Cultural peculiarities in Charles Dickens's "Hard Times"

This extended annotation provides an academic overview of the article devoted to the cultural analysis of Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times. The study examines the complex cultural transformations of nineteenth-century English society as reflected in the novel’s narrative, characters, and social environment. It first addresses the impact of industrialization on cultural life, analyzing the fictional model of Coketown as a representation of environmental degradation, aesthetic uniformity, and the mechanization of human existence. The article further investigates the consequences of utilitarian pedagogy exemplified by Thomas Gradgrind. By suppressing imagination, emotional development, and artistic perception, such an educational model narrows the cultural worldview of individuals and society. The contrast between Sissy Jupe’s intuitive, artistic sensibility and the rigid factualism of the Gradgrind system highlights the central tension between humanistic and utilitarian values.