Q/How far is Dickens concerned with the society he lived in? Examine Hard Times as a protest against social abuses of the 19 th century?

The reader sees the danger of abuse of an mechanizing humans through the use of the Hands at Bounderby’s factories. The Hands are the working poor who have literally been used as machines during the industrial age. The Hands are forced into lives of Fact: long work hours, terrible pay, squalid living conditions, and no recourse to public assistance. There is no imagination, fantasy, or Fancy in their lives. For many in the middle class, like Louisa Bounderby, the Hands cease to be human. When discussing Blackpool’s life with him, Louisa says she always thought Hands were “[s]omething to be worked so much and paid so much.” Although the Hands attempt to better their existences through unionization, the novel abandons their struggle and the reader never learns the outcome of their fight. In this way, Dickens seems to be saying that the plight of the working poor remains unchanged and society still views the impoverished as less than human.