Analiza i kritika društva u viktorijanskom romanu

This paper explores the social and historical context of the Industrial Revolution in Victorian England as portrayed in Elizabeth Gaskell’s North and South and Dickens’s Hard Times. Both authors create their locations and characters to depict the effects of heavy industrialization that led to the dehumanization of the Victorian society. Inspired by the filthy and polluted industrial towns, Gaskell’s critique highlights the contrast between the North and the South and the vast gap between the rich and the poor, the masters and the workers that leads to class struggles and violence. Likewise, Dickens emphasizes the same gap focusing on the system of education that produces a workforce resembling programmed machines to suit the needs of the bleak factories. However, despite the pessimism and the gloomy atmosphere of the two novels, both authors hope for reconciliation which is possible by the masters and workers acting in unison, listening and responding to the needs of the other