Hard Times as a Novel on Industrialism Priyanka Negi College

The nineteenth century saw the attempt word weavers of all kinds – poets, essayists, journalists, and novelists – to artistically capture the multitude of facets of the ever-changing political, social and economic conditions found in England during the Industrial Revolution. These “Condition-of-England novels” refer to a body of narrative fiction, also known as industrial novels, social novels, or social problem novels, published in Victorian England during and after the period of the hungry Hungry Forties. Robin B. Colby points out, “The industrial novels all share some common characteristics: the detailed documentation of the suffering of the poor, the reproduction of working-class speech through dialect, criticism of the effects of industrialism, the discussion of contemporary reform movements like Chartism and Utilitarianism, and some attempt — usually individual and internal — at a solution to social problems. Frequently the plot is developed around a sensitive protagonist, usually male, whose moral, intellectual, or emotional development spans the course of the novel and whose romantic attachments are troubled and conflicted. The protagonist is typically searching for a way to express or mitigate the dissatisfaction of...