These Hard Times

I'm about to begin re-reading Charles Dickens' Hard Times.  I read it before in a Victorian Literature class, and I felt it was a perfect way to introduce the subject of the early Victorian era, as well as industrialization. 

 In this book, Dickens explored the affect industrialization had on society, physically (as in the slums), spiritually (as in Utilitarianism), mentally ("Facts, facts, facts") and emotionally (as in Louisa's apathy).  We deal with a similar change in technology that affects all aspects of society.  As the Victorian Era was exposed to rapid industrialization, we are exposed to rapid digitalization. 

As I head into re-reading the book, I'm going to be thinking a lot about how the characters adjust to their new industrial world.  There are those that thrive, though at the expense of others, those that suffer and are trodden down because they are at the bottom of the social ladder, and those that reject the utilitarian ways.  I'm trying to think of a character that does well in the industrial age, fully accepting it, while also not becoming a kind of machine emotionally.  Hopefully I can find that character, because that is the person who will tell us how to truly adjust to digitalization.

Sissy Jupe is a problematic character in a way, because she is the romantic person living in an industrial age, yet she is the heroine in the end.  As much as you may like her, and as much as she is a kind of angel that saves the hardened, mechanistic people around her, she does not quite fit into industrial society.  Maybe I'll change my mind as I re-read it, but right now, I believe Sissy Jupe would be the modern equivalent of an old woman who can't figure out how to use a computer.  Yet in the book she actually guides the characters in their brave new world. That doesn't seem right; how could someone who doesn't understand the new age teach us how to live in it better?  Perhaps today this would be someone who simply remembers the past and uses that knowledge to help us with new problems we face in the Web 2.0 era?  Or maybe it's someone who simply holds to a moral center, as "backward" as it may seem.

It should be exciting to re-read this book with a new objective.  I hope that in the end, I find that Dickens did believe men and women could live happily and morally in the Victorian era, because I believe that there is a way for us to do the same in our new digital age.  Further, I hope to find answers to how we can adjust well to rapid digitalization, and also to show how we should not react to it.