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3.4 Realistic Significance of the Portrait of Twisted Humanity in Hard Times14
4 A Reflection on Utilitarian Phenomena in Real Life.16
4.1 Utilitarian Phenomena in Our Education System16
4.2 The Definition and Influence of Utilitarian Education16
5 Conclusion...18
Bibliography.19
1 Introduction
Charles Dickens (1812–1870), was born in an impoverished petty bourgeoisie family. At the age of 10, Dickens left school to work in a factory after his father was thrown into debtors’ prison. 15-year-old Dickens became an apprentice in a law firm and later a civil court judge clerk and then a newspaper reporter. Although he had little formal education, his early impoverishment and assiduous self-study drove him to become an outstanding writer and social critic.He is a prolific writer who creates some of the world’s most memorable fictional characters by his talent and hard work.
Dickens is generally regarded as a key representative of English critical realism in Victorian Age. His writing style is marked by a profuse linguistic creativity. Main features of his novels are vivid outward portrayal, humorous and pungent irony, sharp social criticism, and gentle humanitarianism. (Leavis, 2008:167) His works expose and criticize all the poverty, injustice, hypocrisy and corruptness of the 19th century England.(Lai, 1981:20) Throughout his novels, Dickens shows sympathy for the common man and holds a skeptical attitude towards the fine folk.
Hard Times was written by Charles Dickens in the peak of his literary career. “The story is set in a fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester. Coketown may be partially based upon 19th-century Preston.”(Net1) The work reveals the darkness and evil in capitalist society. In the novel, Dickens criticizes Bentham’s utilitarianism prevailing at that time. Almost everything could be measured or calculated by the principle of utility. Utilitarian moral principle holds that the promotion of general social welfare is the ultimate goal for both inpiduals and society—“the greatest amount of happiness for the greatest number of people.”(Mill, 2007:56) This theory held a special appeal to middle-class industrialists, whose greed drove them to exploit workers to the utmost and brought great suffering and poverty to the working class. It was the utilitarian moral principle that ruled over English education system and destroyed many young hearts and minds in that era. Therefore, this thesis focuses on utilitarianism philosophy, and then explores the influence of utilitarianism in Hard Times on Humanity.
Jeremy Bentham, the 18th century English political philosopher, gave the first clear and systematic expression to the philosophy of utilitarianism. Bentham’s essential idea is a very simple one—The right thing, the just thing to do is to maximize utility.(Bentham, 1990:25) Bentham begins his Introduction to the principles of Morals and Legislation with the classic sentence: “Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.”(Stumpf, 2006:335) According to Bentham, all human beings are governed by two sovereign masters: pain and pleasure, and each inpidual accepts a fact that we desire pleasure and want to avoid pain.(Stumpf, 2006:336) He then offered his Principle of Utility, i.e., “That principle which approves or disapproves of every action whatsoever, according to the tendency which it appears to have to augment or diminish happiness.”(Stumpf, 2006:335) He meant by utility the balance of pleasure over pain, or happiness over suffering.(Net1) He said: “It is pleasure and pain that give us the real value of action.”(Net1) Therefore, according to the philosophy of utilitarianism, our private or public life is in the last analysis concerned with maximizing happiness, i.e., maximizing the utility.