a gold spoon," the novel shows the workers at Bounderby's factory to be subjected to hard toil for low pay until they die. The workers are reduced by machines to a machine-like existence, forced to keep up with the relentless pace of the factory. Conditions in Coketown—from the work, to the monotony, to the pollution, to the poverty—make life hard for the majority of the town's citizens.

This harsh working-class life is supported by the hard-hearted philosophy of utilitarianism that wealthier figures like Gradgrind embrace. With its emphasis on facts and figures, the education Gradgrind offers his children leaves them hardened, concerned primarily with money and very little with human emotions or imagination. This makes times hard even for privileged characters like Louisa Gradgrind, who enters into a loveless marriage with a much older man because it seems to her the logical thing to do. A society that is overly focused on efficiency, money, and profit, Dickens says, is a society that is hard on all its members.

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 is one that consists of hardened facts, grounded in rationality,  There is no room for "fancy" in such a configuration, and "hard data" is what is accepted and taught.  Consider that the opening of the novel is one with an angry lecture from a teacher.  It just seems like this is the best way to introduce that education in Coketown and life, in general, consists of "hard times."  From this, more "hard times" emerge.  Louisa is educated in a manner where there is no comprehension of emotional sensitivity and the lack of affect causes her to enter into a loveless marriage where pain and "hard times" emerges.  If we extend to the ending, there is much more of these moments.  The last scene where Thomas and his son is an emotional "hard time," where the father fully understands his failure to teach his son a moral compass.  There is something painful about the guilt and resentment that exists between father and son, and this moment is a representation of "hard times."  The ending is one where Tom's life is filled with "remorse and grief" and "illness and death," while Louisa is committed to philanthropy.  Mr. Gradgrind has abandoned his "fact, not fancy" and embraced the life of religious faith.  For all of them, life is "hard times" and nothing else at the end of the novel.