e. Just as Sissy is oppressed by Gradgrind, who tries to strip her of her imagination, innocence, independence, and her very soul, so is Stephen Blackpool oppressed by Bounderby, by the soulless realism of the capitalistic factory system, and by the entire depressing reality of the city:
In the hardest working part of Coketown; in the innermost fortifications of that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in, . . . the whole an unnatural family . . . press[ed] one another to death. . . . Among the multitude . . . called "the Hands---a race
. . . like the lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs---lived Stephen Blackpool (Dickens 70).
Again, Dickens leaves no doubt whatsoever that he believes the modern world's realism is based on beliefs which foster greed, corruption, and exploitation, and try to crush every
...