Dickens lived in Victorian
England, full of economic turmoil, as the Industrial Revolution changed the
established order. The disparity between the rich and poor, the middle and
working classes, grew as factory owners exploited their employees in order to increase
their own profits. Workers, (“the Hands” of Hard Times) worked long hours for low pay in
cramped, dirty, loud, and dangerous factories, they lacked education and job
skills, therefore they had few options for improving their living and working
conditions.
Dickens became involved with a
number of organizations that worked to alleviate the horrible living conditions
of the London
poor, and, though never a propagandist, Dickens used his art to focus attention
on the plight of the poor and to attempt to awaken the conscience of the
reader.
Hard Times is set amid the industrial factories of Coketown, England,
its characters and stories expose the
gulf between the nation’s rich and poor and criticize the unfeeling
self-interest of the middle and upper classes. Hard Times suggests that
nineteenth-century England
is turning into a factory machine: the middle class is concerned only with
making a profit in the most efficient and practical way possible. Hard Times
is not a difficult book: Dickens wanted all his readers to catch his point
exactly, and the moral theme of the novel is very explicitly articulated. There
are no hidden meanings in Hard Times, and the book shows the writer
subordinating his art to a moral and social purpose.
