Charles Dickens Hard Times Essays -- Charles Dickens Hard Times Essay

Charles Dickens' Hard Times Charles Dickens's Hard Times is one of the most important novels in the Victorian Age. He presents an industrial society in nineteenth century in England. In this age, England prospers in manufacture and trade because of high technologies. It is also a time of trouble. Industrial development causes terrible conditions of a working class. The workers are poor and work hard. Women and children work for many hours. Dickens also presents bad social condition through his work and also shows lives of city people and industrial society in Coketown in England. In Hard times, Dickens has a compassion for the workers and calls for the readers' sympathy by showing the workers' hardships through Stephen Blackpool, a worker who is honest, innocent, generous and full of integrity. However, facing dead-end situations, Stephen Blackpool is the most pathetic figure. Stephen Blackpool is the most suffered and submissive worker. Although he is good, skilful and diligent power-loom weaver, his life is not much improved, but he has to work for survival. Dickens presents that most of Coketown citizens are workers. He says that they are " generically called ' the Hands'- a race who would have found more favor with some people, if the Providence had seen fit to make them only hands, or, like the lower creatures of the seashore, only hands and stomachs- lived a certain Stephen Blackpool, for forty years of age." Dickens comments on the terrible lives of workers. The word " generically" presents that the workers can't rise in the world because they have no education and have not enough money to make their lives better and comfortable. Their children must face the hardship such as working hard and ... ...asks for solution to improve the workers' lives because this is an important problem. The setting increases the compassion for Stephen. It is dark and silent. Everybody mourns for him, and the darkness symbolizes sorrow and death. This picture also shows Rachael's love for Stephen. She kneels on the grass, clasp his hand and tries to comfort although he hurts badly and is going to die. This picture shows the relationship between Stephen Blackpool, his wife and Rachael. Stephen and Rachael love each other, but he can't divorce his wife because of the high expense in lawsuit that he can't afford. Rachael is good and generous woman who takes care of Stephen's wife. She is like an angel, light and shining star. On the contrary, his wife is helpless and alcoholic. She increases Stephen's burden and tries to commit suicide, but Rachael can save her life.