Literature of Victorians

1. Industrialism in Hard Times
“A blur of soot and smoke, now confusedly tending this way, now
that way, now aspiring to the vault of Heaven, now murkily creeping
along the earth, as the wind rose and fell, or changed its quarter: a
dense formless jumble, with sheets of cross light in it, that showed
nothing but masses of darkness—Coketown in the distance was
suggestive of itself, though not a brick of it could be seen.”

2. • Prepared by: Divya Sheta
• Paper No.104:Literature of the Victorians
• Subject Code : 22395
• MA,Sem:I
• Enrollment No:4069206420210033
• E-mail ID : divyasheta@gmail.com
• Submitted to: S.B.Gardi Department of
English, MK Bhavanagar University

3. Content List
• Coketown
• Stephen Blackpool-Worker
• Josiah Bounderby-Master

4. About Novel and Author
• Written by Charles Dickens (1812-1870)
• Who was the Victorian Novelist.
• Hard Times: For These Times(commonly known as Hard Times) published in 1854
originally published in the weekly magazine “Household Words.”divided in three
parts,
• Bool-I: "Sowing“ (16 chapters)
• Book-II: "Reaping“ (12 chapters)
• Book-III: "Garnering“ (9 chapters)

5. Coketown
• Notably in the fifth chapter of the novel, stresses its
ugliness and monotony - qualities that are external
manifestations of the life and work of its
inhabitants.
• Instead of growing slowly and naturally in response
to human needs, such towns have mushroomed as a
result of the Industrial Revolution: what had
originally been small market-towns became within a
few years crowded cities

6. Stephen Blackpool-Worker
• Stephen is typical of his class - the skilled but badly
paid factory operative -in his poor physical
condition and his premature ageing.
• However, he is not only a victim of the factory
system but has domestic problems that complicate
and embitter his life.
• Stephen in his capacity as a worker: we see him
leaving the factory, calling on Bounder by, at home
in his lodgings, and so forth, but we are given no
detailed account of how his time in the factory is
actually spent, presumably because Dickens knew
little about the subject.

7. Stephen Blackpool-Worker
• He is exceptional, idealized and sentimentalized - a
working-class hero rather than a convincing figure.
• While, F. R. Leavis has said that Stephen is 'too
good and qualifies too consistently for the martyr's
halo’.
• One of his 'great misfortunes', and we must now
look at the tragedy of his position between a hostile
employer and hostile fellow-workers.

8. Josiah Bounderby-Master
• Bounderby is one of the most important links
between the two main themes of the novel, the
educational and the industrial. A prominent man of
business, 'banker, merchant, manufacturer.
• For Dickens he represents both a satire on the self-
made man whose ruthless methods have enabled
him to prosper, and an attack on the heartlessness of
the factory-owners;

9. Josiah Bounderby-Master
• Bounderby accepts and even glories in the class
divisions that separate man from man. When he tells
Stephen that there can be no question of his divorcing his
wife, since divorce is a luxury available only to the rich,
Stephen replies, ' "'Tis just a muddle a'together" ',where
upon Bounderby retorts:
'Don't you talk nonsense, my good fellow, ... about things you
don't understand, and don't call the institutions of your
country a muddle, or you '11 get yourself into a real muddle
one of these fine mornings. The institutions of your country
are not your piece-work, and the only thing you have got to
do is, to mind your piece-work. ... '

10. Josiah Bounderby-Master
• The repeated reference to 'the institutions of your country'
shows Bounderby's complacent Toryism: it does not
occur to him that in some areas, including the law
relating to divorce, reform is long over due, and indeed
the word 'reform' is likely to convey to his mind
associations with riot and revolution.

11. Reference:
(Gibson)
Gibson, James, ed. Macmillan Master Guides Hard
Times by Charles Dickens. 1. London: Macmillan,
1985. 9 December 2021.