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How Did Charles Dickens Face During The Industrial Revolution

679 Words3 Pages

In the novel Hard Times, Charles Dickens highlights the exploitation, oppression, and desperation experienced during the start of the Industrial Revolution. Throughout the novel, the reader gets a balanced view of how this time of transition affects individuals no matter their gender or economic status. The characters within the novel face internal conflicts, unacceptable working and living conditions, and all around “hard times”. The first problem faced in industrial society in the story is the opposition between fact and fancy. In the time of the industrial revolution many individuals looked at life with a utilitarian mindset. This meaning that nothing was left to the imagination, but rather all explanations stemmed from logic and fact. As stated in the book “you can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them.” (Dickens ,9) By looking at the world with a utilitarian view, individuals became self-serving or motivated only by the actions that would produce the most pleasure for himself or herself. The character that illustrates this characteristic perfectly is Tom Gradgrind. Throughout the novel, Mr. Gradgrind commits every …show more content…

The obsession with facts and lack of emotion paired with the emphasis on production solidified the reason that the working class was referred to as the “hands”. The working society is described in the novel as, “the subject of a nameless, horrible dread, a mortal fear of one particular shape with everything took. Whatsoever he looked at, grew into that form sooner or later. The object of his miserable existence was to prevent its recognition by any one among the various people he encountered. Hopeless labor.” (Charles Dickens) The workers had the mindset that if they wanted to survive the mechanical era, they had to become

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