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Society and class in Dickens novel
Classism in dickens book hard times
Social aspect in Hard Times by Charles Dickens
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Jason Foster
Mr. Sparling
English 4
May 5, 2014
Sissy and Louisa
Charles Dickens' Hard Times is a story which covers many different themes. Dickens uses different characters to express different themes, and two of these characters are Louisa Gradgrind and Sissy Jupe. They are polar opposites of each other and Dickens creates them in this way for the purpose of expressing the effects that different ways of interpreting and living life will have on a person. Sissy and Louisa are similar only in a few simple ways, but their differences are what change the characters completely. The way they were both raised affects their views of the world drastically.
Louisa is Gradgrind's daughter and both her and her brother have both been used by their father as test subjects. The ideology they are raised on is total utilitarianism; there is nothing important besides facts and statistics. There is no room for emotions or imagination because they are useless and pollute the mind. “It was a fundamental principle of the Gradgrind philosophy that everything was to be paid for. Nobody was ever on any account to give anybody anything, or render anybody help without purchase. Gratitude was to be abolished, and the virtues springing from it were not to be. Every inch of the existence of mankind, from birth to death, was to be a bargain across a counter. And if we didn’t get to Heaven that way, it was not a politico-economical place, and we had no business there.” (255) This mindset is responsible for her getting into a marriage that has no love in it whatsoever, and she nearly has an affair. “I have done no worse, I have not disgraced you. But if you ask me whether I have loved him, or do love him, I tell you plainly, father, that it may be that it may b...
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...rby and Harthouse. “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17)
Sissy gets her children and husband in the end while Louisa is only able to be a bit of a nanny to Sissy's children, never actually having any children herself. Dickens' point is that it's better to be connected with humans and experience emotions as well as let your imagination be large. We're humans, not robots. Emotion and imagination are a gift from God, and through them we can also help and bless others. However, if you're concerned with only the facts and statistics of the world, your life in no better than a Microsoft excel spreadsheet. Luckily, as we saw with Louisa and Sissy, opposites often attract and balance each other out.
Works Cited
The Holy Bible. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2005. Print.
Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. S.I.: S.n., 2009. Print.
Works Cited
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12. Oldham, R. (2000) Charles Dickens’ Hard Times: Romantic Tragedy of Proletariat Propaganda [Online]. Available: http://www.pillowrock.com [Accessed: 25th April 2005].
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Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. Ed. Fred Kaplan and Sylvere Monod. A Norton Critical Edition. 3rd ed. New York: Norton, 2001. 5-222
Charles Dickens is the author of many well-known classics such as A Tale of Two Cities, Bleak House, Great Expectations, and David Copperfield, but he was a man of humble beginnings. Dickens was born on February 7, 1812 in Portsmouth, England as the second of eight children. Though they had high aspirations for success, Dickens’ family remained poor, and his father was even imprisoned for debt. When Dickens’ entire family was sent to work in a downshodden boot-blacking factory, he felt that he had lost “his youthful innocence… betrayed by the adults who were supposed to take care of him. These sentiments would later become a recurring theme in his writing”(biography.com). This life did not last long, as he was soon able to return home, after
When considering representation, the ways in which the authors choose to portray their characters can have a great impact on their accessibility. A firm character basis is the foundation for any believable novel. It is arguable that for an allegorical novel - in which Hard Times takes its structure, Dickens uses an unusually complex character basis. The characters in Hard Times combine both the simplistic characteristics of a character developed for allegorical purposes, as well as the concise qualities of ‘real’ people (McLucas, 1995). These characters are portrayed to think and feel like we as readers do and react to their situations in the same way that most of us would. Such attributes are what give the characters life and allow us to relate to their decisions.
...ggles. Mr. Gradgrind’s two oldest children, Tom and Louisa, are examples of how a utilitarian method can fail horribly. Tom and Louisa were never given the opportunity to think for themselves, experience an adventurous life, or even use their imaginations. True, they are intelligent human beings but do not have the capability to understand street smarts. Dickens uses irony as a comical device but also to show how ineffective the utilitarian method of teaching is.