not what gives happiness, but the surroundings and
12. Oldham, R. (2000) Charles Dickens’ Hard Times: Romantic Tragedy of Proletariat Propaganda [Online]. Available: http://www.pillowrock.com [Accessed: 25th April 2005].
Mill, J. S., Bentham, J., & Ryan, A. (1987). Utilitarianism and other essays. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books.
Charles Dickens’ novels criticize the injustices of his time, especially the brutal treatment of the poor in a society sharply divided by differences of wealth. He lived through that world at an early age; he saw the bitter side of the social class system and had wanted it to be exposed, so people could see the exploitation that the system rests on. But he presents these criticisms through the lives of characters, Pip and Magwitch.
Throughout the novel, Dickens employs imagery to make the readers pity the peasants, have compassion for the innocent nobles being punished, and even better understand the antagonist and her motives. His use of personified hunger and description of the poor’s straits made the reader pity them for the situation caused by the overlord nobles. However, Dickens then uses the same literary device to alight sympathy for the nobles, albeit the innocent ones! Then, he uses imagery to make the reader better understand and perhaps even feel empathy for Madame Defarge, the book’s murderous villainess. Through skillful but swaying use of imagery, Dickens truly affects the readers’ sympathies.
Pojman, L. (2002). 6: Utilitarianism. Ethics: discovering right and wrong (pp. 104-113). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
When considering representation, the ways in which the authors choose to portray their characters can have a great impact on their accessibility. A firm character basis is the foundation for any believable novel. It is arguable that for an allegorical novel - in which Hard Times takes its structure, Dickens uses an unusually complex character basis. The characters in Hard Times combine both the simplistic characteristics of a character developed for allegorical purposes, as well as the concise qualities of ‘real’ people (McLucas, 1995). These characters are portrayed to think and feel like we as readers do and react to their situations in the same way that most of us would. Such attributes are what give the characters life and allow us to relate to their decisions.
Our Mutual Friend, Dickens' last novel, exposes the reality Dickens is surrounded by in his life in Victorian England. The novel heavily displays the corruption of society through multiple examples. These examples, that are planted within the novel, relate to both the society in Dickens' writing and his reality. In order to properly portray the fraud taking place within his novels, Dickens' uses morality in his universe to compare to the reality of society. He repetitively references to the change of mind and soul for both the better and the worst. He speaks of the change of heart when poisoned by wealth, and he connects this disease to the balance of the rich and the poor. This is another major factor to novel, where the plot is surrounded by a social hierarchy that condemns the poor to a life of misery, and yet, condones any action that would normally be seen as immoral when it occurs in the aristocracy. It expands on the idea that only an education and inheritance will bring success in society, with few exceptions. Lastly, Dickens expands his opinions of society through his mockery of ...
Mill, John Stewart. "Utilitarianism: John Stewart Mill." Fifty Readings Plus: An Introduction to Philosophy. Ed. Donald C. Abel. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill, 2004. 416-25. Print.
Rawlins, Jack P. "Great Expectations: Dickens and the Betrayal of the Child." Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900. 23 (1983): 667-683.