farm labor offered, were new. People weren't sure how to deal with these situations, because they had never been faced with them before. In the old days, tenants and landowners were, at least in theory, bound with some sort of feudal ties of mutual loyalty that did not exist in the factory world of industrialism. Dickens captures a snapshot of a moment in history when the pains of industrial growth and change were acute but before the development of the modern social welfare state, which alleviated many of the problems of the poor with limited work hours, minimum wage, and worker safety regulations.

Dickens also captures and parodies the Victorian fascination with utilitarianism, which was the philosophy of obtaining the greatest happiness for the greatest number. Sissy Jupe, for example, questions this method of reducing people to statistics, which she learns about from Gradgrind's school: rather than applauding the low number of people killed for one reason or another, she mourns those who do die. Dickens was making a plea for art, for individualism, and for a creative spirit he thought was being ground away by Victorian industrialism.

Charles Dickens’ novel Hard Times is inextricable from the Victorian era in part because the text is set in and written during the Victorian age, and also because it addresses many of the issues that were inherent with the time. Indeed, Dickens’ story is undoubtedly a product of its time. Dickens examines several prevalent aspects of Victorian society at the time through various characters. For instance, he explores the problems with Utilitarian philosophy through the exaggerated personality of Thomas Gradgrind, a man obsessed with facts and statistics, and how his philosophy negatively affects his children.

Another potent societal issue Dickens addresses with Hard Times is the oppressive nature of the unchecked industrialism and its effects on the community and workers. Dickens is direct in his attacks, and foregrounds the struggle of workers in a post-Industrial Revolution England:

“Surely, none of us in our sober senese and acquainted with figures, are to be told at this time of day, that one of the foremost elements in the existence of the Coketown working people had been for scores of years, deliberately set at nought? That there was any Fancy in them demanding to be brought into healthy existence instead of struggling on in convulsions?” (22-23).

Thus, the Victorian era figures heavily into Hard Times because it is a product of the Victorian era. Dickens sets his story in the Victorian era, and tackles issues that were burgeoning during the time.  

I pulled my textual evidence from the Norton Critical Edition, 3rd ed.