Imagine a world in which everyone was the same, assimilating to the same ideas, concepts and beliefs. Now incorporate into this world that everyone possesses the same knowledge, repeats the same facts by rote, and is required to recite only certain phrases, receiving punishment for any degree of deviation. Those with conflicting ideas are chastised and made fun of, publicly ridiculed, anything to preserve the perfect state of supposed order. Like machines the students file into class, like machines they leave. This is the world Charles Dickens creates to describe utilitarian England during the Victorian era, caricaturizing its hyper-logical nature to establish a biting point: England was being corrupted by a philosophy that lent no value to art, creativity, and individualization, caring only for cold, hard facts and uniformity. In his work of satire, Dickens utilizes several devices which allow him to craft a polarized work of societal criticism—through exaggerated characterization, excessive humor, and vivid imagery, Dickens creates for us both a work of entertainment as well as harsh cultural opinion.
A key device Dickens utilizes in this novel is striking imagery to indicate his point of view regarding the primary philosophy of his society. Dickens’ powerful opinion of utilitarianism was labeled clearly through copious examples of imagery from the novel, such as from the quote describing a house: “A calculated, cast up, balanced, and proved house. Six windows on this side of the door, six on that side; a total of twelve in this wing, a total of twelve in the other wing; four-and-twenty carried over to the back wings”. Another particularly obvious example appears at the commencement of the novel, in the form of descriptions of Mr. Gradgrind and his unusually square shoulders. (Dickens 1&12). These forms of exaggerated description not only involve humor, but also allow the reader to visually interpret nearly the whole novel, almost in a filmic way. This causes the audience to more easily ascertain Dickens’ true message, as every chapter is over emphasized and visually depicted. Less time is spent on reading, and more on visualizing the hyperbolic scenes concealed.
Characterization in this novel is one of the aspects that Dickens utilizes to represent the errant philosophy in English Victorian society. Most of the characters in Hard Times have a symbolic significance that stands for something. One of the main characters in this novel is a man of harsh reality named Mr. Gradgrind who thinks that only facts, calculations, and the measurable are important but not emotions and creativity. Dickens writes in Gradgrind’s words, “‘You must discard the word Fancy altogether… You never meet with quadrupeds going up and down walls; you must not have quadrupeds represented upon walls. You must use,' said the gentleman, 'for all these purposes, combinations and modifications of mathematical figures which are susceptible of proof and demonstration’” (1.2.44). This is one of the few times in the novel where logic and fact are related to true beauty. Picture the world being described here as one where everything can only be decorated with squares, rectangles, or triangles. However, there is a main force of contradiction to Thomas Gradgrind – Sissy Jupe, a girl who lives in imagination and emotions unaffected by Gradgrind’s unreasonable reason. She is the only character who receives a happy ending involving marriage and children, the circus, and other forms of entertainment. But she is also clearly one of the more realistic and lifelike characters in the novel. Taken in a broader sense, Gradgrind and Jupe demonstrate two different English mindsets during the Victorian time period and model a comparison between the old generation and the new generation. Gradgrind is clearly personification of what was known as utilitarianism in commonplace Victorian philosophy and he represents this worldview in its most rigid form through facts, figures and statistics education. In contrast, Sissy Jupe doesn't accept the classical utilitarian assumption because she thinks that life should depend on actions of well-being and morality (Rawls [23], p. 30). In this way, the characterization in Dickens’s Hard Times is one of the main concerns in regard to giving the social vision of Victorian society being inside the overall purpose of the novel.
If anything, Dickens is the most humorous in this novel. Take for example this excerpt: “It's a bad job; that's what it is. You had better have been satisfied as you were, and not have got married. However, it's too late to say that.' 'Was it an unequal marriage, sir, in point of years?' asked Mrs. Sparsit […] 'Note' en so. I were one-and-twenty myself; she was twenty nigh but.' 'Indeed, sir?' said Mrs. Sparsit to her Chief, with great placidity. 'I inferred, from its being so miserable a marriage, that it was probably an unequal one in point of years.” (1.11.29-33). Though this section may not seem to pertain to utilitarianism directly, it does lighten the tone slightly, allowing the audience to more easily read Dickens’ harsh social critique. This excerpt describes a situation in which two of the adult characters, Mrs. Sparsit and Mr. Bounderby, are discussing a marriage between the latter and a fifteen-year-old girl; this is something quite egregious now, and would have been even then. Though Dickens is humorous in this passage, perhaps he is also emphasizing a specific example in which English society is adversely affected by the emotionless and apathetic nature of utilitarian society.
Therefore, Dickens quite eloquently derides the utilitarian mindset of uniformity through intense characterization with the radical Gradgrind and the innocent Sissy Jupe, cutting humor that makes his novel a slightly easier pill to swallow, and striking imagery with description that almost transmits all information in a kind of filmic form. All of these devices seemed to aid Dickens in the communication of his overarching message—every person has a different form of thinking and their own opinions, and that uniqueness should be held sacred. Like Dickens shows in his novel, the utilitarian Gradgrind didn’t listen to his students if they possessed an opposing or even mildly different opinion from himself; he dealt with everything and everyone with facts. In Dickens’ mind, all members of society should respect other people’s individuality—in this way, great beauty may be added to community through diversity.
PERSON-AFFECTING UTILITARIANISM AND POPULATION POLICY,
jwcwolf.public.iastate.edu/Papers/JUPE.HTM.
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