Philosophical background
Hard Times is a criticism of Jeremy Bentham's ethical philosophy, Utilitarianism, which proposed that an action is right if it ensures the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people. The State decides what is welfare for the majority and individuals are not included in this rule-based calculation and they must look after their own self-interest. Dickens' novel is a criticism of the greed of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy.
The novel is a critique of the utilitarian philosophy that prioritized facts, efficiency and self-interest over creativity and sociability. For the author, the application of this philosophy to Gradgrind's children dehumanised them.
The economic principles of Adam Smith, foundations of our present neo-liberal economy which proposes that the market should be left to regulate itself, are also apparent in the novel. Dickens appears to take a pre-marxist stand by satirising Bounderby, the false self-made man, and by portraying the class divisions between the factory owners and the workers.
Historical background
Dickens used the Industrial Revolution as a backdrop to Oliver Twist (1838) and Hard Times (1854). He favours the underdogs such as Stephen Blackpool and shows how they were exploited by a new mercantile class for their own profit. He presents Coketown as a Hell for the 'hands' who worked in its factories and compares it with the natural surroundings where society's leaders, the Bounderbys and Gradgrinds, live. The characters are also seen travelling to and fro through a desolate landscape in the iconic industrial machine: the steam engine.
Literary background.
Dickens formed part of the European Realist literary tradition which was critical of contemporary moral and social values. This tradition is exemplified in Spain by Leopold Alas' La Regenta, in France by Flaubert's Madame Bovary, in Russia by Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and Tolstoy's Anna Karenina where individuals seek their own self-interest, transgressing ethics.
The Realist literary tradition was a reaction against the previous Romantic era which had favoured imagination. In the characters he paints Dickens seems partly to hearken back to that emphasis on fancy and artistry in his criticism of a utilitarian hyperrational insistence on facts and calculations and the egoism of self-interest.
Discussion
