Dickens Hard Time

Maddie Hooyman

History 002

Dickens Paper

Hard Times Class Portrayal

Class distinctions in Europe became more prominent during the Industrial Revolution in the early nineteenth century. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, people were classified into two main categories. They were the laboring poor or the aristocracy, with some merchant or professional people not fitting into either class. However, with the help of the boom in industry, the class distinctions grew wider apart. It was then that it became evident that a new middle class was emerging. This middle class became what is known as today’s modern working class and the people in it were mainly factory workers or industrialist capitalists. They had enough money to earn an honest living while still not entering into that upper threshold of aristocracy (McKay 701). The novel, Hard Times by Charles Dickens, clearly displays all three of these class distinctions and how he perceives each.

The Gradgrind family was a good representation of an upper middle class family in the early nineteenth century. Thomas Gradgrind was a wealthy, retired merchant that based everything off cold, hard facts. Everything is about numbers, or statistics, and he leaves nothing to the imagination. He taught his children this same way and did not tolerate “fancy”, as he referred to it. At the end of the book, his daughter Louisa tells him how unhappy she is and he changes his mind that everything needs to be about fact. Dickens’s used his character to show that there needs to be a balance between fact and fancy, neither one is more or less important than the other.

Gradgrind’s eldest children, Tom and Louisa, were both brought up by their father with the idea that only fact matters. While Tom completely accepts this concept, Louisa is deeply unhappy and feels that something is missing, though she doesn’t know what it is. Tom grows up to be selfish and not a very good person in general. He ends up robbing a bank and letting...