Social class Differences Of 19th Century English Society in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times

ABSTRACT

Discussion on literature cannot be separated from understanding the definition of literature itself. Literature is particularly defined as the writings or works or books valued as works of arts which can be the result of human’s experience about the world, such as the phenomena of humanity. Literary works might include the social problem in a society or be directly derived from human being, like emotions, values, knowledge, or ideas through his imaginations. Moreover, literature can help people to understand human sentiments, human interest, human problems, human desire, etc. In addition, literature also has aesthetic values because in studying or reading literary works, people need concerns to understand and evaluate what the literary works mean. Besides, literature is very important for building intellectual and moral knowledge. Novel as branch of literature has some pleasure or exciting stories. Also, it is an expression and a picture of life. As the result, the novel is proven to have more concern on human beings so that, novel gives more value or contribution of the social reflection in human being’s daily life.

Furthermore, the researcher has chosen Dickens’ Hard Times because this novel is very interesting and tells about the relation between social class differences of 19th century English society, which are influenced by Industrial Revolution condition and viewed as the dominant objects. We sometimes can find
such condition in our society. That is why, for the case above, the purposes of this research are to describe and find out the social class differences are found in Hard Times, to show whether the social class differences in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times reflect the social condition of 19th century English society.

This research is designed as literary criticism. By using literary criticism, the researcher wants to make an evaluation, in form of an analysis of the work, on the value of a literary work but not to find its fault, to explain the researcher interpretation of the work, or to provide readers with other relevant information.
In general, this research is aimed at enriching the reader’s understanding of the
literary work. Further, this research also uses genetic structuralism because the researcher does not only analyze the social condition inside the novel but also outside the novel.

From the result of analysis it is found that in Hard Times, Coketown society as a representative of English society in Industrial Revolution era is dominated by bourgeoisie and proletariat (working class) because this condition strongly influences each of the characters and gives big impact in their life at that
time. Besides, one of these classes exist some minor classes. Every person has a name to mention his or her social class. The Bourgeoisie class people who are rich, owning factory, factual, statistical and utilitarianism people are reflected in the character of Gradgrind, Bounderby, Louisa, James Harthouse, Mrs Sparsit, Mr. Mc’Choakumchild, and Bitzer. And the working class people who are poor, as labors in the bourgeoisie people’s factory, and suffer are reflected in the characters of Blackpool, Rachael, and Slackbridge. On the other hand, Cecillia Jupe, Sleary, and other circus people are the reflection of lumpenproletariat class that is the class which is very close to the working class.