This paper provides an examination of Charles Dickens' novel 'Hard Times' and the allegorical significance of Coketown, applying sociological and historical perspectives.
Abstract In this article, the writer studies the allegorical significance of Coketown within Dickens' novel 'Hard Times'. The writer maintains that the typical manufacturing towns of industrial Britain are examined and Dickens intends to penetrate through the veneer of material prosperity and expose how society was degenerating in many ways. The writer discusses that Dickens' particular wrath is reserved for the ethos of utilitarianism which characterized the Victorian epoch. He demonstrates how this philosophy becomes a smokescreen that hides the ambition of the baser elements of society and facilitates their rise to dominance. The writer maintains that Dickens wants to show that cold calculation and self interest do not make for an environment of healthy human interaction. The essay offers detailed character studies as well as sociological and historical analyses of the times.
From the Paper "Coketown is an allegorical place through which Dickens presents his vision of Industrial England. It is a harsh and bitter reality that he intends to convey. In the wake of the Industrial Revolution, Britain witnessed the phenomenon of the Industrial town, a place devoted to manufactures by the way of enormous factories, and driven by a voracious profit motive of the capitalists who owned the factories. The ferocious ambition of the capitalists led to exploitation on an unprecedented scale. The land and resources were plundered, and the brunt of the exploitation fell on the lower strata of society, who were forced to abandon the countryside and to huddle in the city slums, because the factories offered the only means of subsistence for them. The harsh realities of Industrialism are what gave rise to Socialism from various learned and intellectual centers in Europe. This was a political philosophy that sympathized with the oppressed proletariat after positing a class struggle between the owners of capital and their workers. "
Abstract This paper shows how throughout the novel Dickens satirically portrays the fallacy of reason as society's main motivator not to suggest that imagination's role is more important or should dominate reason, but rather to arouse an awareness of the need for middle ground, an equal helping of both reason and imagination in order for Coketown to maintain its ?great place under the sun."
From the Paper "The text first presents this persisting need for balance through its portrayal of the industrialized city of Coketown. In its physical description, Coketown is portrayed as a "town of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves" as well as a town "where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness" (Dickens 20-21). The narrator describes the factories further as "fairy palaces burst[ing] into illumination, before pale morning showed their monstrous serpents of smoke trailing themselves ... all the melancholy-mad elephants, polished and oiled up for the day's monotony, were at their heavy exercise again" (56). In addition to imaginative description, the text makes repeated reference to the book The Arabian Nights as well as allusions to other fairytales and mythic stories. In emphasizing the imaginative aspects of the strictly Utilitarian Coketown, passages ?invoking the world of fairy-tale ironically, making the inhabitants of this drab, gritty, Victorian mill town re-enact the motifs of folk-tale and legend, [Dickens] drew attention to that repression or elimination of the human faculty of imagination ... which he believed was the culturally disastrous effect of governing society according to purely materialistic, empirical criteria of "utility"? (Lodge 408). This repressive Utilitarian work ethic of Coketown inspires an imaginative "craving" in the townspeople for ?some relaxation, encouraging good humor and good spirits,? a craving that "must and would be satisfied aright, or must and would inevitably go wrong, until the laws of the Creation were repealed" (Dickens 23). The text here implies that one of its purposes is to stress the importance of an equally balanced social order"work/play, reality/fiction, reason/imagination"and fully realizes its purposes through the actions of its characters."
Abstract This paper discusses the main themes and the main characters of "Hard Times". The author shows how Dickens presented education as a microcosm of the social picture of the times and how Dickens explicitly critiqued the education system that existed in 19th century England, the Lancasterian system. The author also explains Dickens' view on the Industrial Revolution that had taken root in England through ?Coketown?, a typical city, and the new breed of employee that had been born - the factory worker.
From the Paper "Imagine a world where there was only one, generic form of employment characterized by an assembly line. After a hard day's work there was no entertainment to be enjoyed: no sports, no opera, no theatre and no movies. No Le Louvre, no La Scala, no Mona Lisa and no Rudolph Nureyev. And lastly, imagine if one person enforced all of this. That person would be perfectly represented by Thomas Gradgrind. In reality, if Thomas Gradgrind had had his way, Newton who probably discovered more facts than any person in our history would not have given the world the foundations of physics that we enjoy today."
