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The novel Hard Times written by Charles Dickens, is a reflection of the evolving ideas prevalent during his time. Dickens characters especially are personifications of changing ideas in psychology and political thought. Each one of his characters symbolizes a different belief and its association to society. Both Stephen Blackpool and Thomas Gradgrind, Jr. particularly characterize ideas of notable philosophers around the time of Dickens. Blackpool portrays the abused worker, suffering under capitalism as expressed by Karl Marx.
Thomas Gradgrind, Jr. , is Freud's notion of our desire to rebel against an extreme, which often leads to intoxicating substances, and our conscience and the subsequent feelings of guilt and remorse we experience because of it. Stephen Blackpool represents the oppressed working class of the 19 th century in Dickens novel Hard Times. He is portrayed as an honest, hard-working power-loom weaver employed by the factory owner and proclaimed self-made man Josiah Bounderby. Through the course of the plot Blackpool is found to have suffered many trials in life including a marriage to a drunk and the unfortunate love of a woman he cannot marry. He is even shunned and despised by his own class because of his refusal to join a union with his fellow factory employees due to his belief that the trade union agitator is a false prophet. Eventually he defends the workers against harsh words spoken by Bounderby about them and ends up losing his job for that.
In Book Three of Hard Times Blackpool is accused of a crime he did not commit but is unable to prove his innocence except in asking Gradgrind to clear his name. These are among his last words, and he dies soon after. Through it all though, Blackpool is a moral, sensitive man holding no contempt against those who have wronged him. These struggles Blackpool confronts in Dickens novel exemplify the ideas of Marx. Blackpool is Marx's personification of the corruption of the worker by capitalism.
Blackpool is the first victim of the labor cause. As Marx writes in Alienated Labor, The misery of the worker is inversely proportional to the power and volume of his production (WIT Text, pg. 444). He leads from his beginning a depressing life. Stephen looked older, but he had had a hard life. It is said that very life has its roses and thorns; there seemed however, to have been a misadventure of mistake in Stephens case, where by somebody else had become possessed of his roses, and he had become possessed of the same somebody elses thorns in addition to his own. (Hard Times, pg. 60).
Stephen has not known any beauty in his life. His work is all he has, but that is not his passion. He describes his place of employment, the mill, as... always going, and... they never work us any nearer to any distant object-except always death. (Hard Times, pg. 140). It was something he had begun out of necessity and eventually it had moved itself into his entire being.
After work every day he feels a sensation the sensation of its [his labor] having worked and stopped in his own head (Hard Times, pg. 61). This idea is the entire basis Marx fashions: the fusion of the worker and his work as one until the worker is diminished. Again in Alienated Labor Marx enunciates his point by pointing out [The objectification] of labor appears as the diminution of the worker (WIT Text, pg. 445) and The more objects the worker produces, the fewer he can own and the more he falls under the domination of his product, of capital (WIT Text, pg. 445). Stephen Blackpool is the victim of labor in that it completely prohibits him from experiencing what is attractive in life. His labor thwarts his roses and gives him thorns instead. In Hard Times the laws of England are fashioned for the rich, not the poor, another way Marx believes capitalism exploits the poor worker.
Stephen Blackpool visits Bounderby for help. He has spent a large portion of his life married to his estranged wife but has found another woman he has grown to love. Wanting to free himself from the bounds holding him to his first wife he asks Bounderby for advice. Blackpool, however, is quickly informed that getting a divorce involves a large amount of money. Due to his meager salary Blackpool must live his life married to a drunk and simply acquaintances with a virtuous woman. The divorce laws in England at that time only benefited the wealthy.
The bourgeoisie, the predominate lawmaking class at that time, made the law in their own interest. They could afford such fines if necessary and thus saw no reason to lower the cost since it did not benefit them at all. In this case, no help was extended to the poor. In Alienated Labor, Marx addresses this corruption; he writes, Political economy proceeds from labor as the very soul of production and yet gives labor nothing, private property everything (WIT Text, pg. 453). In the personification of this idea labor, equals the worker, Blackpool, and private property equals the wealthy, Bounderby. Private property forms competition which compels those who have to ignore or take advantage of those who have nothing; The only wheels which political economy puts in motion are greed and the war among the greedy, competition. (WIT text, pg. 444).
Everything is compelled by greed so the worker is stamped out. Helping Blackpool does not benefit Bounderby so the worker, Blackpool, is tossed aside. Marx writes The non worker does everything against the worker... (WIT Text, pg. 455). Helping the worker is not in the greedy self interest of the non worker, according to Marx. The non workers motives include only his selfish desires thus the worker is abused by both the non-worker and the laws made by the non-worker. In his exasperation Blackpool cries...
show me the law to help me! (Hard Times pg. 70). There is no divorce law to help him. He is simply a worker, a tool, a hand. Marx believes that his [the workers] own active function, his life activity, alienated labor, also alienates the species from him. (WIT Text, pg. 448). Throughout the entire story of Hard Times Blackpool is left alone to fend for himself.
Charles Dickens uses this alienation Stephen experiences as an illustration of Marx's point. Before the story even begins he has been abandoned by his wife. He is then rejected by his fellow workers for refusing to join the trade union. Finally even his work alienates him when his is fired from his position at the factory and forced to relocate to another town to find work. In a capitalist society the worker is used for the good of the rich but still remains oblivious to the fact he is used (WIT Text, pg. 447).
Work reduces the worker to the opposite of what he produces. The more powerful the work, the more powerless becomes the worker; the more intelligence the work has, the more witless is the worker and the more he becomes a slave of nature. (WIT Text, pg. 446). This idea is a key point in Marx's essay Alienated Labor and Blackpool personifies this idea. In the end he is reduced to a criminal for a crime he did not commit in a society that has always detested him. As what he produces becomes more and more powerful, he and his race are pushed farther and farther down.
But yet the workers have no notion of the crimes committed against them. Stephen Blackpool is not bitter against his aggressors even after everything that had happened to him. Even shortly before his death he proclaims the goodness of Bounderby: If Mr. Bounderby had ever known me right-if he had ever known me at all-he wouldnt have took offense with me. He wouldnt have suspected me. (WIT Text, pg. 254). The propaganda of the non-worker had convinced him of its superiority and reduced Blackpool to a simple believer.
The more the worker exerts himself, the more powerful becomes the alien objective world which he fashions against himself, the poorer he and his inner world become, the less there is that belongs to him. (WIT Text, pg. 445). Stephen Blackpool is robbed of everything: his love, his work, his reputation and eventually his life; all of it was taken for the capitalist economy. Blackpool is everything Marx saw as having been corrupted by labor and capitalism. Although the character Blackpool is the oppressed worker according to Marx, Thomas Gradgrind, Jr.
represents the ideas of Freud. Tom is Freud's personification of the desires within ourselves to rebel against an extreme we are taught to live, often leading to the abuse of alcohol, and the s...
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