Essays on Bounderby

The Novel “Hard Times” by Charles Dickens is a story that is in a 19th century setting about the industrial town of Coketown which is in England. The ideologies presented by Dickens presents were not only relevant to the society at the time, but they can also be traced in the society today. The ideologies reflect the realities that are at play in societies and families such as utilitarianism, the ideological state apparatus (ISA), social class, and morality just to mention a few. Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby are followers of utilitarianism. This is true in the sense that they believe ...

Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times is a hard-hitting and fascinating look at the state of England's working poor during his time; the depiction of these social problems, particularly in the first nine chapters of the book, is very telling of his attitudes toward the treatment of the poor in England. In the world of Coketown, a place filled with dark smoke and factories, fact is held up as the best and most prudent thing to have; imagination is downplayed as being useless to a modern society. Dickens uses vivid characters and extensive use of setting and tone to describe an England that ...

Charles Dickens’s Hard Times is a novel divided into three books. These books are entitled “Sowing”, “Reaping” and “Garnering”. Explain how each book’s title relates to the events, characters, and themes in it, and and analyze how the novel’s three sections convey Dickens’s central message about rationality and logic in mid-nineteenth century England.

The titles that Dickens chooses for the three books of Hard Times work on different levels: the words are associated with agriculture and imply a nostalgia for the rural traditions that were swept away by the Industrial Revolution – sowing the seeds, reaping the crop, ...