Social Issues In Hard Times

Hard Times is a Novel in which focused on the influence of economic and social condition of the Victorian era by determining particular events and shaping characters. In addition to it embodied an implicit thesis of political reform. In the book culture and society by Raymond Williams (1983) in which studied the social novels of Victorian age , he described Hard Times as a creative examination of Industrialism dominant philosophy. Dickens used fiction as a way for his perpetual fascination with the darker and evil side of human nature. Charles Dickens’s treatment of crime was far more than an authorial device; it was a central point for his deep concern with social problems that played and performed an important role in his attempts

Hard Times is a work that a raised questions on the harsh living conditions of the working class and the poor law system at the Coketown factory. Hobsbaum states that “Hard Times […] is Dickens’ attack upon the System by which the claims of individual human beings are trampled in a general mêlée.”(Jonsson ,2009:3). Charles Dickens’s used of language, diction and vocabulary ítems characterised Hard Times as a unique and gave the novel its complex identity to interpret it and this reflected in the choice of the title Hard Times (Al-Maliki, 2013:74). Charles Dickens selected Hard Times as a title from a list of titles suggested from his friend John Foster when he tried to help him, some of these titles maintained “Mr.Gradgrind’s Fact, Gradgrind Philosophy,Matter of Calculation,Hard Times, Our Hard-headed Friend, Two and Tow Are Four, Rust and Dust”. (Watkin ,2009: 162 Cited by Al-Maliki,

Charles Dickens was strongly critical of the utilitarian principles and ideals through his novel Hard Times, particularly the notion of weath división which left the rich more rich and the poor poorer (Ibid,7). Charles Dickens is well known for his novel Hard Times, He had been writing about the plight of the urban poor and he clearly portrayed English poverty in a more realistic way because he was part of it. One of his greatest achievements was to bring the problems and hard conditions of poverty to the attention of his readers through presenting varieties of poor persons (Ibid,8). Charles Dickens built up sympathy for his heroes of the street while convinced the reader of the harshness of the aristocrats, and any other Dickens’s villain and criminal. Dickens’s characters are all wonderful, and so vivid that the reader begins to know them on a personal level by the end of each novel (Gholami and Joodaki, 2014:7) . The juxtaposition of characters in Dickens’s novel from the lower class against a corrupt industrialized world was a confirmation that the world still has people who are not