Hard Times

In Hard Times, Coketown is both a primary setting and a symbol of the novel’s themes. Charles Dickens makes the town come to life by describing multiple aspects of its inhabitants’ work and their...

The title of Hard Times is significant because it shows exactly that: that the majority of the people in England, particularly those in the working classes, really were having a hard time. Take...

Thomas Gradgrind wants nothing but facts: "NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts." When he asks Girl #20 to tell the class what a horse is, she cannot come up...

Sowing means planting crops (seeds), reaping is harvesting the full-grown crops, and garnering is picking up the pieces that are left over after the harvest. Sowing and reaping are intimately...

Sissy Jupe brings a ray of light and life into the serious and rationalistic world of the Gradgrinds and Coketown. The daughter of circus worker, she represents poetry, imagination, and pleasure....

Fact and fancy represent radically different and largely irreconcilable worldviews in Hard Times. The former is represented by Mr. Gradgrind, the utilitarian pedant who insists on facts as being...

This excellent Dickensian classic promotes the fear that the author had of the impact of embracing industrialisation in society and how this would, in turn, inhibit humanity and turn them into...

Charles Dickens, like William Shakespeare, used character names to conjure up certain perceptions of the characters in the reader's (or audience member's ) mind. In the case of Hard Times, some of...

Hard Times is a favorite Charles Dickens book. It's also one of his shortest and least acclaimed. Those with an unfavorable opinion often say that Dickens's concern with making a statement about...

Novels were usually released in three volumes in this time period. In Hard Times, the first volume or book is called "Sowing," the second "Reaping," and the third "Garnering." The section titles...

Hard Times protests the ill effects of industrialism, which was beginning to dominate life in England by the Victorian era. Much like many real mill towns in the mid-nineteenth century, Coketown...

Hard Times is a novel written by famed English writer and social critic Charles Dickens. It was first published in 1854, in Dickens’s weekly periodical magazine Household Words, in the form of a...

In the classic sense, it's not really tragic. Most of Dickens has a combination of sad and happy endings. It's more melodrama than straight tragedy. Like many of his books, it's a culinary tale....

The main moral lesson in Hard Times is that industrialization, if unchecked, can turn human beings into machines, into cogs in a vast system of production. Such a process involves the deliberate...

Hard Times is divided into three books, entitled respectively "The Sowing," "The Reaping," and "The Garnering." These titles correspond to three stages in a child's upbringing and education. The...

Realism in literature is identified by literary critics as a method of presenting human experiences as they actually occur. In the nineteenth century, it arose as a style that purported to be the...

Gradgrind calls himself a "man of facts and calculations." He wants his pupils to know nothing but the facts. He calls Sissy Jupe girl number twenty, because he believes education is primarily a...

I think that one of the most significant element about the writing style that Dickens employs is to bring out an almost philosophical treatise to the literary narrative being depicted. Dickens...

Sissy Jupe and Louisa Gradgrind are in many was opposites in this novel, but they do share some commonalities. Sissy, the daughter of a circus clown, represents the world of imagination and magic...

The main thematic conflict in Hard Times is between utilitarianism and humanism. The utilitarian philosophy represented by Mr. Gradgrind emphasizes reason and practicality at the cost of everything...

Dickens' creation of Gradgrind's teaching style seems to be a direct indictment of capitalism and a world where acquisition is the sole driving force. Gradgrind's mantra of "facts, not fancy" and...

In Charles Dickens's novel Hard Times, Louisa and Tom Gradgrind are sister and brother. The two siblings have very different responses to their difficult upbringing at the hands of Thomas Gradgrind...

Very much the social reformer, Charles Dickens dedicated his novel Hard Times to Thomas Carlyle, a social critic whose account of the French Revolution also influenced the writing of A Tale of Two...

Sissy, the nickname of Cecilia, Jupe is a child during much of the action in Hard Times. In many ways, Sissy embodies the novel’s title—the difficulties that England’s poor must endure. Charles...

Education in Hard Times is often presented as little more than rote learning and the transmission of facts. In the notorious figure of Mr. Gradgrind, we have the epitome of Victorian utilitarianism...

