What is Dickens Attitude to the Working Classes in Chapter XX (Book 2, Chapter 4)?Does Dickens portray the Unions with as much Sympathy as the Workers? Charles Dickens wrote Hard Times in 1854.
What is Dickens Attitude to the Working Classes in Chapter XX (Book 2, Chapter 4)?
Does Dickens portray the Unions with as much Sympathy as the Workers?
Charles Dickens wrote Hard Times in 1854. He lived in London and because he was writing about industrialisation in the North at that time he went up to Preston in 1852 to explore the industrialisation there and to witness the strike of the weavers. He was horrified by the oppressing industrialists he witnessed and also horrified by seeing the way the common people were made to work. His experiences in Preston and the characters he met were very much portrayed in Hard Times.
Chapter 20 in Hard Times shows Dickens' attitude to the different classes of people that were involved in industrialisation. The chapter is about the mill workers who are debating whether or not to go on strike because they are tired of the bad treatment they are receiving from their oppressor, Bounderby. The two main characters who are speaking in this Chapter of the book are Stephen and Slackbridge.
Stephen is one of the workers in the mill who has sworn to the woman that he is in love with, Rachel, that he would not join the Union because of reasons not explained in the book. The main point that Dickens is putting across through what Stephen is saying is that if they strike and join the Union then it will result in even more harsh treatment and a bleak future.
Slackbridge is the Trade Unionist in the chapter who we presume has been sent by the National Unionists to encourage the workers to join the Union. Dickens portrays Slackbridge as the unsympathetic professional activist. From the way Slackbridge talks we see that he has come here to do his job and is using persuasive and emotional language when he speaks to the workers. Although Slackbridge would like himself to be seen as an understanding character in the workers' eyes, he actually had no care for the workers' feelings and therefore Dickens portrays him as a very cold and manipulative character.
Dickens attitude to the Chairman is he is the neutral character in the chapter. "There was a chairman to regulate the proceedings , and this functionary now took the case into his own hands." This was said about the chairman after Slackbridge had spoken and there was a lot of confusion amid the crowd. But overall during the chapter, the chairman is sympathetic towards Stephen which draws the reader to feel almost sorry for him too. In this way Dickens portrays Stephen as the underdog compared to Slackbridge.
The crowd starts at the beginning of the chapter as very enthusiastic towards what Slackbridge is saying; '"Good! Hear, hear, hear! Hurrah!" and other cries, arose in many voices from various parts of the densely crowded and suffocatingly close hall.' In paragraph 3 we see that Slackbridge takes advantage of the plain and simpleness which comes with the goodness of the common people: '..this crowd of earnest faces, whose honesty in the main no competent observer free from bias could doubt, so agitated by such a leader.' This highlights the wickedness of Slackbridge, especially as he is trying ...
This is a preview of the whole essay
The crowd starts at the beginning of the chapter as very enthusiastic towards what Slackbridge is saying; '"Good! Hear, hear, hear! Hurrah!" and other cries, arose in many voices from various parts of the densely crowded and suffocatingly close hall.' In paragraph 3 we see that Slackbridge takes advantage of the plain and simpleness which comes with the goodness of the common people: '..this crowd of earnest faces, whose honesty in the main no competent observer free from bias could doubt, so agitated by such a leader.' This highlights the wickedness of Slackbridge, especially as he is trying to speak as their equal, even though he has never worked in their position before.
So what are the aims of Slackbridge and Stephen and what are their styles of speaking? The chapter opens with Slackbridge speaking, 'Oh, my friends, the down-trodden operatives of Coketown!"' He tries and talks to the workers as if they are all on the same level; Dickens portrays him as a professional activist and not liking it. The whole tone of his first speech is overblown, clichéd, over rhetorical. He is portrayed as being unsympathetic and not understanding the industrial problem; "Oh, my friends and fellow-sufferers, and fellow-workmen, and fellow-men! I tell you that the hour is come, when we must rally round one another as One united power, and crumble into dust the oppressors that too long have battened upon the plunder of our families.." Slackbridge would have had no idea on the suffering of the workers and as he was supposedly on the same side as the 'oppressors,' Slackbridge's whole argument becomes totally insincere. Dickens uses tri-colons, triplets and anaphora to emphasise his points which makes it sound even more overblown; "Oh, my friends..oh, my friend..oh, my friends," etc and "upon the...upon the....upon the," etc.
'Here, it is clear that Dickens resorts to his imagination once again and does not control his emotions towards Slackbridge. He lets himself be guided blindly by feelings of hatred and fear. The result is a horrible falsification of the nature of both the leader and the trade union, and a monstrous distortion of its cause. Many critics of different political tendencies have expressed their dissatisfaction with Dickens's description of Slackbridge'(1); the following is a quotation from George Bernard Shaw:
' "Slackbridge, the trade union organizer, is a mere figment of the middle-class imagination. No such man would be listened to by a meeting of English factory hands. Not that such meetings are less susceptible to humbug than meetings of any other class.........But even at their worst trade union organizers are not a bit like Slackbridge. . . . All this is pure middle-class ignorance. It is much as if a tramp were to write a description of millionaires smoking large cigars in church, with their wives in low-necked dresses and diamonds."'(2)
'Dickens notes that the strike organizers refused to listen to a group of Manchester delegates from the Labour Parliament, as they felt that these honourable gentlemen marginalised the strike and tried to explain and justify the policy of the Labour Parliament. This wisdom, order, dignity and moderation are totally absent from Hard Times'(3), which further shows Dickens attitude towards the people at the head of unionism and going on strike.
