An Indictment of Contemporary Society: A Re-reading of Charles Dickens' “Hard Times”

Abstract

Charles Dickens, one of the greatest Victorian novelists, was not merely an entertainer but also a crusader for a better and more humane world than the world he lived in. Right from the start as a creative artist he exposed evils. For example, in his novel “Pickwick Papers” he mightily satirizes electioneering methods, the tricks of lawyers, the limitations of the law and some other aspects of contemporary life. But in his early novels, social criticism was a secondary element. As his powers matured, it became his dominant concern. He wrote movingly when he lashed out at the maladies with which he found society to be afflicted. Dickens' indictment of contemporary society in his remarkable novel “Hard Times” (1854) is more searching and thoroughgoing than in any other novels. Apart from presenting Bounderby in an unfavourable light as an individual, he focuses on some of the basic assumptions of the Victorian social set-up. He strikes at the system of education based on the doctrine of Utilitarianism as well as the economic theory of laissez-faire.