Hard Times of Charles Dickens - Essay Example

? CHARLES DICKENS’S HARD TIMES RESONATES WITH THE WORKS OF HIS CONTEMPORARIES PARTICULARLY IN RELATION TO THE ENCROACHING EFFECTS OF INDUSTRIALIZATION AND URBANIZATION ON THE LIVES AND HUMANITY OF THE ENGLISH WORKING CLASS by [Author’s Name] 06 March 2011 Charles Dickens’s Hard Times Resonates with the Work of His Contemporaries Particularly in Relation to the Encroaching Effects of Industrialization and Urbanization on the Lives and Humanity of the English Working Class Introduction That urbanization and industrialization changed the order of life in English class workers is a well-known fact. The rapid development of cities and evolution of industrial relations caused serious negative consequences in the English working class. Rationality and calculation became the distinctive feature of the English reality. Thousands of people had to give up their romantic ideals for the sake of economic fight and survival. Charles Dickens’s Hard Times presents a unique picture of industrialization and urbanization in 19th century England. The sullen atmosphere of Coketown symbolizes suppressed anger of the factory workers and failure to improve their lives and wellbeing. Surprisingly or not, Dickens’s work resonates with and echoes in the works of his predecessors and contemporaries, who discuss the tragic man-city dichotomy and depict the disruption of human integrity by cities. It would be fair to say that Charles Dickens’s Hard Times presents a unique and profoundly philosophic allegory of urbanization and industrialization, which causes encroaching effects on the lives of English class workers and reinforces the sense of human alienation from everything rational and urban. Charles Dickens’s Hard Times is rightly considered as one of the best representations of industrialization and its disintegrative effects on the lives and wellbeing of English class workers. It is a relatively brief novel, which serves an excellent critique of industrialization and its implications for the lives of low class workers in England (Humphreys 2008). Needless to say, Dickens’s novel itself was a frequent object of scholarly criticism. General readers used to criticize Dickens for oversimplification of industrialization and unreasonable attack on everything rational (Humphreys 2008). Nevertheless, it is due to Dickens’s repulsion toward dry statistics, rationality, and facts that Hard Times turned out to be an excellent source of truth about the disruptive effects of industrialization on workers. In Dickens’s book, urbanization and industrialization are associated with the lack of creativity and everything humane. The family of Gradgrinds exemplifies the utmost saneness and extraordinary rationality with no tint of feeling or romance: “No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle […] no little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field […] with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb” (Dickens 1854). Needless to say, those are the products of industrialization, which suppress romanticism and create a sullen atmosphere on Coketown. The name of the city itself symbolizes sullenness and intoxication with rationality. This sullenness, however, is nothing but the sign of repressed anger, which finds no outlet but goes unabated (Colon 2006). The implications of industrial sullenness in Coketown are two-fold: on the one hand, it creates and fosters a claustrophobic atmosphere; on the other hand, it indicates and reflects the growing social dissent in the English work class. Excessive rationality leaves workers beyond the boundaries of improved wellbeing and, at the same time, emphasizes an irresolvable man-city dichotomy. The themes of sullenness and workers’ alienation from the processes of industrialization and urbanization resonate with T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Green and Fernald (2003) are correct in that both works create a set of metaphors which further emphasize the stifling conditions of life in industrialized Coketown. Dickens describes Coketown as a kind of ugly citadel, which has little to do with romance and Nature but is fated to live in the atmosphere of killing gases and unnatural urban constructions (Dickens 1854). In Coketown, people and places, factories and workers, all violently hurry to meet one man’s purpose (Dickens 1854). The crooked shapes of chimneys searching for fresh air and the multitude of houses looking for kind people to be born in them create a pressuring picture of social instability at the verge of violence (Dickens 1854). All these houses and chimneys foster the creation of a new race, called “Hands” – lower creatures with nothing but hands and stomachs; a sort of a working machine without any hint of humaneness (Dickens 1854). It is through these chimneys, crooked houses, and claustrophobic atmosphere that industrial workers in Coketown are connected to their workplaces. In this sense, T.S. Eliot is very close to and echoes the message of industrial tragedy depicted by Dickens. In Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, a