A Study on the Hard Building Images in Hard Times文献综述

 2022-08-29 10:43:51

Literature Review

Hard Times is a novel written by Charles Dickens intended to reveal the severe labor-capital conflicts in his time. It is popular not only because the novel itself is thought-provoking, but also because of the ceaseless criticisms and comments on the novel as well as its author, Charles Dickens.

So far, many researches have been done on this novel. Some analyze the novel from personality structure; some concentrate on its utilitarianism; some scholars criticize the fault in dealing with the class plot and the industrial theme; still some try to analyze the imagery in the novel.

Scholar Chen Shuangshuang analyzes the personality structure. In her book Personality Structure in Hard Times (2011) she uses Freudrsquo;s personality structure theory to reveal the full representation of this psychological mechanism in the novel. She analyzes the embodiment of the id, ego and superego, and represents them respectively from the perspective of Tom and James; Sissy and Mr. Sleary; Gradgrind and Bounderby, to show that the fate of every person is severely connected to his or her saying and doing, or we can put it in one word, personality.

Utilitarianism is also widely discussed. It is an ethical theory according to which the rightness and wrongness of acts depends entirely on facts about overall well-being. It is commonly related to the phrase “the greatest good for the greatest number”, and it typically requires people to act in whatever way will result in the greatest possible amount of well-being, where well-being is understood as closely associated with happiness. Often, researches about consequences of it are focused on two aspects: humanity and education. According to The Tragedy of Utilitarianism by Wang Yanjun (2008), it is indeed the utilitarianism that destroys humanity and then leads to the miserable fate of human beings. Take the two protagonists Gradgrind and Bounderby for example. Gradgrindrsquo;s facts education destroyed his own children, while Bounderby was utterly isolated in the end. Similar to Wang, in the book Utopian Studies (2012) written by Jennifer Wagner-Lowlor, he compares the education in Hard Times with the Utopian one, and then finds that an education that reflects the ideological “value” of facts alone, of self-interest, of calculation and profit, and of social conformity and obedience produces precisely the “worst of us” that destroys so many lives. It is a good illustration to show us the deficiency of utilitarian education.

Many scholars in western academia regard the way that Dickens deals with its class plot and industrial theme in the novel to be more or less faulty. Julian Markels asserts in his Towards a Marxian Reentry to the Novel that the development of Stephenrsquo;s fate is so quaint that he could not be a representative for the whole working class, which results in the inconsistence in the class plot. Due to the failure of one of the main lines in the novel, it causes the unsymmetry in its form structure. Terry Eagleton also makes comments which are similar to Markelsrsquo; in Critical Commentary. He delivers that the literary style of the novel lacks coherence. With the development of the novel, the industrial theme is quickly replaced by the conventional patterns of entanglement between man and woman as well as stealing. What is more, Raymond Williams issues in his Culture and Society 1780-1950 that Dickens is not an excellent observer in the life of working people, and his description of the labor-capital conflicts just remains in the surface, but without a feasible solution to solve it.

Nowadays, some scholars abroad have paid much attention to the imagery in the novel. According to Cynthia Northcutt Malonersquo;s The Fixed Eye and the Rolling Eye: Surveillance and Discipline in Hard Times (2002), the Eye is used as a symbol to indicate the ubiquitous surveillance. Hard Times is preoccupied with watching; it is filled with observing, surveillance eyes. And those eyes even try to kill differences between different people, to make them in total conformity. Besides, room is also studied as an important imagery by scholars. Lauren Cameron in his book Interiors and Interiorities: Architectural Understandings of the Mind in Hard Times (2013) issues the huge and different functions of rooms. He holds that onersquo;s mental development is highly related to the room in which he lives. For example, students would become a healthy middle-class British citizen after they study in a well-decorated room. And Logan supports Laurenrsquo;s view in his work The Victorian Parlour. He said that the parlour itself was very distinctly feminine, and it was the duty of women to decide and do decorations to make the room as warm as home. But where Louisa lives was always degendered, poorly decorated with a barren home environment, which indicates her unhappy marriage and miserable fate to some extent.

In short, although some scholars recently have paid attention to imagery in Hard Times, few of them have systematically summarized all the imagery and illustrated their corresponding symbolic meanings and studied it as a solo subject. When Dickens wrote this novel, England was at the peak of another labor movement. Thus we should not only observe the imagery itself under his pen, but look into the hidden and implied meanings he wants to tell the world. Factory appears frequently in the novel, on the one hand, it stands for industrialism and Dickens intends to show the quick progress of economy; on the other hand and more importantly, it is the place where human beings are destroyed and tortured. And so does the room in the novel. The classroom where knowledge is taught is actually an excellent place for facts education and grave for imagination. And if we are careful enough, we can discover all kinds of imagery and their symbolism, to help us better understand this novel.

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