Lit202

Charles Dickens

Hard Times

The novel did not enjoy a superior reputation until F.R Leaves - famous literature scholar from Cambridge - critiqued it and elevated it to a very high level.

It's a novel that operates on many levels -

popular novel - comedy - interesting

it also serves as a social commentary - functions as an exploration of human nature - also an exploration of pedagogy principles.

It's also a critique of industrialisation - also a critique of Victorian social morays.

The success of the work is the seamless intertwining of these ideas into one whole.

Is Charles making a point against capitalism or merely against its successors?

Are the workers inherently noble and the bosses inherently flawed?

Only rarely do we feel that Dickens is preaching and going off on a moral tangent (extraneous to the plot)

Dickens uses caricatures. Sentamentality. The obvious appeal to emotion. Which is not just a technique but is also a theme. Characters personifying world views (similar in Frankenstein).

The transition between Romanticism to Victorianism.

Victorian Age - 1830-1903 - An age of manners - Oscar Wilde - Gerard Manly Hopkins - John Ruskin - Matthew Arnold - John Stewart Mill - Alfred Lord Tennyson - Charles Darwin - Frederick Engles - Karl Marx.

A period that gave too much to manners and 'keeping up appearances'.

Dickens critiques and challenges utilitarians and recognises its all pervasive influence on his contemporary education - and the connection between the education explored in the novel and the consequences of that education - visibly realised in the Industrialisation.

Mill - along with Bentham - was one of the leaders of the utilitarian movement.

The utilitarians untied the rainbow.

For Dickens - the mechanized man perfectly gives rise to the mechanized society.

Chesterton wrote about hard times.

permanent and presiding humanity -

The book titles -

The first: sowing

The second: reaping

the third: garnering

agrarian images

'murdering of the innocence' - biblical.

Explains the character like the character is explaining himself - 'Thomas Gradgrind, sir'

Rationalistic view of life which thinks they just can just generalise, summarise and break down the mystery of existence. (by extracting we are exhausting, according to Dickens.)

Sissy Jupe ignores the truth. He is trying to manipulate the truth to make it palatable. So this is the irony - using