The Industrial Revolution: A Watershed in Human Society in Charles Dickens’s Hard Times

Abstract

This dissertation examines Charles Dickens’s “Hard Times” as a powerful literary response to the Industrial Revolution and its profound transformation of human society. By portraying industrial England as a space of mechanical routine, emotional repression, and social inequality, Dickens presents industrialization as a watershed that reshaped not only economic structures but also human relationships, moral values, and individual identities. Drawing on historical and socio-critical perspectives, this study explores how utilitarian ideology and industrial capitalism contribute to dehumanization, class division, and emotional alienation. Through an analysis of setting, characterization, and narrative technique, the dissertation argues that Dickens critiques the reduction of human life to facts, profit, and productivity, while advocating imagination, empathy, and social responsibility as necessary correctives. Ultimately, “Hard Times” is shown to be a moral and social indictment of industrial modernity whose concerns remain relevant in contemporary societies shaped by technological and economic rationalism.