1. Submitted by Mushaid Aziz
Submitted to Sir Tahir
INTRODUCTION: -
Charles’ Dickens shows the hidden advocates of materialism that were
progressing back in Victorian society. In his novel “Hard Times” published in 1854.
He tells about the attraction of people towards the material things and tells his
readers that a person, who is always following facts and materialistic things, by
ignoring the aesthetic values, remains in debt. Charles Dickens gives a broad
overview of materialism as the main force behind the increasingly industrializing
Victorian world in Hard Times. Dickens is particularly critical of factory owners,
whom he paints as driven by avarice and indifferent for the wellbeing of their
employees. Thomas Gradgrind’s utilitarian ideology is sharply criticized by him.
EXPLANATION: -
Dickens concentrates his portrayal on the conflict between bosses and laborers in
a single, hypothetical industrial metropolis. He shows how Bounderby, the
company’s owner, vehemently opposes unionization, seeks to discredit those who
do, and presents his exploitative practices as being in the best interests of the
workers. It is made clear that the primary motivation for such exploitation is the
preeminent desire for wealth. Bounderby, a stereotypical business owner,
displays hypocrisy by charging the staff with being avaricious. Stephen Blackpool’s
life is full of thorns and no flowers, as the narrator all fact-base. Dickens
demonstrates how the doctrines of the time supported materialism and opposed
artistic, intellectual, and spiritual virtues while searching for more reasons. This
part of his criticism is focused on Thomas Gradgrind, who uses a curriculum and
parenting approach that is solely fact based. Finally, Dickens shows the
hollowness of such materialism and the harm it does to the less fortunate through
2. the characters in the novel who are wealthy and insist on sticking to the facts or
who were tragically raised in a world of nothing but the facts. Ironically, it is those
like Sissy Juppe and Mr. Sleary who are aware of the delicate balance between
reality and fantasy. According to Hard Times, the obsessive industrialization of
nineteenth-century England threatened to transform people into machines by
preventing the growth of their emotions and imaginations. This argument is
largely supported by the actions of Gradgrind and Bounderby, one of his
followers. While the former instills factual values in the young children of his
family and school, the latter treats the employees of his factory as emotionless
objects that can be easily exploited for personal gain. The factory Hands and the
Gradgrind children are compared by the narrator because both live
unremarkable, boring lives devoid of joy. Due to the dulling of their fantasies and
emotions, they also become practically mechanical. The rational self-interested
ideology of Mr. Gradgrind exacerbates the mechanizing impacts of
industrialization. According to Mr. Gradgrind, human nature is completely subject
to rational laws that may be measured, quantified, and controlled. In fact, his
school works to make kids into little robots who follow these norms. In Hard
Times, Dickens primarily aims to highlight the risks of allowing people to become
robotic, implying that life would be intolerably difficult without empathy and
imagination. Louisa does experience this sorrow, and when she goes back to her
father’s house, she informs him that something has been missing in her life and
that it has made her unhappy in her marriage and possibly in love with someone
else. Louisa realizes her life is intolerable and that she needs to take dramatic
measures for her own survival, despite the fact that she does not act dishonorably
since she cuts off her contact with Hart house before she has a socially disastrous
affair with him. Louisa is able to convince her father, with the utmost honesty,
that his life philosophy and techniques of child rearing are to blame for Louisa’s
disconnection from other people. Hard Times by Charles Dickens exemplifies how
utilitarianism has crept into society and how it affects both education and
interpersonal interactions. Dickens chose art as his favored method of
expenditure to challenge the power of utilitarianism. Dickens vehemently
opposed utilitarianism. Utilitarianism, which was founded by Jeremy Bentham
and was popular in industrial England at the time Dickens was writing Hard Times,
3. was the dominant ideology. Utilitarian’s held that the greatest number of
individuals should be considered when determining how much pleasure (also
known as happiness) or sorrow a particular activity had caused. Additionally,
societal ties and issues that extend beyond one are what motivate people.
Humans are also motivated by social ties and issues that extend beyond
themselves and their local communities. Dickens’ fictitious work Hard Times
contains one of his most scathing critiques of these moral standards and their
repercussions. Thomas Gradgrind, the head of the school board and a father who
makes it his duty to make the kids under his command memorize facts and
figures, serves as the novel’s core utilitarian figure. By making choices based on
egotistical, cold calculation, the youth are urged to maximize utility through their
deeds. Children who partake in artistic amusement, such as reading fairytales and
viewing circus performances, are then punished. The children are annoyed and
dissatisfied with their life since they are controlled by facts and lack art. When
faced with the complexities of justice and emotions, Gradgrind’s children
eventually come to realize that the utilitarian system of ethics fails them.
Gradgrind initially encounters his polar opposite in Sissy, a student at his school
who is taken in by the Gradgrinds after being abandoned by her circus star father.
Sissy is from a different world— the circus—where art and emotion rule, in
contrast to Gradgrind’s school and upper-class home, where facts, logic, and self-
interest do. Sissy’s empathy and creativity prevent her from adhering to the
mathematical justifications of utilitarianism, both at home and in school. Dickens’
overarching purpose is to demonstrate the importance of imagination, art, and
human connection in a world ruled by facts and logic. When Tom Gradgrind’s
children, Louisa and Tom, endure adversity as a result of their father’s utilitarian
thinking, it is Sissy who will finally be the one to lead change in the Gradgrinds’
imaginary. Sissy is a captivating storyteller who can ignite a spark in the minds of
others, illuminating a fresh perspective on the world. That image could be one of
fairies and other forest spirits, or it could be one of a different, more
compassionate future. This is shown in Sissy’s unwavering optimism that her
father will return home to her one day. She believes in a brighter tomorrow
founded on love rather than material advancement. Dickens portrays the fictional
town of Coketown, which serves as the setting of Hard Times, for its noise, air,
4. and water pollution caused by its industrial operations, is the gem that any
environmentalist would undoubtedly enjoy. The depiction is eerily similar to the
“cancer villages” of contemporary China. Conclusion: - Dickens valuing art as the
type of expenditure that can save humanity from the depths of productivism and
outlining these anti utilitarianist experiences in his humanistic stories.
THE END
