Fancy Versus Fact: A Study of Two of Dicken’s Characters Essay

Charles Dickens novel Hard Times is a commentary on the shortcomings of the Mid-Nineteenth Century Englands Industrialization Era, which favored the development of human beings into machines, with bring out having either emotions or imagination. The lawsuits in this novel have allegorical shades and take on two different types of people two different kinds of products of the industrial age. For instance, doubting Thomas Gradgrind is the main character of the novel and represents facts. In contrast, Cecilia Jupe aka sissyishs character stands for fancy or imagination.Thus, both these characters represent two different philosophies or lifestyles. Through these characters, hellion has tried to question how fact differs from fancy and why fancy and imagination form an important part of ones personality and development as a human being. Gradgrind is an educationist and represents a faulty educational system comprising besides factual knowledge and measur satisfactory information. A s a member of the parliament of Coketown, he is using this educational system to mass produce slaves for the towns factories.The pursuit of facts served an nonpareil purpose to the human beings in the Utilitarian society of the Mid-Nineteenth Century England. Gradgrind sees Sissy as an unpromising and unfit pupil due to her inability to reply to factual knowledge and refers to her merely through her roll number. Although being a part of such an educational system, Sissy refuses to be defined or influenced by it. Her strong personality, imagination, and compassion make it possible for her to not only to rise above the system but to lead a significant life and to reach out to others around her in their hour of need.For instance, she is able to help Louisa realize what is missing in her life all on she helps Tom too in his time of need and also takes wish well of the other younger children of Gradgrind. Thus, her character has a pronounced redemptive, motherly quality, although she was accustomed as a child by her father. According to Leavis, Sissys character is the embodiment of fancy and has a special part to hearten in the fable and she is wholly convincing in the function Dickens assigns to her (235).In an age of industrialization, where schools are acting like factories and churning out pupil who are duplicates of one another and are no purify than machines, Sissy represents a gentle but firm assertion of morals, values, and compassion. By the end of the novel, her happy and peaceful life in contrast to Gradgrinds own childrens unhappy lives makes him realize how wrong he has been intimately her and everything else. He then abandons his pursuit and belief in facts and tries to seek comforter in values like Faith, Hope, and Charity instead. The learned thus becomes the learner.