This document provides an analysis of the role and portrayal of women in Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times. It discusses three main female characters - Sissy Jupe, Rachael, and Louisa - and how they demonstrate Victorian gender norms through their devotion and power through emotions but also lack of independence and power over their lives. While Sissy shows power in her empathy, Louisa is portrayed as powerless as she is forced to marry Bounderby for his wealth instead of her own choice. The document examines how Dickens presents women as trapped in a patriarchal society through their dependence on men and inability to determine their own lives.

1. Role of The women in
‘Hard Time’

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👉Name : Upasna Goswami
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👉Paper Name : Victorian Literature
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Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of English
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Characters

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Charles Dickens's novel Hard Times(1854) seems to embody the link of cultural theory
with the
carnival and with the Marxist argument of how societies, classes and cultures are
colonized, decolonized,
centered and de-centered, subverted and liberated, and pushed to the periphery for the
same cultural, materialist,
racial, historical, ideological and political reasons. The novel is actually saying that we
human beings exist and
live in social groups, and that all of our behaviour, experiences and responses to daily
activities are related to
our society and culture. When we understand the interrelatedness of all our actions
within society we begin to
understand ourselves, our beliefs, values, philosophy, religion, and our entire existence
in a certain culture.
Introduction

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It is
thus our culture, the politics of culture,
which actually determines our identity.
This article reveals how Dickens
inverts in a carnivalesque manner most of
Victorian cultural values, not only those of
the rich bankers, the
cotton lords of Preston/Coketown, men of
facts and calculations, of Bounderby and
the like but also those of the
working class lot as those involved in
horse-riding circuses or the carnival
proper. Indeed Dickens succeeds in
such ideological representation of culture
as a prison-house which is policed by many
social and educational
hegemonic forces or
conscious/unconscious apparatuses

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hard to criticise not only in this
novel but throughout his fiction.
Throughout the novel there is a
politics of
culture which continually renders
the poor class as a subversive and
threatening class against the
stability of the
entire society,
carnivalism. So the concept of
culture stems from the fact that
what we believe, what we value,
and in many
ways what we think is a direct
result of our culture and our
society.

7. Gender and paradox in Hard times
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Hard time provides two portraits of idealized Diensian
women:sissy jupe and Rachael both character exhibit
standard Victorian feminine virtues extraordinary
devotion remarkable love based power of introduction.
The man's own worthiness in the formula is largely
irrelevant especially if he is a father or brother.

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This contribution reveal themselves
whenever gender issues aries for
example:...
Tom's attitude about his sister
female duty towards him”you are a
girl,too, and a girl comes out of it
better than a boy does”.”(92;1.ch8)

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Hearing that her husband has apprehended Tom and
Louisa peeping into Sleary circus, Mrs.Gradgrind
exclaims:”I declared you are enough to make one regrent
ever having had a great mind to say I wish would you
have doen,I should like to know”.(61;bk,1,ch.4)
Dickens obviously intends us to laugh at this obvious
paradox.
Mrs.Gradgraind could only prove her suffering to her way
ward children if they did not exist.

10. Women in Hard time
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Hard times shows women as powerless and trapped with in a patriarchate
society. How far do you agree with this statement? Discuss at least three
female characters. Dickens show women as repressed and powerless,
especially through their dependence on men, we see this especially in the
character Louisa. On the other hand, Dickens portrays women as havin
power within their emotions, such as emphasis and perception, as we see
in Sissy. Although women arnt shown to have power, and shown to have
power, I The women in "Hard Times" are shown to have no power. Louisa
is forced into marrying Mr Bounderby because he is rich and the main
thing is POWER. Dickens shows her reaction: "She closed her hand as if
upon a solid object and slowly opened it as if realising dust or ash". The
use of "dust or ash" compares to her life as they are both seen as
worthless. "Realising" compares her being released to Bounderby because
she has no say in what she wants to do. To summarise this quote she is
trying to

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COWLES, DAVID L. “HAVING IT BOTH WAYS: GENDER AND PARADOX IN
‘HARD TIMES.’” Dickens Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 2, 1991, pp. 79–84. JSTOR,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/45291349. Accessed 17 Oct. 2022.
Carr, Jean Ferguson. “Writing as a Woman: ‘Dickens, Hard Times, and
Feminine Discourses.’” Dickens Studies Annual, vol. 18, 1989, pp. 161–78.
JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44371633. Accessed 18 Oct. 2022.
Sharma, SANDEEP KUMAR. "Charles Dickens’ Hard Times: A Social
Document." Epitome: International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research
3.12 (2017).
works
Cited works

12. Thanks!
A very little key will open a very
heavy door.
_Charles Dickens
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