man finds himself in the middle of an industrial and urban crisis. In the middle of a large, industrial city, Eliot’s protagonist questions his own power as a human and individual (Green & Fernald 2003). Like Dickens’s Hands, Eliot’s protagonist finds himself in the midst of personal indecision, which leaves little room for self-realization but turns people into working machines. It is an ongoing alienation of cities from people living in them, which positions urbanization and industrialization as effective antipodes to everything human. Dickens’s Hard Times profoundly resonates with the works of his contemporaries and predecessors in the context of urbanization vs. emotional depth. Numerous authors before and after Dickens sought to re-assess the power of cities and their effects on the inner world of people living in them. In his work, Dickens tries to present excessive rationality as the key source of the ongoing paradox between rationality, irregularity, and social instability (Ketabgian 2003). For example, in his Sketches by Boz, Charles Dickens exploits the same city-vs.-human theme and seeks to portray human creatures that lack humaneness in the age of industrialization and machinery. In a similar vein, Charles Darwin (1871) creates and describes a model of the human instinct, which has nothing to do with true humaneness but stems from the mechanical instincts and reflects behind human acts (Iverson 1984). However, the monotony of mechanical instincts in urban societies is profoundly destructive by nature. Coketown is “abating nothing of their set routine, whatever happened. Day and night again, day and night again. The monotony is unbroken” (Dickens 1854). In this situation, city residents have little to no chances to attain their higher goals. The members of Gradgind family constantly feel that they are missing something. This is particularly the case of Louisa. Excessive rationality coupled with urbanization and industrialization ruins her life: she has not a single opportunity to arrange her life in accordance with her wishes and needs (Dickens 1854). In a similar vein, factory workers in Coketown are fated to experience constant pressure of urbanization and rationalism on their shoulders. They lose emotional capacity (Dickens 1854). They are believed to be automatic and mechanical. Everything they do must be easily quantifiable (Dickens 1854). They cannot obtain a divorce, since divorce is available to the wealthy layers only (Dickens 1854). They cannot count on their hands and brains, since they do not help them to earn a better living. To a large extent, Dickens’s story of human alienation and disrupted social stability in industrialized English towns resonates with Signs of the Times, written by Thomas Carlyle in 1829. In this essay, Carlyle, like Dickens, implies that the lack of emotional self-expression in industrial cities can readily become the source of social disagreement and suppressed violence. This violence and anger at being unable to realize themselves is characteristic of almost all Dickens’s characters. In one of her conversations with Tom, Louisa utters: “as I get older, and nearer growing up, I often sit wondering here, and think how unfortunate it is for me that […] I don’t know what other girls know. I can’t play to you, or sing to you […] for I never see any amusing sights or read any amusing books that it would be a pleasure or a relief” (Dickens 1854). Needless to say, people cannot live this way forever. With time, they realize the unbearable pressure of urbanization on their lives. Workers want better conditions of work and life. People want more freedom of self-development and emotional evolution. Urbanization and industrialization deprive people of a chance to realize their emotional potential. Simultaneously, urbanization and excessive rationality leads nowhere but into the midst of a moral and social abyss. However, like with his predecessors and contemporaries, everything Dickens writes in his book is nothing but a sophisticated satire of everything economic. Dickens criticizes economy for its excessive rationality and exposes its inconsistencies. The hatred toward rationality as a product of industrialization and urbanization is one of the most important thematic threads in Dickens’s work. Dickens himself wrote that “my satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else” (Henderson 2000, p.49). However, some Dickens’s thoughts and beliefs about rationality can also be found in the works of other philosophers and writers. Here, MacDonald’s Phantastes is a frequent object of literary analysis. Pennington (1997) writes that Phantastes echoes and expands the ideas and beliefs about rationality, which Dickens described in his Hard Times. Phantastes is believed to reflect Dickens’s concerns about the growing gap between reality and fantasy in an urbanized world (Pennington 1997). Like Dickens, MacDonald emphasizes the alienation and gap between the city and an individual in it. Simultaneously, where Dickens uses extreme reason to explore nonrational