North and South and Hard Times Essay -- Dickens Hard Times Essays

North and South and Hard Times       In   "Industrial" H Sussman states that "one of the most significant shifts created   by industrialism" was that of the "separation of the workplace from the home".   This "shift" created "new gender roles" with the "husband as breadwinner [and   the] wife as childcare giver" and led ultimately to the "19th century   ideology of the two separate spheres -   the masculine public sphere of work [and]   the private female sphere of domesticity". Is, however, this "shift" one which   Elizabeth Gaskell in North and South and Charles Dickens in Hard Times not only reflect but one which they endorse?    If the public   sphere is masculine then the opening chapters of HardTimes immediately confronts us with this masculinity in the form of Gradgrind. The   opening line of the novel, "Now what I want is facts", is assertive and   authorative, the masculine manifestation of public speech. The demand for facts   can be articulated by Gradgrind and responded to in the appropriate terms   by Bitzer, who too, is part of this masculine world, and who can therefore   clinically define a horse. Sissy Jupe however, in the face of such assertiveness   is unable to react in any terms other than being inarticulate and "alarmed".   Dickens however does not share Gradgrind's demands for the masculine "fact".   In writing Hard Times Dickens drew heavily from the criticism of   industrial society in Thomas Carlyle's essay "Signs of the Times". In this essay   Carlyle condemned a society where: "Not only the external and physical alone is... managed by machinery, but the internal and spiritual also". This is the idea   that the competitive, masculine, business sphere has permeated into the private   sphere,... ...ard times but reflections of deeply   divided ones.    BIBLIOGRAPHY:    North and   South, Elizabeth   Gaskell, Penguin Classics (1995).    Hard   Times, Charles Dickens,   Oxford World Classics (1998).    "Signs of the   Times", Thomas Carlyle, Thomas Carlyle: Selected Writings , Penguin   Classics (1971)    "Industrial",   H Sussman in A Companion to Victorian Literature and Culture, ed. Herbet   F. Tucker (1999).    "The   Industrial Novels", Raymond Williams in Culture and Society (1958).    "What must   not be said: North and South and the problem of women's work", Catherine   Barnes Stevenson.    "The Domestic   Sphere in the Victorian Age", Bonnie G. Smith in Changing Lives.    Charles   Dickens: The Critical Heritage ed. Phillip Collins.    Elizabeth   Gaskell: The Critical Heritage ed. Angus Fasson.