Tough Reading, Good Content

Charles Dickens was also one of these critics, expressing his views in the novel Hard Times. In this novel, Mr. Bounderby and Mr. Gradgrind, two gentlemen who firmly believe in education and proper schooling, represent the classic liberal view of the Revolution and who run businesses whose employees are of the lower class. Dickens criticizes the rationality of the Enlightenment, the idea that man has so much control over the society he wishes to create. Hard Times is a nostalgic reminiscence of the “good old days” of a world that has been lost, the hardships of the Industrial Revolution on the lower classes caused a desire to go back to the past when times were not as difficult. (But in fact times were somewhat more difficult in the past.) The picture of Sissy’s town is a good example- man is closely related to nature and there is a great deal of extended family within the circus, showing people have not moved away to the cities.
Dickens uses the word “Hands” to describe factory workers, such as Stephen Blackpool and Rachael, and they are a central part of the Industrial Revolution. Smith needs them to run his assembly line, but Dickens shows that they are exploited and not treated fairly.