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Essential concepts: the name comes from Queen Victoria who reigned from 1837 to 1901
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It was an age of contradictions: there were very strong points (progress, social reforms, stability) and very week points (injustice and poverty)
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Very important date: 1832 the first reform act → expanded the right to vote to the citizens of the big industrialized towns. They recognized their role in the towns and asked to be represented.
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Victoria married Prince Albert: model for the society → family was an important ideal in that society, it was also a father-centered society.
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Queens are most important that men in the development of the govern.
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Inside society 3 tends of thought come out: Utilitarianism, Puritanism, Darwinism.
The first sends back to Bentham's theory of utility. The second was a doctrine by which everyone had to do his best. It invited people to produce and to pray, in adopted rigid orthodox standards of behaviors. (EX. Woman has t stay at home, looking after her children. Man has to work for the subsistence of the family). It was a binary way of thinking. The third sends back to the evolutionary principles according to which only victors survive → You have to adopt to the context you live in. In the case of Victorian age you have to adopt to utility and facts.
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Everything that is not used for production if utility in neglected. Emotions are marginalized.
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Hard Times by Charles Dickens: is the best expression of an utilitarian society and its characters are the best representation of the mentality so called “self-made man”.
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Victorian age: most important social class was the middle class → the back bone of the country. Capitalists belonged to the middle class were in conflict with the labors of the working class. That conflicts are the result of the transformation from an agricultural country to an industrialized one.
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The empire: the highest power in the world of the time. Competition with European countries, United States and Japan → Great Britain obtained raw material from her colonies → motto “the white men's burden”
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Literary texts: Mr. Bounderby and Coketown belong to Hard Times → puritan concepts of living in a society that put family in its center and that privileges man.
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Coketown: typical product of industrialized England → unnatural. The title is symbolic of fuel that allows industrialization. The narrator makes a rhetorical description: he uses hyperbolic, exaggerated, symbolic, metaphoric, religious, language to provide an indirect criticism of that town.
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The narrator: in both the text is a third person omniscient narrator. It is also intrusive because the narrator steps into the text and dialogues with the reader.
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Mr Bounderby: he is a representation of the middle class (EX. He is a man devoid of sentiments). His characterization is based on judgments connected to reputation. Dickens uses irony to make an indirect criticism to the “self-made man”.
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Dickens appeals to the language of sense impression: (EX. Three colors of Coketown) use of a language that appeals to sight and hearing.
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He uses hyperbolic language to create a character that becomes comic: technique of grotesque → to create a puppet of the characters deforming their features.
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Mrs. Gradgrind: relevant contrast with the exaggerated vitality of Mr. Bounderby. Her weakness is both physical and mental → idea of disease in contrast with Mr. Bounderby's vitality.