things, MacDonald, on the contrary, applies to fantasy in order to explore things that can only be found in fantasy (Pennington 1997). Dickens does not merely criticize urbanization for its excessive rationality and unreasonable reliance on facts, but tries to show that irrationality never dies; it challenges reason and economy in urban societies and can become a relevant antipode to the rational way of understanding things. In this context, several different works support and precipitate Dickens’s attitudes toward rational reality. Lupton (2003) mentions at least three different characters from eighteenth-century literature, which support these ‘rational-irrational’ beliefs. These include but are not limited to a “man without skin” created by Tobias Smollet, Uncle Toby by Laurence Sterne, as well as a man of feeling from Henry MacKenzie’s works (Lupton 2003). These irrational characters in the middle of an urbanized world are successfully offset by the rational writings of Adam Smith and Alexander Pope (Lupton 2003). In Dickens’s book, even Kantian beliefs about philosophy and rationality find their reflection and place (Lupton 2003). All these similarities and differences between Dickens and his contemporaries create a compelling argument that support a belief in the negative consequences and implications of industrialization for worker class people in England. In Dickens’s work, urbanization and industrialization leave little room for self-expression and feeling. They lead to excessive standardization of operations and human actions. Individuals turn into working machines. They cause encroaching effects on English class workers and reinforce the sense of alienation between them and everything rational. Conclusion The rapid development of cities and evolution of industrial relations caused serious negative consequences in the English working class. Charles Dickens’s Hard Times represents a unique picture of industrialization and urbanization in 19th century England. The work resonates with and echoes in the works of his predecessors and contemporaries, who discuss the tragic man-city dichotomy and depict the disruption of human integrity by cities. It would be fair to say that Charles Dickens’s Hard Times presents a unique and profoundly philosophic allegory of urbanization and industrialization, which causes encroaching effects on the lives of English class workers and reinforces the sense of human alienation from everything rational and urban. Dickens’s work resonates with and echoes in the masterpieces of his predecessors and contemporaries, who discuss the tragic man-city dichotomy and depict the disruption of human integrity by cities. The themes of sullenness and workers’ alienation from the processes of industrialization and urbanization resonate with T.S. Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock. Dickens’s story of human alienation and disrupted social stability in industrialized English towns resonates with Signs of the Times, written by Thomas Carlyle in 1829. Green and Fernald (2003) correctly noticed that in that both works create a set of metaphors which further emphasize the stifling conditions of life in industrialized Coketown. Like his predecessors and contemporaries, everything Dickens writes in his book is nothing but a sophisticated satire of everything economic. In Dickens’s work, urbanization and industrialization leave little room for self-expression and feeling. They cause encroaching effects on English class workers and reinforce the sense of alienation between them and everything rational. References Carlyle, T 1829, ‘Signs of the Times’, in T Carlyle & GB Tennyson, A Carlyle reader: Selections from the writings of Thomas Carlyle, pp.31. Colon, S 2006, ‘Dickens’s Hard Times and Dante’s Inferno’, The Explicator, vol.65, no.1, pp.31-33. Dickens, C 1837, Sketches by Boz: Illustrative of every-day life and every-day people, Carey, Lea & Blanchard. Dickens, C 1854, Hard Times, Online Literature, [online], accessed 05 March 2011, http://www.online-literature.com/dickens/hardtimes/9/ Green, TM & Fernald, AE 2003, ‘Eliot’s The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock and Dickens’s Hard Times’, The Explicator, vol.62, no.1, pp.31-33. Henderson, JP 2000, ‘Should economists count? – The Dickensian view’, Forum for Social Economists, vol. 29, no.2, pp.49-59. Humphreys, A 2008, ‘Hard Times’, in D Paroissien (eds), A companion to Charles Dickens, John Wiley and Sons, pp.390-400. Iverson, N 1984, Urbanism and urbanization: Views, aspects, and dimensions, BRILL. Ketabgian, T 2003, ‘Melancholy mad elephants: Affect and the animal machine in Hard Times’, Victorian Studies, vol.45, no.4, pp.649-677. Lupton, C 2003, ‘Walking on flowers: The Kantian aesthetics of Hard Times’, ELH, vol.70. no.1, pp.151-171. Pennington, J 1997, ‘From fact to fantasy in Victorian fiction: Dickens’s Hard Times and MacDonald’s Phantastes’, Extrapolation, vol.38, no.3, pp.200-206. Sterne, L 1804, The works of Laurence Sterne, A.M.: Some account of the life and writings of Mr. Sterne, Printed by John Wyeth. Read More