Hardy and Dickens. Countryside Verses the City.

Explore the significance of representations of the city and/or the countryside in two nineteenth-century novels.

During the nineteenth century, many Victorians aspired towards a life in the city where the opportunities were abundant and wealth and success were the dominant prospects, whereas country life was regarded as laborious and limited. ‘In the last twenty years before 1914, opportunities either to expand more rapidly or to give more attention to increasing the comfort and amenity of life’ were becoming progressively more sought after, yet paradoxically city life was not always successful. The countryside however, appears as an environment where although lacking in prosperity and eminence, its inhabitants are overall happier. This concept is particularly prevalent in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations and Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd which portray the hardships of working life in the city and the countryside. The predominant message attained from both novels is that although the city is esteemed to be a place where one can enjoy a materially enhanced and prosperous existence; the truth is that there is significantly more fulfilment in pastoral traditions and associations with the familiar, rural way of life. Dickens’ satirical bildungsroman Great Expectations depicts the changing attitudes of British society during the early nineteenth century, as wealth and prosperity was now not purely associated with familial relations and being born into nobility. ‘Dickens tried so earnestly to give his story a social significance’ and his social commentary accurately portrays the current truths of the Victorian society that he lived in. The possibility of acquiring the noble and dignified status of the gentle folk was becoming achievable through inheritance and progression up the fortune ladder. Although the class system and associated prejudices were still strongly in tact; (Dickens was ‘renowned for his portrayal of the class

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