( Dickens would face this dilemma himself in just a few years.) Stephen Blackpool is caught in a loveless marriage. He is unable to obtain a divorce and marry the woman he really loves. – Hard Times by Charles Dickensĭivorce is also dealt with in Hard Times.
By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder.
Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Thomas Gradgrind represents Utilitarianism within the novel. As he raises his children he stresses facts over imagination and function over feelings. The goal of Utilitarianism was “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” This no-nonsense movement relied heavily on statistics, rules and regulations. Individualism and imagination are not highly valued in this philosophy. Hard Times takes a hard, unsympathetic look at Utilitarianism. This philosophy was also called Philosophical Radicalism or Benthamism and was influential in the mid-Victorian period. Thomas Gradgrind apprehends Louisa and Tom at the circus.
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