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Wealth
Hard Times definitely has a specific view on wealth. In this novel, the gulf between rich and poor is vast and cannot be crossed, despite the myth created by the rich that the poor can lift themselves up by their bootstraps. Those who rise do so at the expense of others, and even then their progress is slow, painful, and does not reach much higher than where they started – and anyone who says otherwise is telling self-serving lies. With wealth come options and opportunities for all sorts of abnormal and deviant behavior. With wealth also comes the privilege of escaping from paying for transgressions, and the chance to start life over fresh.
Dickens does not fully understand the way the production of wealth operates. His disapproval of enterprise and capitalism, and simultaneous rejection of the striking workers, demonstrates his unfamiliarity with these concepts rather than illustrating an alternative system that could be implemented.
The characters who most strongly feel and care about class differences are the ones who suffer least from these differences.
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