By
Hard Times, published in 1854, is the title of the tenth novel by Charles Dickens, the English novelist. Like most of Dickens’ novels, Hard Times is a searing indictment of a corrosive and morally atrophied society on the brink of disaster.
Set in Victorian England, which was
touted as a prosperous epoch, the novel reframes the socio-economic turmoil
that undermined the entire fabric of the English society of that time. The
reality of what was configured as prosperity was acute deprivation and hunger
for the common man as a result of the dislocation occasioned by the Industrial
Revolution.
