Utilitarianism in Dickens' "Hard Times"

Dickens’ Hard Times may largely be read as a criticism of the utilitarianism system.  In Dickens’ illustration of utilitarianism, facts are more important than people and the human element has been removed from all aspects of life.  Children in school are addressed by numbers rather than names and workers in factories are called “hands,” implying that nothing else is necessary.  Utilitarianism means functionality.  There is no room for beauty or sentiment. 

How did the world end up like this?

Utilitarianism was invented by Jeremy Bentham, and was possibly the most important philosophical system of the nineteenth century.  Utilitarianism was responsible for many changes in criminal law, judicial organization, and social reform (Smith 133).  Utilitarianism, at first, was intended to improve social conditions. 

The main point of Bentham’s utilitarianism was to reduce decision-making to a form of mathematics.  The profits, advantages, benefits, conveniences, and happiness gained from an action would be weighed against the disadvantage, inconvenience, loss, or unhappiness that may also result (Everett). 

The ultimate test question in determining the value of a decision became “What is the use of it?” 

At some point, happiness fell out of the equation.  Utilitarianism became practicality, usefulness, and profit above all else.  Anything not aimed at profit, practicality, or usefulness, such as children’s fairy stories, decorated wallpaper, imagination or love, were to be stamped out.  These are not useful.  Get rid of them. 

But, Dickens book asks, what does that do to people? 

Louisa Gradgrind needed a father’s love.  She needed to be able to confide in her father, and to ask him for advice.  But Thomas Gradgrind’s eminent practicality had built an impassible wall between him and the rest of humanity.  

Love, imagination, sentiment, and all the rest of “those subtle essences of humanity” cannot be measured even by the most sophisticated of mathematics.   Not ever.  Not until the last trumpet sounds and blows algebra to pieces (Dickens 74). 

But Louisa can’t wait that long!

Gradgrind had done a good job in imparting his eminently practical ways to his children.  Louisa turned her back on sentiment.  What was the use of it?  She married a man she did not love.  It was, after all, the practical thing to do.  What could go wrong?

Works Cited

Dickens, Charles. Hard Times. New York: Dover, 2001. Print.

Everett, Glenn.  “Utilitarianism.” The Victorian Web. 11 Oct. 2002. Accessed 11 Apr. 2017. Web. http://victorianweb.org/philosophy/phil1.html

Smith, Grahame. Charles Dickens: A Literary Life. New York: Palgrave, 1996.  Print.