Hard Times | Summary

Thomas Gradgrind, a citizen of the northern industrial town of Coketown, is a convinced Utilitarian: an enemy to Fancy and a worshiper of Fact. He is intent on having the pupils in his model school—who include his children, Tom and Louisa—crammed so full of knowledge as to leave no room for anything else.

Two other pupils of Gradgrind’s prove important to the story: the naturally affectionate Sissy Jupe, the daughter of a performer in Sleary’s Circus (a traveling troupe of clowns, jugglers, and horseback riders), and Bitzer, an emotionless, eerily pale boy who absorbs all...

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