The young in dickens's hard times

Abstract EN

Charles Dickens’s Hard Times deals with one of the most significant themes of the time: the conflict between adults and children, a conflict between the world of money, facts, and selfishness, on the one hand; and the world of innocence, love, and affection, on the other.

This paper aims to examine Dickens’s perception of the children in Hard Times as it is offered in two extreme images: one is of innocent as represented in Sissy and Louisa, the other is that of the criminal as embodied in Tom and Bitzer, who are the end-products of Gradgrind's educational system.

Gradgrind's system, representing the adult world, focuses on the coldness of rational thinking, which is imposed on Tom and Bitzer, wherease childhood is normally associated with freedom, love, and imagination, which are embodied in Sissy and Louisa.