Essay on Hard Times

Essay on Hard Times by Charles Dickens

Choose one topic and write an essay (2 pages). Quote from the novel to support your point.

Submission date: October 11th

• What social and economic roles do women play in Hard Times? What does Dickens see as "appropriate" and "inappropriate" roles for women? Why are certain women in the story punished and others rewarded? Why, for example, does Sissy have children but Louisa doesn't?

• Although marriage is not central to this novel's theme, Dickens offers no less than three examples of "failed" or "failing" marriages: the Gradgrinds', the Bounderbys', and the Blackpools'. Compare the dysfunctional nature of these relationships, identifying the causes of marital breakdown in each case. What, implies Dickens, is the "formula" or secret to a happy marriage? Which character in the book best knows this "secret"? Explain.

• What about its effects makes Dickens hostile to industrial capitalism in Hard Times? How does he reveal his indignation? In what ways does Bounderby, for example, exemplify the worst aspects of the factory-owning class? What cure does Dickens propose for the ills of industrial society as depicted in the novel?

• George Bernard Shaw argues that Dickens deliberately wrote Hard Times to make his middle class readers feel "uncomfortable." Locate the sources of this discomfort, and explain how it serves Dickens's thematic intentions in the novel.