Charles Dickens’ Hard Times is a Novel that captures the social and economic conditions of the nineteenth century. It throws light on the historical period marked by the spread of the Industrial Revolution. The novel highlights how these new perspectives removed man from his fullness, the development of his feelings and life in the midst of an idealised nature, threatened by the advances of industrialisation. The Industrial Revolution, which occurred in England in the mid-eighteenth century, can be understood as an unprecedented revolution that has resulted in economic and social transformations1.
Every process of industrialisation is necessarily painful because it involves the erosion of traditional living standards. However, in Britain, it occurred with exceptional violence and was never accompanied by a sense of national participation in a common effort. The only economical ideology in motion was that of the bosses. What actually happened was violence against human nature. This violence can be considered as the result of the yearning for profit, at a time when the greed of the owners of the means of production was free from the old restrictions and had not yet been limited by the new instruments of social control. It was neither poverty nor disease that was responsible for the darkest shadows that covered the years of the Industrial Revolution, but the work itself (Westkamper and Walter, 2014)2. Dickens can be seen to echo this greed of production and profit amongst the bourgeois as the novel undergoes an ironic construction, giving voice to the working class, not for the intention of representing those that cannot be heard but to expand profit and readership. In this sense, Dickens himself promotes the industrial capitalist ideologies.
Dickens further embodies the ideologies of the industrial capitalist through the character of Mr. Bounderby, the wealthy manufacturer who profits from the excruciating labour of the working class. Young Thomas Gradgrind is one of the many workers “passed into Bounderby’s Bank, [and] made an inmate of Bounderby’s house”3, this image of the worker being passed through the bank dehumanises the individual and adds to the yearning for profit amongst money motivated owners, who simply saw the working class as a business tool. Thomas is described as an ‘inmate’ further depicts an image of restraint and lack of power within the working class as a result of industrialisation, becoming a pawn within society to benefit those who are capable of eroding the lifestyles and mindsets of the working class.
In Europe, until the eighteenth century, the past was the model for the present and for the future. The old man represented wisdom, not only in terms of experience, but also of the memory of how things were, how they were made, and how things should be done. Currently, the accumulated experience is no longer considered as relevant in the nineteenth century, knowledge becomes a statement of fact as opposed to living experience and wisdom. Mr. Gradgrind represents the notion of fact being an essential requirement in life that should not be eluded by curiosity. The industrial era is a time of materialist philosophy which is defined by the tangible, “Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder”4, Gradgrind believes the individual must only govern pre-existing philosophies and demands life to be lived in the present. This view coincides with the industrial locomotion and speed which individuals felt during the revolution of the new world, to move forwards whilst disregarding what is behind, in the past. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the novelty brought by each generation is much more striking than its resemblance to what it had before (Westkamper and Walter, 2014)5.
Dickens, as a social commentator, is conscious of the decline of imagination and fancy during the Industrial Revolution. A time when man became one with the machine. Throughout the novel, Dickens illustrates the working class characters as individuals who lack common knowledge and live without the capability of imagination or genius. Tom, for example, is described as a gentleman “whose imagination had been strangled in his cradle”6, Dickens reinforces the capitalist ideology to control and manipulate the minds of the working class in order to develop an industrialised society beneficial to those financially successful, the bourgeois. The minds of the less fortunate are programmed to collaborate with the machines they are forced to work with.
The Industrial Revolution brought great increases, both in the technology of steam engines and in the general process of production. The factories of the eighteenth century replaced the old craft workshops. In craft workshops, the craftsman was the independent producer. Craftsmanship produces the whole piece, which requires disposition, dexterity in the use of tools, and the ability to transform raw material into a manufactured one. Each piece is unique, the amount produced is small (Kaelble, 2017)7. The Industrial Revolution destroyed the craft production system and introduced the manufacturing system. In this system the machine is fundamental. Yet the machine cannot function without man, therefore the machine and man were forced to become one. It has a uniform source of energy that sets it in motion, dispenses with man’s willingness to be operated on.
The machine starts to homogenise human work. Man must be subordinated to the rhythm of the machine. The output is standardised and increases exponentially. The social division of labor and the machine make it possible to meet the growing demand needs. The essence of the Industrial Revolution is the shift from the use of the tool to the machine in the production process. One may say the man becomes the tool to the machine in the production process. This ideology is supported in Chapter 11 'No Way Out’, “the looms, and wheels, and hands all out of gear for an hour”8 describes the human body in a mechanical and industrialised way. The machine and human become one and work in society hand in hand. The industrial revolution transformed man’s relations with work. The machines changed the ways of working, and the factories were concentrated close to raw materials and large ports, resulting in vast human concentrations (Westkamper and Walter, 2014)9. Dickens firmly engages with the theme of industrialisation throughout Hard Times, with an understanding that man and the machine coexist in the nineteenth century. This is represented through the philosophies of people such as Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. Bounderby and the working ethics of characters young Thomas Gradgrind and Stephen Blackpool.
In conclusion, the work of Charles Dickens does throw light on the industrialisation and how it impacted the society at the time. It discusses how the industrialisation in the fanatical Coketown impacted the relations and the how machines began to replace labor gradually, depicting life in Northern England during the nineteenth century. Also, Dickens reinforces the capitalist ideology to control and manipulate the minds of the working class in order to develop an industrialised society beneficial to those financially successful. The minds of the less fortunate are programmed to collaborate with the machines they are forced to work with.