Hard Times
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In Charles DickensÆ Hard Times, we see that authorÆs view that industrialism and industrial society are deleterious to human growth and development. In the novel Dickens expresses his belief that the impact of capitalism and industry has a dehumanizing impact on those who serve as the means of production for the wealthy owners of the means of production, the factory ôhandsö in Hard Times. Dickens wrote the novel in order to call to light for government officials the abuses being visited upon factory workers in England. The Victorian England of DickensÆ time was one ôfraught with massive economic turmoil, as the Industrial Revolution sent shockwaves through the established order,ö (Hard 2003, 1). The brunt of these shockwaves were mainly absorbed by the working poor and poor, who must suffered form the changes taking place in society. Similar to contemporary times, a focus on capitalism and industry at the expense of human development created dour conditions for the working poor, the poor, and society in general. Typically only the wealthy could affect change but they mostly remained interested in profits not people, ôWorkers referred to as ôthe Handsö in Hard Times were forced to work long hours for low pay in cramped, sooty, loud, and dangerous factories,ö (Hard 2003, 1). As factory owners continued to exploit workers, the gap between rich and poor continued to grow while millions lived in abject poverty, suffering from starvation and illness
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d compassionate are satirized perhaps as much as anyone and anything in the novel. We see this most clearly in the case of Mr. Gradgrind with his own particular and economically based school of thought. The Gradgrind school of philosophy does not believe in helping people when there is a material cost associated with it. Gradgrind figures if this is the way of the earth and heavens, then the heavens be damned because it was the way he was going to work it on earth where politico-economical factors indeed matter ôIt was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter,ö (Dickens 1966, 219).
Gradgrind cares only for demonstrable fact and his two children, Tom and Louisa, much like Dickens, are raised in a grim and practical environment. Because of her emotional short-comings from a lack of education, Louisa marries her brotherÆs boss, Josiah Bounderby. LouisaÆs emotions gain new life as she sees the vulgarity of
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Approximate Word count = 2063
Approximate Pages = 8 (250 words per page)
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