Analysis of civil rights in Hard Times - Essay Example

However, an overview of human civilization would clearly show that people have always acted as the most important factors against ensuring equality to their counterparts and most of the time such deprivation of rights is done due to fulfillment of personalized interests. History of human civilization has witnessed brutal expressions of such deprivation. It is due to this reason, increasing amount of importance has been provided over protection of civil rights in modern times; however, the issue of protecting basic rights of common people received different manifestations in different periods of time.

Charles Dickens’s famous novel Hard Times can be regarded as a brilliant example that encompassed within its scope the traits of violating what we call as civil rights in the recent times within the purview of Victorian Society. The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia defines civil rights as, “Civil rights are the basic freedoms and rights of people within a community. They are guaranteed by laws and customs that give everyone fair treatment” (446). Civil rights aims at ensuring fair and equal treatment of citizens, keeping aside the apparent religious, ethnic or gender differences.

It also provides equal rights to all human beings regarding freedom of speech, expression, participation in social activities, development of community, participate in political aspects, right to fair trial and voting rights. Despite civil rights ensures complete enjoyment of all these rights to an individual but at the same time it also makes it clear that an individual should restrain himself from exercising any of these rights to such an extent so that other people’s freedom or liberty is hampered (The Kingfisher History Encyclopedia 446).

Most of the democratic governmental structures provide a great deal of stress on proper expression and protection of civil rights. Intellectual enlightenment during the