Hard Times as a Novel of Social Realism Is Wholly Unsuccessful. Do You Agree?
‘Hard Time’s as a novel of social realism is wholly unsuccessful. Do you agree?
‘Hard Times’ is a novel based on a short visit made by the author Charles Dickens to a town similar to ‘Coketown’ called Preston. He made this journey in an attempt to identify the social problem of the exploitation of factory workers. Dickens was sensitive to the social abuses which pervaded the Victorian society and so with an approach of a utilitarian denial of human imagination; he used the factories of the fictional Coketown and juxtaposed them with the contrasting, imaginative and bizarre world of Sleary’s circus. ‘Hard Times’ therefore deals with a range of social issues including divisions of a working class, rights of the ‘common people’ to engage in fanciful amusement or entertainment and most of all an education for the less fortunate in this society.
David Lodge in his essay suggests that the novel ‘manifests its identity as a polemical work; a critique of mid-Victorian industrial society dominated by materialism, acquisitiveness and ruthlessly competitive capitalist economics’ (Lodge, 1969). In the time of Dickens’ writing of the novel these qualities would have been represented specifically from the Utilitarian perspective. Dickens represents the industrial society with his fictional ‘Coketown’ setting. Coketown is emphasised as a ‘city of fact’ which introduces the means of a criticism or attack on the utilitarian principles. The inhabitants of this town lack individuality and freedom, forcing them to become merely products of a materialistic society. The emphasis on fact is insistent within this community and is drilled into the minds of everyone within it. In schools all children are taught only facts and not to let themselves be drawn into imagination or ‘fancy’. Dickens was required to write Hard Times in twenty sections to be published over a period of five months in his magazine ‘Household words’. He has filled the novel with his own philosophy and symbolism.
‘Hard Times’ is a novel based on a short visit made by the author Charles Dickens to a town similar to ‘Coketown’ called Preston. He made this journey in an attempt to identify the social problem of the exploitation of factory workers. Dickens was sensitive to the social abuses which pervaded the Victorian society and so with an approach of a utilitarian denial of human imagination; he used the factories of the fictional Coketown and juxtaposed them with the contrasting, imaginative and bizarre world of Sleary’s circus. ‘Hard Times’ therefore deals with a range of social issues including divisions of a working class, rights of the ‘common people’ to engage in fanciful amusement or entertainment and most of all an education for the less fortunate in this society.
David Lodge in his essay suggests that the novel ‘manifests its identity as a polemical work; a critique of mid-Victorian industrial society dominated by materialism, acquisitiveness and ruthlessly competitive capitalist economics’ (Lodge, 1969). In the time of Dickens’ writing of the novel these qualities would have been represented specifically from the Utilitarian perspective. Dickens represents the industrial society with his fictional ‘Coketown’ setting. Coketown is emphasised as a ‘city of fact’ which introduces the means of a criticism or attack on the utilitarian principles. The inhabitants of this town lack individuality and freedom, forcing them to become merely products of a materialistic society. The emphasis on fact is insistent within this community and is drilled into the minds of everyone within it. In schools all children are taught only facts and not to let themselves be drawn into imagination or ‘fancy’. Dickens was required to write Hard Times in twenty sections to be published over a period of five months in his magazine ‘Household words’. He has filled the novel with his own philosophy and symbolism.
Bibliography: Dickens, .., 1995. Hard Times. london: Penguin Classics. Lodge, .., 1969. The rhetoric of Hard Times. Edward Grey edition twentieth century interpretations of Hard Times ed. s.l.:s.n. Wheeler, .., 1994. English Fiction of Victorian period 1830-1890. New York: Longman publishing.