Political Economy and Utilitarianism in Dickens’ Hard Times

The paper will re-examine Charles Dickens' understanding of utilitarianism through a study of Hard Times. In agreement with what the current literature that focuses on the joint criticism that Dickens and Bentham made of the administration of the time, or on the biased presentation made by the former of the philosophy of the latter, which leads to criticism that emphasis is placed on pain alone, while the principle of utility emphasizes pleasure as well (Blake 2009), we will demonstrate the need to nuance Dickens' position as regards utilitarianism, a philosophy which he knew well (see Goldberg 1972; Stone 1985). To do so we need to distinguish what, in this work, pertains to his criticism against political economy and what pertains to his criticism against utilitarianism (I). We will illustrate our arguments by pointing out the dynamics at work throughout the novel and we will prove that for Dickens, utilitarianism was open to change, while the effects of the economy remain inalterable and admit no solutions (II).