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Hard Times
Lord Macaulay objected to the "sullen Socialism" of Hard Times, but George Orwell points out, in an essay on Dickens in which he quotes this remark, that there is not a line in the book that can...
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Hard Times
Imagery in literature is quite common, and the meaning of the term varies greatly from sense perceptions by the reader to specific descriptions of objects and scenes. Figurative language,...
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
Author Charles Dickens (1812-1870) was born in Landport, England and was raised with very little formal education but loved to read adventure novels as a young man. Despite his upbringing, he...
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
The description of Coketown that Dickens's narrator provides suggests that Dickens feels unhappy and disdainful about the lack of poetry and beauty in the appearance of the new factory cities that...
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Hard Times
Hard Times was one of Charles Dickens's shorter works and was actually written with the intention of garnering more sales for his other works. It, like most of his other novels, takes a hard, often...
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
The circus in Hard Times is run by a man known only as Mr Sleary. Accordingly, the Circus is called Sleary's Circus, and its members are Sleary's People. Dickens seems to use the circus to serve as...
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Hard Times
The Coketown system is the factory system. This arose during the Industrial Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century, so most factory settlements like Coketown were only a few decades old...
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Hard Times
In the tradition of the eighteenth century novel and theater, most of the character names share a similarity in that they tell us something about the nature of the person in question. Gradgrind,...
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Hard Times
Charles Dickens's novel Hard Times, which is a social criticism, is divided into three sections. These sections act as thematic titles. Sowing In this section, Dickens introduces his main...
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Hard Times
In Charles Dickens’s novel Hard Times, Mrs. Sparsit is a snooping, manipulative, and jealous woman. At one time, Mrs. Sparsit was a woman of high social status because she had married well, but her...
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Hard Times
Stephen Blackpool’s conversation with Josiah Bounderby follows a disagreement that Stephen had with the union organizers. Although Stephen recognizes the crucial need for reforms in Bounderby’s...
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Hard Times
The moral of Hard Times is that a life built completely on the basis of facts and statistics is limited and unhappy. Gradgrind raises his children, Tom and Louisa, to value only money and to live...
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Hard Times
As the narrator satirically describes it at the beginning of the first chapter of the second book of Hard Times, the mill owners, who are compared to fragile china, are undone (driven out of...
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
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....
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Hard Times
Sissy Jupe from the start lights up the cold, fact-based world of the Grandgrinds, Mr. M'Choakumchild, and Coketown. The child of a circus clown, Sissy is the only person in the Gradgrind world,...
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Hard Times
I tend to think that Dickens' message about love is that the ability to love and to feel love is an essential part of human identity. For individuals to strive to a realm in which this is not...
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
The novel Hard Times by Charles Dickens is set in the fictitious industrial mill-town of Coketown. The first two chapters of book 1, "The One Thing Needful" and "Murdering the Innocents," take...
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Hard Times
Let us remember that we never actally meet Sissy's father in this excellent novel, so we have to analyse their relationship by thinking about what others tell us about them. However, Childers at...
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Hard Times
The first and most obvious attribute of Coketown is the bricks. Every building is made out of bricks, which are stained by the smoke coming out of the apparently hundreds of fumes coming from...
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Hard Times
Interestingly, I think the theme of utilitarianism that you have highlighted is very closely linked to the theme of the mechanisation of the human soul, that is discussed at length through the...
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
It shows that knowledge cannot always be neatly encapsulated in precise definitions, by propositional logic. As well as deriving from abstract thought, knowledge can also arise from practical...
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Hard Times
It is interesting that while female characters in other Dickens novels such as Lucie Manette in A Tale of Two Cities or Agnes in David Copperfield represent the idealised view of women in the...
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Hard Times
Dickens’s specific, satirical writing style is widely known for its uniqueness and ability to entertain the reader. Furthermore, it is also quite detailed, picturesque, and often poetic and, as...
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
Dickens makes this passage a moving one by focusing on Sissy Jupe as an emotional being. In the Gradgrind world of utilitarianism and rationality that she has entered, Sissy thinks primarily with...
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Hard Times
I would say that Dickens' detailing of the ill effects of industrialization lies in the depiction of Thomas Gradgrind's mentality and teaching to his children. Dickens makes the unique argument...
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Hard Times
In Hard Times, Dickens embodies a villainous conniving female in Mrs. Sparsit and a heroic warmhearted female in Cecilia Jupe, also called Sissy. In typical Dickensian fashion, Mrs. Sparsit's name...
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Hard Times
In Charles Dicken's Hard Times, the character Sissy Jupe's father, Signor Jupe, had once been so depressed at his declining performance as an acrobatic clown due to his declining health that he...
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Hard Times
The chapter that you need to focus on is Chapter Twelve of Book the Second, entitled "Down." It is in this Chapter that Louisa, having said to James Harthouse that she will run away with him, runs...
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Hard Times
Stephen Blackpool's name is significant in the story "Hard Times" because he is a man who does not seem to get out of falling victim of the muck of society, even though he is a good man. He was a...
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Hard Times
Well, I take issue with any one work having a major theme, as you describe it. I think it is clear that any work opens itself open to a number of different possible themes and to identify one as...
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Hard Times
I think that there can be many reasons to attribute to Louisa's condition at the end of Dickens' work. I am inclined to place much of the blame for her condition at her father's feet. Gradgrind's...
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Hard Times
In Hard Times, Charles Dickens presents the sad, exaggerated Utilitarian philosophy of Thomas Gradgrind as a sort of tragedy. More specifically, Dickens examines how Gradgrind’s staunch pedagogical...
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Hard Times
Because Thomas Gradgrind is a man who lives by rules and the measure of how others adhere to those rules. All the items in this description can be understood both literally and metaphorically....
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
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....
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Hard Times
You are right in identifying that Dickens uses names extremely interestingly to suggest aspects about his characters. Thomas Gragrind, for example, obviously suggests something about this character...
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Hard Times
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...
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Hard Times
It is clear that by the end of the novel we see that Gradgrind has undergone a 180 degree turn in terms of his beliefs and philosophy. Having discovered that emotions are important and that facts...
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Hard Times
It is clear that in this novel there are two sides or a conflict between two groups of people and what is important to them. The novel itself gives us a helpful division to understand the central...
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Hard Times
Louisa's "unmanageable thoughts" seem to emerge when she looks into the fire, which she does at various points in the novel, which appears to allow Louisa to think about various topics that are...
