Social Injustice in Charles Dickens' Hard Times

Sins of society: Hard Times is one of the main novels by Charles Dickens, first published in 1854 during the Industrial Revolution and the Victorian Age. The term “Victorian” encompasses a quite particular historical connection, attaching an appropriate set of ideas, circumstances, values, and attitudes. Actually, the way in which the working classes were treated—their behaviors and the injustices they faced—was the reason why Charles Dickens mainly wrote about the sins of society.

Victorian Education and Social Control

The work mainly explains how both perspectives of education in the 19th century and the working class needed to be broadened and refined. Victorian education was understood as a means of both social control and individual betterment due to the social and economic forces of industrialism. In fact, there were two sides to Victorian society: the middle class and the lower class. The contrast between the education of those classes was highly considerable:

• Middle-class education: Based on the emphasis of scholarship, competitive examination, and moral behavior.
• Lower-class education: Focused on the pedagogy of knowing what their place was.

The Brutal Reality of Industrial Labor

A topic which frequently brought Dickens’ attention was the devastating working conditions of factories. That is the reason why Dickens wrote about his own feelings regarding the alleged negligence of factory owners and mine owners, as well as child labor. In fact, childhood in the Victorian period was normally filled with cruelty and brutality. Furthermore, most poor children usually started working at the age of five; they worked in:

• Coal mines
• Cotton mills
• Chimney sweeping

Dehumanization in the City of Coketown

Charles Dickens had a substantial point of view about people being seen as numbers and statistics. The idea of generalization was highly representative; nobody was important—they were just figures and numbers without personality, being part of an autonomous daily life based on work and effort. In fact, the city described by Charles Dickens in Hard Times, Coketown, is a mechanical city in the monotony of its layout and architecture. Therefore, Victorian society ended up feeling like inhabitants who are denied their uniqueness as human souls, turning them into units in a system that allows them no freedom or spontaneity of behavior, but imposes on them a strict pattern of monotonously repeated actions.