Charles Dickens Uniformity

The city of Coketown is a town introduced as an uncompromising, brutal, and fearful place defined by its work and industrialization. The description that we are given of Coketown makes it clear that it is not a place of enjoyment, pleasure, or nature. It is heavily characterized by its repetitive and endless labor. Coketown is therefore essential as a setting displaying the negative aspects of industrialization. However, there is additional significance in the negative portrayal of Coketown. The idea of monotony in the industrial city is one that is returned to several times throughout the novel. Dickens writes

Through the structural elements in Hard Times of plot, themes, and characterization, Dickens portrays certain social facts of an industrial society and tries to picture a social reality. He leads the reader

Utilitarianism, a philosophy that values the happiness of the general population above the happiness of an individual, ironically caused more than its fair share of sorrow. Thriving in the Industrial Revolution’s environment of corrupt businessmen, lethargic politicians, and draconian educators, utilitarianism seeks only quantifiable results, abandoning emotion and imagination in favor of facts. With its opening exclamation of “Facts, facts, facts!” Charles Dickens immediately makes it clear that Hard Times intends to critique the flawed obsessions of utilitarianism. Most notably, he introduces the Gradgrinds of Coketown, an unmistakable product of a society gone dreadfully wrong. Look no further than Mr. Gradgrind, Dicken’s personification

Charles Dickens novel “Hard Times” is set during the Industrial Revolution and reflects life at that period of time. The novel reveals Dickens disapproval of the utilitarian education system, which involves teaching children nothing but facts. He shows his dislike through his language and tones the various settings of the main action and through spiraling character development. Dickens uses Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. McChoakumchild as examples of characters who teach children only facts. This is clearly demonstrated even in their names. The word Grind indicates that he is grinding down the children’s imaginations. It also illustrates that he is being very

The conflict in relationships due to family and class conflict can also be seen in Charles Dickens’s Hard Times. The central theme of the novel, that of fact versus fancy, is dramatized through the Gradgrind family and Louisa’s longing to find an imaginative escape into a world not conditioned by economic thinking (Dickens, 1854). Due to the expectations on Louisa and her life, she is bound to certain behaviors, and her desire for something else in her life contradicts those expectations. Only after Louisa marries Bounderby and is led, for the first time, to an encounter with Stephen Black pool, is she given a new perspective of the world around her (Dickens, 1854). Prior to this, Louisa had no conception of individuality in connection with her family outside of the ideas of supply and demand (Schor, 2001).

Along with this modern era came harsh realizations of few or no jobs, ruthless working environments, unsanitary living conditions, polluted homes, unfair distribution of wealth, and false hopes--these were very hard times. In Charles Dickens classic novel Hard Times, Dickens paints for the reader a picture of urbanization in the nineteenth century, "Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun's rays. You only knew the town was there because you knew there could have been no such sulky blotch upon the prospect without a town. 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." Dickens shows that the murky smoke stacked city is a place of depression and at the heart of it all is industry.

In Hard Times, Charles Dickens explores the importance of the developments of both intellect and emotions throughout a child’s upbringing. However, to an extent, Dickens emphasizes on the greater importance of emotional growth compared to intellectual growth; such as the much happier and more compassionate human being Sissy is compared to Louisa and Tom, whom have had all ‘fancy’ rooted out of their childhood. Furthermore, although Bitzer may not be unhappy in any way, he still lacks compassion and an understanding of emotions as a result of his education under Gradgrind’s “fact only” system. As such, the administrator of this system, Gradgrind, also lacks the ability to recognise emotion, and hence was unable to acknowledge his children’s

In “Hard Times”, Dickens uses heroes, villains, and bystanders who represent people of his time. Dickens captures the social group system of nineteenth-century England by drawing from the travelers, represented by the circus people, the struggling labor class, the up and coming middle class, and the fading upper class.

