Charles Dickens first published Hard Times in installments in Household Words, an English periodical edited by himself. It was published in 1854, with sections coming out from April to August. Later in 1854, Hard Times came out in book form. Each publication cost a tuppence, which would be a $1.25 in United States currency today. This low cost ensured “a wide readership” (Allingham, Household Words). Household Words claimed its purpose was “to show to all, that in all familiar things, even those which are repellant on the surface, there is Romance enough, if we will find it out” (Allingham, Household Words). Its main audience was the middle class, though this paper did make a goal of exploring the issues of the working class. Around the time period this book first came out, there were numerous advertisements for Dickens’s works that claimed him to be a “genius” and a “great master of fiction” (Daily News, 5).

Hard Times follows a number of characters ranging from the upper middle class to the poor working class and their lives in an industrial town. Mr. Gradgrind, a character who was a teacher in this story, had a strong philosophy and claimed, “Facts alone are wanted in life” (Book 1, Chapter 1). In Mr. Gradgrind and his faith in “Fact” and his disregard for “Fancy,” Dickens represented the philosophy of utilitarianism. In utilitarianism, there is a focus on the benefit of the group, instead of the individual, which can lead to “ignoring human values” (Stevenson, 9). Hard Times shows the relationship between the rise of technology and utilitarianism and the negative impact it can have on the people. When industrialization arose, the group became important for productivity, but the individual was lost.

The town in Hard Times, Coketown, was described in the following way: “Time went on in Coketown like its own machinery: so much material wrought up, so much fuel consumed, so many powers worn out, so much money made” (Book 1, Chapter 14). The town was simply a machine, with the goal of productivity, taking up the fuel. Patricia E. Johnson in her research article “Hard Times and the Structure of Industrialism: The Novel as a Factory” explored the issue of fuel by asking, “But what is the true nature of the fuel that is being consumed?” (4). The answer can be found in the lines: “So many hundred Hands in this Mill; so many hundred horse Steam Power” (Book 1, Chapter 11). Johnson concluded that “both the fuel and waste product of the factory system is human life” (4).  It can be seen that the workers had their identity in the machines through the fact that they were often just called “Hands.” Charles Dickens shows in Hard Times how industrialization and factories take over the identities of the workers and townspeople.

This allows for a connection to TikTok because Hard Times depict another time where the rise of technology caused a harmful effect on a group of people. The working class become inseparable from the machines they worked on, until they simply became that “fuel” or “Hands.” In the same way, Seattle schools are suing social media for similar harm. Behind screens, kids are more likely to cyber bully. These social media apps are giving rise to a mental health pandemic that the schools say they cannot keep up with. Between both of these events, there has become inseparable between one’s identity and technology.

Picture:

McNamara, Robert. “Biography of Charles Dickens, English Novelist.” ThoughtCo, ThoughtCo, 18 June 2019, www.thoughtco.com/biography-of-charles- dickens-1773689.

Primary:

"Advertisements & Notices." Daily News, 17 Apr. 1899. British Library Newspapers, link-gale-com.proxy.ulib.uits.iu.edu/apps/doc/BA3203397533/BNCN?u=iulib_iupui&sid=bookmark-BNCN&xid=0af971ec. Accessed 27 Apr. 2024.

Dickens, Charles. "The One Thing Needful." Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism, edited by Rebecca Parks, vol. 446, Gale, 2024, pp. 4-6. Gale Literature Criticism, link-gale-com.proxy.ulib.uits.iu.edu/apps/doc/HKEAVK096915109/LCO?u=iulib_iupui&sid=bookmark-LCO&xid=01b129c7. Accessed 27 Apr. 2024. Originally published in Hard Times for These Times, Bradbury and Evans, 1854, pp. 3-4.

Secondary:

JOHNSON, PATRICIA E. “‘HARD TIMES’ AND THE STRUCTURE OF INDUSTRIALISM: THE NOVEL AS FACTORY.” Studies in the Novel, vol. 21, no. 2, 1989, pp. 128–37. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/29532632.

Other Works Cited:

Allingham, Philip V. “Household Words.” Victorian Web, victorianweb.org/periodicals/hw.html.  

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. COVE Studio, BRADBURY & EVANS, 1854, https://studio.covecollective.org/anthologies/eng-l302-anthology-sp24/documents/hard-times.

“Hard Times.” Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, inc., www.britannica.com/topic/Hard-Times-novel-by-Dickens.