The assertion that facts and hard data should form the basis of living is the main message that Gradgrind communicates to his students. Gradgrind believes that provable facts must underscore...

I am not really sure that there is any other way to describe the story of the Gradgrind family other than to say that it consisted of plenty of "Hard Times." The mere educational philosophy of...

Thomas Gradgrind's philosophy is the one most criticized by Charles Dickens in Hard Times. Gradgrind essentially believes in nothing but hard facts: mathematics and science. Anything involving...

The Victorian era is reflected in the economic situation of the factory workers in Coketown. They work very hard for very low pay and have no benefits or job security. Many feel they have no...

Yes, the novel is a satire of industrial society. More importantly, perhaps, it is a satire of the values on which industrial society is based. The sort of values which Dickens is satirizing is...

In this opening paragraph of Part 2 of Hard Times, Dickens uses some difficult language in his description of Coketown and it is much easier to understand if we break it down. To begin, then,...

In chapter 20, Mrs. Sparsit is presented as having been at Mr. Bounderby's house for several weeks. When her stay ends, she will lose her free lodgings and ability to interfere in his life. Mrs....

In Charles Dickens' "Hard Times," Coketown is portrayed as a sort of industrial nightmare area. The book is written in the context of an England where a new, industrialized society is taking the...

Mr. Bounderby's age is alluded to in Chapter 4 of the novel. Dickens writes that Mr. Bounderby "looked older; his seven or eight and forty might have had the seven or eight added to it again,...

Stephen Blackpool is by far one of the most interesting and tragic characters in this great novel. Consider how he is introduced: we only meet him after Dickens has shown us the Gradgrind family...

Gradgrind's model school in Dickens' work is a result of the utilitarian model motivated by the Enlightenment gone sadly awry. We can see this in the opening chapters. The direct method of...

Rachael is a Hand that appears first in the novel in Chapter Ten of Book the First. She is hard-working and presented as a character that symbolises moral purity and domestic bliss to Stephen...

Every single character in Charles Dickens’ Hard Times represents a trope or facet of Victorian society. Mr. James Harthouse is no exception. He represents the archetypal “rake,” or a wealthy,...

In Hard Times, the circus symbolizes learning through experience. It's here that Sissy Jupe learns what a horse is, for example, without needing to give the kind of precise, lexicographical...

Gradgrind and Bartleby are both wealthy businessmen in mid-1800s industrial England who adhere to rigid moral and philosophical ideologies. Gradgrind preaches the power of rationalism and reliance...

Clearly the two relationships that this question refers to are the relationship between Louisa Gradgrind and her father, Mr. Gradgrind, and then the relationship between Sissy Jupe and her father,...

The allusion you refer to comes in the final chapter of Book II in this excellent novel, where Mr Gradgrind is presented as working in his study, writing some kind of report. Note what the text...

Lord Macaulay objected to what he called the "sullen Socialism" in Hard Times and, although the book is not ideologically Socialist, it is easy to see what he means. More than any other Dickens...

It is important to identify Sissy Jupe's function in this tremendous novel concerning Victorian industrialisation and utilitarianism. Cecilia Jupe is the daughter of a clown in Sleary's circus, and...

This is a great question! It is clear that Dickens presents Bounderby and Louisa's marriage as an unhappy one. Note how it is juxtaposed in the text with another unhappy marriage - that of Stephen...

An excellent chapter to think about and study in depth with regard to this question in Chapter 15, entitled "Father and Daughter," when Gradgrind relates the proposal he has received to his...

I think that Dickens uses his teacher character of Gradgrind to reflect many of the problems in the British educational system. A strict utilitarian who is driven by calculations and profitable...

From the most elemental of point of view, Gradgrind's failure is his embrace of a singular and monistic expression of the good. The affirmation of "fact, not fancy" and the idea that learning, and...

Slackbridge is a trade union organizer who tirelessly campaigns to recruit union members and thereby improve the working conditions at Bounderby’s factory. Charles Dickens portrays him as an...

At the experimental private school run by Thomas Gradgrind in Coketown, the children learn facts and only facts. To Gradgrind, there is no purpose for fun, fancy, or imagination in this world. He...