The moral values of male characters in Hard Times and Pride and Prejudice Essay Example

who incidently is a childhood friend of his wife. This is his really true companion who wants to defend him when everybody at the factory is against him. The reason is he is the only person who does not want to join the worker’s union. Firstly he gets the workers against him and secondly the harsh Bounderby finds him suspect and fires him. Rachael formulates Blackpool’s delicate dilemma when she states that Stephen had the “masters against him on one hand, the men against him on the other, he only wantin’ to work hard in peace, and do what he felt right. Dickens uses Blackpool as an instrument in the novel to prove that the employer’s and employee’s moral integrity are endangered because of the industrial revolution and because of the social chaos which arises as an unavoidable consequence. Blackpool realises that reality no longer is stable and you cannot trust traditional moralities like goodness, solidarity and decency any more. Instead each person’s morality must be a process of improvisation with the moral goal of obtaining an initiation of one’s own selvdiscovery.

It follows from this that action from Blackpool necessarily will be opportunistic despite the fact that he is doing the right things in a moral sense. It is interesting to analyse if Blackpool’s name has a metaphorical connection with the black canal in Coketown. Dickens normally had a deeper motivation when he choose names of his novel characters. The name Blackpool and black canal naturally suggest a connection and the black canal may be interpreted as blood running through the town.

Scholars normally suggest the character Blackpool represents a martyr or

a Christian figure and that immediately suggests the black canal is a methaphor of the blood of Christ or that Coketown is wounded because of the industrial revolution which creates chaos and separates people in an economical perspective. Not only Blackpool’s name may have a deeper meaning but definitely the character of Blackpool who is much deeper if we compare him with the male characters in Austen’s novel, the landlord and colonel Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy twenty-eight years old and the officer Mr George Wickham who is in his mid to late 20’s.

They are not only considerably younger than Blackpool but also belong on the opposite scale of the economical hierarchy of British society. Mr Darcy is the richest of the two characters and worth at least ten thousand pounds a year. He is also in possession of a large, elegant country house and estate in Derbyshire. They have most probably not acquired any life experience of so called hard times and are immensely more spoiled characters who do not know what it means to suffer.

The typical characteristic traits of Mr Darcy is that he is stiff, proud, arrogant and has prejudices regarding his most important relation with a gentleman’s daughter, the intelligent Elizabeth Bennet, who like Blackpool in Hard Times is the very center of the novel. What is typical of this kind of man like Mr Darcy is he wants to marry an accomplished woman who is an asset in social gatherings. An accomplished woman is supposed to be well versed in activities like needlework, drawing, singing, music, dancing, etiquette and so forth. Mr Wickham is an officer in the

militia and a childhood friend of Mr Darcy.

Mr Wickham’s most typical traits is he is a gambler, immoral and a cynical manipulator who tells lies. Mr Wickham is not on friendly terms with Mr Darcy as an adult and tells Mrs. Bennet that Mr Darcy will marry his cousin Anne De Bourgh despite the fact that Mrs Bennet just turned down Mr Darcy’s proposal of marriage and obviously know this is not true. Mr Wickham’s motive is he is interested in Elizabeth Bennet himself. In the beginning Elizabeth is attracted by his appearance and allowed herself to be taken in but step by step she loses interest in him.

The turning point is after reading a letter from Mr Darcy because from that moment the education of Elizabeth’s vision of judging characters develops quickly . The difference between appearance and reality is eventually made clear for Elizabeth when she is making mental revisions, corrections and amendments until she reaches correct judgements of particularly the rivals Mr Darcy and Mr Wickham. This also proves reality is not stable regarding people’s ideas and judgements of situations and people. She[Elizabeth]perfectly remembered every thing that had passed in conversation between Wickham and herself, in their first evening at Mr Philip’s.

Many of his expressions were still fresh in her memory. She was now struck with the impropriety of such communications to a stranger, and wondered it had escaped her before. She saw the indelicacy of putting himself forward as he had done, and the inconsistency of his professions with his conduct. She remembered that he had boasted of having no fear of seeing Mr Darcy

– that Mr Darcy might leave the country, but that he should stand his ground; yet he avoided the Netherfield ball the very next week.

She realises that Mr Darcy has all the goodness and Mr Wickham all the appearance which in practice simply means that the former is the right person to marry and the latter the wrong one. Both turn out the opposite to how they first seemed. Mr Darcy and Mrs Bennet eventually marry each other and Mr Wickham is married to Lydia Bennett after Mr Darcy helped him with money. Mr Darcy did this because of his love to Elizabeth. My conclusion after I had studied these three characters is that Blackpool is the most moral person who subconsciously or consciously sacrifices his job and eventually himself for higher ideals like moral integrity.

Mr Wickham is the least moral, behaving like a scoundrel and even has some similarities with Bounderby in Hard Times, because of their own self-interest as a common theme. Mr Wickham has a limited mind because of his lack of good qualities. Mr Darcy lives with completely different economical conditions if you compare him with Blackpool who really knows what it means to suffer. Mr Darcy is really spoiled and he will have a happy life with Elizabeth because they match each other on the intelligence and conversation level.

Mr Wickham is also spoiled in an economical sense compared with Blackpool but his relation with Lydia will probably not last in the long run and it will not be happy. The reason is his own defects will struck back on him sooner or later. Blackpool

never had any real opportunities to be happy in a traditional sense, even if he did not die prematurely. He lived during a tough period in the English history, which was the beginning of the industrial revolution. He had responsibilities to his drunken wife but above all to be true to himself during hard times.