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Charles Dickens is one of the most renowned British writers with well-known and widespread work. Dickens was born in England in 1812 and died in 1870. During this time, Victorian England experienced an Industrial Revolution, which impacted his life tremendously. New factories and industrial machinery changed many lives of the lower class citizens. The family grew up impoverished and struggled to maintain a good lifestyle. The family’s financial situation was strained as John Dickens, Charles’s father, spent money that the family didn’t have. These societal factors were influential in Charles Dickens’s life, and the same themes present themselves in his works. When an author creates a work, frequently themes of their life events are incorporated into the theme of the book, consciously or unconsciously. Victorian Age industrial-influenced strife was a common theme in Dickens’s life and presented itself throughout Dickens’s books.

1) This passage in the nineteenth chapter in the book. This passage explains how Sissy treated Francie like her daughter when she went up to Mrs. Briggs to tell her that she has a severe kidney problem and that she can drop dead in class time if she doe not go out.

The novel’s opening words (Book 1, Chapter 1) “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity. . .” Provided, Dickens conveys the relationship between poverty and aristocracy through the use of parallelism, paradox, and other poetic techniques. In addition to, Dickens's technique functions not only to draw opposites, but to reveal hidden parallels.

English author Charles Dickens has written many well known novels such as Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol, of which both have a recurring theme: the expectations of society. During the Victorian Era, England was over populated and had terrible living conditions, with an enormous gap between the rich and the poor. Generally, people during the Victorian Era were not allowed to talk about things such as sex and crime, and had to live by strict social rules set by society. With the social disparities came many other concerns as well. Charles Dickens eloquently displays issues such as child abuse, prostitution, poverty, and crime in such a way that readers are able to understand and view them from diverse perceptions. By creating characters that have been through hell and back, Charles Dickens executes a great display of struggle especially within the lower classes. In the works of Charles Dickens, the wide variety of social issues of the Victorian Era are presented in a way such that readers are able to see specific issues from the perspectives of people from contrasting social classes, while speaking from his own experience through the characters. By doing so, Dickens is able to compare and contrast issues deemed controversial in the Victorian Era, especially regarding the disadvantaged.

Written by Dickens in 1815, Hard Times attempts to convince readers by illustrating the fact that life during the Industrial Revolution was anything but pleasant for human beings. Centred around Mr. Gradgrind and his moderately sized family, Dickens succeeds at giving the reader a up close and personal view of what it meant to be a father, mother, man, woman, and child during the industrial revolution. Dickens also provides the reader with three central themes: the mechanization of human beings, the conflict of fact versus fantasy, and the significance of the female figure. Dickens set out with a goal in writing this novel to expose the truth on how grim the Industrial Revolution really was for the human race. I therefore think that, through examining various examples sprawled throughout the text in connection to the three themes, there should definitely be enough evidence to conclude that Dickens interpretations of the Industrial Revolution were believably similar and, in a sense, true to what people were faced with during the 18th

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.”

Sissy seemed to be the only one who knew that Louisa felt no form of love towards Mr. Bounderby. She felt extremely sympathetic for Louisa, mourning the loss of freedom that she never truly had. At this moment, Louisa could not bring herself to look at Sissy. She felt coldness and pride that prohibited her from having any real feelings. Sissy was able to experience life in completely different way that Louisa was not.

Charles Dickens was a well known, celebrated author of the Victorian Era. Though he was successful, he faced many setbacks in his difficult life. His father was hurled into debtors’ prison when Dickens was young (Bragg 5) and he was left with his mother and six siblings (Rooke 1). Dickens, being the oldest male of the family (Rooke 1), had to go work in a factory during his formative years. Dickens’ rough childhood made him insensitive. (Bragg 1) When Dickens came of age, he began to show interest in writing novels and short stories (Bragg 2). His mother, however, was unsupportive of his endeavors (Bragg 2), and was often after him for his money (Bragg 2). He was said to have lived a depressing, lonely adulthood (Bragg 1) and people used to

Representation of Different Social and Cultural Forces in The Handmaid's Tale by Atweeon and Hard Times by Dickens

In history, a woman was the one who would nurture the bodies and minds of her children and husband. Dickens story takes a turn when he makes Mr. Gradgrind take on this role. Mrs. Gradgrind is barely mentioned but continues to have a strong message in her character. Through hard facts Gradgrind teaches both his students and children the same things and removes the burden of ideal femininity from his daughter, Louisa. Unfortunately, this leaves her unprepared for entering the world outside her own progressive family. She is unable to fulfill the idealized roles of wife and mother, and has no other options for adulthood outside of these. This book shows the constant need of a female role model in the household but fails to show it’s proceed

Throughout the somber passage, Hard Times, Charles Dickens depicts an image of a monotonous industrial town. With the aid of syntactical structures, the author demonstrates the town’s uniformity.

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

Hard Times is a novel, so this work can be regarded as a fiction; however, it is also a novel that reflects facts and satirizes facts. Though the story is fancy, the background really shows British social conditions at that time. Therefore, in his

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).

Charles Dickens is one of the most influential writers in history and was “born in Landport, now part of Portsmouth, on February 7th, 1812”(Priestly 5). Despite being the successful writer that he was in life, Dickens had very humble beginnings and because his Father, John Huffman Dickens, “lacked the money to support his family adequetly” , Dickens lived in poverty through out most of his childhood (Collins). Matters only got worse, however, when Dickens’s Father had to “spen[d] time in prison for debt” causing Dickens to have to “work in a London factory pasting labels on bottles of shoe polish” (Collins). It was a horrible experience for him, but it also helped him to no doubt feel pity for the poor, which is