These stories and their settings reflect the poverty which Dickens lived in at one point and, by reading these stories, a person with little background on the matter, can clearly see Dickens’s past come alive in his stories. Some also argue that Dickens uses reality as a foundation for his stories, and that “‘the Dickens World’ was his everyday world” (Johnson VII). In both stories, society is the main, if not sole, enemy of the characters present and establishes a conflict with the main characters. Through these battles with society, the reader can clearly see the reality that Dickens had developed into an enemy of the society that had been pushing down on him since childhood. Although he was now amongst society as a writer, he fought against the practices that were seen in it with ideas such as “having fewer selfish purposes” (Edinburgh Review 1845), and by doing so, convert the populace of society to think with more emotion rather than the excess of reason plaguing England at that time.

Hard Times by Charles Dickens is a social and moral tale of his normal vein. It takes place in a fictional mining town during the height of the industrial revolution and introduces characters intended to represent the extremes of society during that time. Mr. Gradgrind and his family, as well as his associate Mr. Bounderby and his employee Mrs. Sparsit all represent the no-nonsense upper middle class to upper class of the time (mid-nineteenth century). They were raised in religion with a basis in moral living, compassionate only when it served the interests they considered valuable. Their approach to life was to live simply, enjoy little excess, and pass these values to the next generation in a stern, concise manner. As Mr. Gradgrind delivered his proposal to Sissy Jupe after learning her father had absconded, it was clear he did so with intent to show his moral character to others, “I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly educated; and you will be living proof to all who come into communication with you, of the advantages of the training you will receive. You will be reclaimed and formed.”

Pip is the main character in Charles Dickens novel “Great Expectations’. The great Victorian novelist is preoccupied by great expectations of transitioning from childhood to a gentleman. His growth is eminent all through the novel as he develops from a young inexperienced boy into a gentleman. His development is through three stages and the stages can be divided into the innocence stage, the stage if sin and finally the redemption stage. Pip starts out as an innocent young boy and later goes out to London in the quest of becoming a gentleman. He lives a bad life neglecting his friends and family before his redemption stage where he tries to amend all the mistakes that he had committed in his stage of sin.

Expectations are rooted within human emotions; therefore, they can have the capacity to cause angst on the author of those emotions. Dickens focused with the of the first person narrative in the novel, in order to create the character’s actions were in fact rooted within their internal actions from their consciousness; rather than their interactions and care for each other. The subjective view point of how any human envisions the world is in direct conflict, with how the world actually is; this is what self-deception is and therefore, takes a grip upon the actual reality of the characters then causes dramatic repercussions for the characters in the novel. Pip had trained himself to believe that his wealth and his status were being righteous rewarded to him out of good faith; Miss Havishim’s aspirations had barred her in within the world; and Estella’s life seemed almost out of her control, in consideration to her marriage to Bentley Drummel; who Pip viewed as an unromantic partner for her; however was viewed as the person she ought to marry out of sense of security.

In the early part of his journey, Pip is a character deeply entrenched into becoming a gentleman. As he matures, Pip is portrayed in many different lights by Charles Dickens in the way that Pip manages his relationships with others and his own personal view on his ascending social status. He is seen as a charming child, a cocky cavalier, and finally, a complete character in the process of developing his mind from a child to an adult. Through the descriptions of his mental state and the interactions he had during his rise to gentleman status, Dickens is able to not only portray his view through the transformation of Pip’s inherent view on class rank in society, but also describe how ambivalent Pip is in his emotions to the people he loves.

In Charles Dickens’ Hard Times, the narrator is third person limited omniscient. This means that the narrative voice has a wide overview of the acts, but it doesn’t always have an acute account of what is happening. Dickens made

Summary: As the most popular English novelist of the Victorian era, Charles Dickens has his own composing features, one of which is to utilize distinctive language as a salient method to form different characters. He forms very new and striking expressions out of rather special words so that almost all the speeches fit a ll the characters who speak them. In addition to a knowledge of figures ‟ personalities, we can also get a deep understanding of the theme，characters‟ psychology and their interrelationship through their