Hard Times

Like many industrial cities, Coketown is filled with grim factories belching columns of coal-black smoke. Thomas Gradgrind has used his wealth to set up a school in the city. This school instructs children to follow Gradgrind’s distinctive ideology: They must abandon fanciful, whimsical ideas and relentlessly pursue success and profit. Gradgrind tests two students by asking them for “the definition of a horse” (28). Cecilia ‘Sissy’ Jupe, the young daughter of a circus entertainer, struggles to provide a direct answer. Bitzer, a pale young student, lists the dictionary definition of a horse. Gradgrind praises Bitzer and chastises Sissy. The pugilistic government officer asks the students whether they’d “paper a room with representations of horses” (29). Sissy insists that she would because she likes horses, and he again chastises her and tells her that she’s “never to fancy” (30).

Gradgrind returns to his home, Stone Lodge, “in a state of considerable satisfaction” (32). On the way, he sees his two eldest children, Tom and Louisa, peeking through a gap in a fence at the circus being set up. Gradgrind is concerned about this whimsy; he raised them to follow his stoic, fact-based ideology. Angry, he drags Tom and Louisa back to Stone Lodge. Louisa admits that the circus fascinates her even though it embodies everything her father hates, adding that she’s tired “of everything, I think” (34). She tries to defend Tom, claiming that she’s to blame. Gradgrind beseeches her to consider “what would Mr. Bounderby say” (35) if he caught the two children spying on the circus.

Mr. Bounderby is a wealthy industrialist who owns a bank and a mill. He has a habit of greatly exaggerating stories about his supposedly poverty-stricken childhood. While Gradgrind interrogates Tom and Louisa, Bounderby is in a different part of Stone Lodge, regaling Gradgrind’s wife with a long story about his childhood. Mrs. Gradgrind is a pale, timid woman “of surpassing feebleness, mental and bodily” (36). She listens meekly as Bounderby insists that he was abandoned to be raised by his drunk grandmother, “the wickedest and worst old woman that ever lived” (37). Gradgrind enters, complaining about Tom and Louisa. Mrs. Gradgrind unenthusiastically scolds Tom and Louisa. Overhearing the matter, Bounderby blames Sissy for leading Tom and Louisa astray to stare at this “vulgar curiosity.” Gradgrind decides to expel Sissy from his school to protect the other children from “idle imagination.” Before he and Bounderby go to the circus entertainer’s house to deliver the news to Sissy’s father, Bounderby asks Louisa for “a kiss.” After he leaves, she rubs furiously at the spot on her cheek that he kissed.

Gradgrind and Bounderby walk through the grimy, dark streets of Coketown. The buildings are seemingly identical, all built from the same materials. They’re “all fact,” just like the lessons Gradgrind teaches in the school. In the streets, they run into Sissy, who’s being chased by Bitzer, the school bully. Sissy is a loving daughter and was out purchasing medical supplies for her exhausted father when Bitzer began to chase her. Bounderby declares that she deserves it “for being idle” (44). Gradgrind and Bounderby follow Sissy back to the house that the poor circus performers share.

Before reaching home, Sissy stops at the Pegasus Arms. Inside the “mean, shabbily-furnished room” (45), she introduces Bounderby and Gradgrind to Mr. Childers. In a private aside, Childers reveals to the two men that Sissy’s father has “deserted his daughter” (47). He has lost his ability to perform and, out of shame, has left her and the circus behind. Gradgrind and Bounderby talk to the circus master, Mr. Sleary. Feeling pity for Sissy, Gradgrind offers her a place in his home. In exchange for this “sound practical education” (51), she must adhere to his teachings and not return to the circus, and she can one day work as his servant. Sissy, still hopeful that her father will return in the future, accepts these conditions. Bounderby announces that Sissy “mustn’t expect to see [her father] again” (50), and the circus performers threaten to kick him out unless he acts more tactfully. The circus performers gather around Sissy to wish her farewell. These people may seem strange to the men but, to Sissy, they’re almost like a family. She’s sad to say goodbye.

The next day, Bounderby talks to his housekeeper, Mrs. Sparsit. Although she was once part of a wealthy, “highly connected” family, Mrs. Sparsit has fallen on hard times and has sought work in Bounderby’s house. However, she struggles to leave behind her aristocratic opinions, and he revels in having such a person running his household. They discuss Louisa, who Bounderby worries will be corrupted by Sissy’s fanciful ways. Bounderby is romantically interested in Louisa and hopes to one day marry her. At Stone Lodge, Gradgrind tells Sissy that she’ll be assigned the job of caring for Mrs. Gradgrind while also attending the school. Her education will be “living proof […] of the advantages of the training” (57) his school provides.

Gradgrind has long planned to send Tom to work as an apprentice at Bounderby’s bank. Life at Stone Lodge, with their father and his ever-present insistence on work, depresses Tom and Louisa. Tom tells her that he’s “sick of [his] life” (59). To revitalize him, Louisa reminds him that they always have each other. However, she feels that she’s missing something intangible from her life. She confesses to having “such unmanageable thoughts” (62). Mrs. Gradgrind enters and warns Louisa against wondering, as it goes against Gradgrind’s philosophy. Wondering is an affliction to Mrs. Gradgrind, as it makes her imagine what life would have been like had she not been burdened with a family.