In chapter 5, Slackbridge glorifies labour which is completely hypocritical to what he had been previously been saying about their suffering. He is very repetitive and goes back to the same point 'at such at time...at such a time....' Although some of his words could be seen as revolutionary 'with a noble and majestic unanimity that will make Tyrants tremble,' these good things are turned into manipulation and hypocrisy by Slackbridge.
Another interesting point to note about Slackbridge is the similarity between his body language and that of Hitler's 'holding out his right hand at arm's length' etc.
Whereas Dickens' portrayal of Stephen is completely different. Stephen is portrayed as the hero in this chapter and almost characterizes Dickens own personal thoughts to the problem at the time. Stephen is telling the crowd in the chapter that going on strike is not the answer. When he starts speaking, we lapse into Coketown dialect which is almost uncomprensible which puts Stephen lower than the rest of the workers but shows him as a man of the Earth type; this draws a line of complete difference between the characters of Slackbridge and Stephen again, because although Slackbridge has a lot to say and says it with noise and enthusiasm, Stephen speaks with the same tone and is portrayed as quiet and Jesus-like, good. Before Stephen speaks, the crowd sympathises towards him, in respect to what he has to say, 'then the place was wonderfully still.' Again an almost Christ-like image.
In one part of Stephen's speech, he uses a biblical reference towards the Good Samaritan, he being the Jew in the road and the crowd, the people choosing to walk past. The reader is drawn to feel sorry for Stephen and we see him as an outsider.
For all this, the gulf between the portrait of the Preston organisers and that of the Coketown leader is immense. We may wonder, therefore, whether Dickens's aim was to avoid frightening his middle-class public and therefore emphasizing his characters to make the story more interesting.
Throughout the chapter constant references are made towards Stephen so that the reader looks at him as the vulnerable party. After we assume that Slackbridge has formed his union '...three cheers for the United Aggregate Tribunal!,' Dickens draws the conclusion that Stephen, as the only person against Unions is the only good person as well; because once the workers have formed against him, the way they treat Stephen is as bad at the treatment their oppressors give them, which is ironic because that is what they're fighting against. But although what they have done may not be kind, Dickens shows that their natural intentions were good and the crowd are not the bad party in this instance, 'The multitude of doubtful faces (conscience-stricken).......Private feeling must yield to the common cause.' These people have to succumb to becoming part of the Union because there is nothing else for them to do. So Dickens shows Stephen as the outsider after this incident '....his abandonment by all his fellows from a baseless sense of shame and disgrace.' But there is no reason for Stephen to feel ashamed, so we see that although he did not do anything wrong, his conscience has been torn by deciding not to join the strike. From that moment Stephen distances himself from the people and becomes a person with almost no identity. This is echoed in the words Bitzer says to him 'You are the Hand they have sent to Coventry?'
Throughout this chapter, the Chairman is the middle ground between Slackbridge and Stephen. He is not on either side but yet he is capable to shut Slackbridge up, 'I askes o'our friend Slackbridge who may be a little over hetter in this business, to take his seat,..' and tends to sympathise towards Stephen by taking an almost fatherly figure towards him, 'Think on 't once agen, lal, afore thou'rt shunned by wa owd friends.'
So what conclusion can a reader of this chapter draw as Dicken's solution to the industrial problem in England at that time? The fact is that Dickens had no solution to the problem. 'Dickens had a deep horror of revolutionary hysteria, an obsession which he had developed during the dark years of Chartism and from which he never recovered. He was afraid that strike might lead to rioting and cause the whole country to drift into chaos and even civil war.' (4)
'It seems more probable that the novel called forth a heightened picture all round, and in writing about the strike meeting he had only to draw upon that part of himself which had (with some reason) despised the more violent leaders of the chartists, that feared so desperately mob rule, to find himself in tune with the middle class who could take so much concern for social reform.'(5)
Dickens had spoken to Karl Marx and possibly have read the publication of Engles' and Marxs' 'The Communist Manifesto.' It was unknown whether he agreed with his solution to the social injustices which industrialization had brought but it was certain that they both had very strong feelings of the workers being oppressed. Dickens had also seen what had happened when the workers did eventually revolt as 1848 was the Year of Revolutions; France, Germany and Russia had all revolted and we see that from the Chapter XX of Hard Times Dickens was definitely against the English workers forming a revolution too.
It seems probable that Dickens's life-long distrust of political association and his early experience as a reporter in the House of Commons are partially responsible for his attitude to trade unions aswell.
So although the tone of this chapter is revolutionary, it actually fails to be revolutionary. Hard Times was one of Dickens weakest novels as he didn't follow through his points and the most obvious question that he left unanswered and ambiguous is his solution to the industrial problem.
