Abstract
The Victorian Era of writings of works such as Charles Dickens Hard Times used the social and environmental setting by which the characters live in; it is created by a philosophy that adds fuel to sustain the advancement of industrialization. The philosophy mirrors the mechanical characteristics of industrialization and how they are expressed is of great importance to the mechanical perceptions, such as objective utilitarianism. The mechanization that is found in the lives of the characters has an evil presence of depriving them of human dignity by living a mechanical lifestyle. It was the mechanical lifestyle that can be explained through Marxist theory to explain the key characteristics of the Industrial Era and its importance to materialism, as it represented political power. Marxism provides a theory for requiring the working class to concentrate on working in factories in Coketown and the “bourgeois” to separate themselves as competing agents of self-interest. It is a goal of the wealthy social class to maximize utility as a consumer and profit as a producer within the mechanical world.
 Keywords: Victorian Era; Mechanical Thinking; Marxist Theory
Highlights
The Victorian Era of writings of works such as Charles Dickens Hard Times, used the social and environmental setting by which the characters live in; it is created by a philosophy that adds fuel to sustain the advancement of industrialization
Victorian Era literature has contributed to works to show that under an almost entirely mechanized society, ideals and environments, as the lower social class is in need to fight for their self-preservation among the perceptions of the upper social class characters and the “quiet hands” or factory hands found within Charles Dickens Hard Times
The philosophy mirrors the mechanical characteristics of industrialization and how they are expressed is of great importance to the mechanical perceptions, such as objective utilitarianism
Summary
Abstract- The Victorian Era of writings of works such as Charles Dickens Hard Times, used the social and environmental setting by which the characters live in; it is created by a philosophy that adds fuel to sustain the advancement of industrialization. Marxism provides a theory for requiring the working class to concentrate on working in factories in Coketown and the “bourgeois” to separate themselves as competing agents of self-interest It is a goal of the wealthy social class to maximize utility as a consumer and profit as a producer within the mechanical world. From the beginning of Hard Times, the mechanical world can be found in Thomas Gradgrind, who instructs a class in school how they should think and reason He tells them in front of both the schoolmaster and another person that facts alone are wanted in life, as he “[...] swept with [his] eyes the inclined plane of little vessels, and there arranged in order [...].” (Dickens 9) When thinking of the children as vessels, it is Mr Gradgrind who makes them to be seen as objects, as he refers to them as small gearwheels in a greater machinery. There is an importance for being a human being, since it shapes and provides an examination of how the characters’ are able to understand time is different when explored in Charles Dickens Hard Times provided an example of the mechanical human nature that impacts human life
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