Discrimination against lower class society of England in Industrial Revolution Era in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times

ABSTRACT

Discrimination is an event that is often found in the society, caused by the human being inclination to discriminate the others. Discrimination is treating people not same with the other people, in which this treatment is made based on the characteristic which has been represented by that people. The upper class society discriminates the lower class by employing them in the factory with a very small salary and long working hours.

Related to the phenomenon above, this study is aimed at describing kinds of discrimination experienced by the lower class society of England described in the novel Hard Times, the lower class societies struggle against the discrimination described in the novel Hard Times, and the discrimination happened in the novel reflect the real condition in the first industrial revolution era.

This research is a literary criticism using Marxist sociological literary criticism. Marxist sociological literary criticism is a research which focuses on human problems, social change and view of human liberation because it reveals human struggle in determining their future based on the imagination, feeling, and intuition. And the purpose of it is to find the relationship between literary work and the condition of the society from many aspects.

After analyzing the data, the researcher finds several points about the real condition in industrial revolution era, first, there are two kinds of discrimination happen in industrial revolution era based on the novel Hard Times. They are 1) status discrimination, it is treating someone because of their status in the society. The people who has the higher status in the society, they got privilage in the higher structure in the society as compared to the people who has the lower status and 2) sexual/gender discrimination, it is kind of discrimination happen to the woman because of their weakness. Second, the lowers class struggle against the discrimination by using their action to show their struggle, and the last, the story in the novel Hard Times reflects the real condition in industrial revolution era.