Charles Dickens was a great social analyst and prolific author who boldly challenged the social norms in 19th century England. When he wrote his novel Hard Times published in 1854, he was especially critical of the commonly accepted psychological abuse of women in the newly industrialized British society. His character Louisa represents the average middle class woman who, trapped in a coldly rational family, is used as a means to an end for her father and husband. The angelic Rachael has a story of virtue that restores the hope of men, but which is limited to that purpose. Mrs. Pegler, the final female character I will discuss in this essay, is a rejected and forgotten mother who brings shame to her son because she has no social rank, though she aches to be close to him. Dickens clearly exposes some of the horrible insensitivities, injustice, and abuse that women were made to endure in Victorian England through his female characters.

Louisa obeys her father and marries Josiah Bounderby, which would be expected of any daughter in her position. Naively, she is convinced that her marriage to a mean, calculating man who is twice her age will be best for everyone and therefore best for her, but her inward confusion and heart ache soon become too much for her to bear. When she finds herself running away from her husband in desperation, she says to her father, “How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart?” (Dickens, 2007). Finally, her father is moved. He actually begins to see how much he had cruelly denied his daughter by forcing her to marry. In those times the patriarch of the household “completely controlled the spouse and barred her from the public life,” and so she had been confined to serving a man she did not love in the remotest aspect of the feeling (Makati, 2008 p.51). This shows that even a hardened, self-interested, stubborn man like Louisa’s father, “whose abuse was carried out through his attempts at the mechanisation of the human nature”, might see how depraved a situation like that could be (Nicholl-Stimpson, 2014, p.12).

Time is often described as mechanical and monotonous in Hard Times. Stephen is a victim of this relentless monotony and Rachael is the cure for his despair. She encourages him and loves him even when everything and everyone is against him. She nurtures his soul and defeats the evil of industrialism with her compassion and feminine warmth. She wants to marry Stephen, marriage is the only acceptable path for a woman, and it doesn’t matter that he is an unimportant work hand like her. Stephen, aware of his lowly status, “thought of the number of girls and women she had seen marry, how many homes with children in them she had seen grow up around her, how she had contentedly pursued her own lone quite path- for him” (Dickens, 2007). However, tragically, all her pure and angelic desires come to nothing. Rachael loves a man, but because the man has no power he dies and she is left alone in an oppressive society with no support. The isolation and disappointment that women suffered in those times, as Dickens describes it, was often tragic and society showed them no mercy, even if they were well-behaved by all definitions.

Probably the most disturbing example of the psychological abuse of women in this novel is the relationship between Bounderby and his mother. Bounderby wants to be recognized only for his money and success. Embarrassed by his roots and ashamed of his mother, he tells everyone that she abandoned him in a gutter and that he’s an entirely self-made man (Dickens, 2007). His poor mother is portrayed as caring and, concerned about her son, she comes regularly to check on him, without bothering him, of course. She’s clearly proud of him even though he rejects her and treats her like trash. His mother knows her place, which is beneath him because she is a woman, and does not demand better treatment. Bounderby does meet an ugly end in the novel, which is satisfying to the reader and typical of Dickens who always “showed compassion and empathy towards the vulnerable and disadvantaged segments of society” (Nicholl-Stimpson, 2014, p.12).

The characters developed in this novel send the message that British women in the Victorian period were strictly limited to specific roles in society. Their only purpose was to please and inspire the men who were very much in charge and bear their children. Daughters were often forced to marry for solely economic purposes. They were caregivers and wives or they were embarrassments. Even when they played their roles well, with sincerity and love, they were often treated as objects. This kind of abuse was inflicted upon them by society as a whole and it wasn’t until feminists began to write and take action, many of them inspired by Dickens’ work, that conditions for women began to change.