[1] Instead the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller.

One of Dickens's reasons for writing Hard Times was that sales of his weekly periodical Household Words were low, and it was hoped the novel's publication in instalments would boost circulation – as indeed proved to be the case.

Critics such as George Bernard Shaw and Thomas Macaulay have mainly focused on Dickens's treatment of trade unions and his post-Industrial Revolution pessimism regarding the divide between capitalist mill owners and undervalued workers during the Victorian era.

Sales were highly responsive and encouraging for Dickens who remarked that he was "Three parts mad, and the fourth delirious, with perpetual rushing at Hard Times".

Louisa and Thomas, two of Mr. Gradgrind's children, go after school to see the touring circus run by Mr. Sleary, only to meet their father, who orders them home.

As they consider her a bad influence on the other children, Gradgrind and Bounderby prepare to dismiss Sissy from the school; but the two soon discover her father has abandoned her thereto, in hope that she will lead a better life without him.

Rachael wakes and is able to prevent Mrs. Blackpool from poisoning herself, and Stephen, horrified by his lack of action, finds strength and resolve to bear his suffering.

Book Two opens on Bounderby's bank in Coketown, over which the "light porter", Sissy's old classmate Bitzer, and the austere Mrs. Sparsit keep watch at the afternoon.

Having argued that her rigorous education has stifled her ability to express her emotions, Louisa collapses at her father's feet in a dead faint.

Five years later, he will die of a fit in the street, while Mr. Gradgrind, having abandoned his Utilitarian ideas and trying to make Facts "subservient to Faith, Hope and Charity", will suffer the contempt of his fellow MPs.

Louisa, showing kindness to the less fortunate and being loved by Sissy's children, will spend her life encouraging imagination and fancy in all she encounters.

His name is now used generically to refer to someone who is hard and only concerned with cold facts and numbers, a follower of Utilitarian ideas who neglects the imagination.

At the end of the novel, when the Gradgrinds' philosophy of religiously adhering solely to facts breaks down, Sissy is the character who teaches them how to live.

Dickens wished to educate readers about the working conditions of some of the factories in the industrial towns of Manchester, and Preston, to "strike the heaviest blow in my power", and as well to confront the assumption that prosperity runs parallel to morality.

Bentham's former secretary, Edwin Chadwick, helped design the Poor Law of 1834, which deliberately made workhouse life as uncomfortable as possible.

Dickens was appalled by what he saw as a selfish philosophy, which was combined with materialist laissez-faire capitalism in the education of some children at the time, as well as in industrial practices.

John Stuart Mill had a similar, rigorous education to that of Louisa Gradgrind, consisting of analytical, logical, mathematical, and statistical exercises.

In his twenties, Mill had a nervous breakdown, believing his capacity for emotion had been enervated by his father's stringent emphasis on analysis and mathematics in his education.

Gradgrind's own son Tom revolts against his upbringing, and becomes a gambler and a thief, while Louisa becomes emotionally stunted, virtually soulless both as a young child and as an unhappily married woman.

While not a snooper himself, he is undone by Sparsit unwittingly revealing the mysterious old woman to be his own mother, and she unravels Josiah's secrets about his upbringing and fictitious stories.

Stephen Blackpool, a destitute worker, is equipped with perfect morals, always abiding by his promises, and always thoughtful and considerate of others, as is Sissy Jupe.

Stephen's honesty and Rachael's caring actions are qualities not shown in people from higher classes, but among hard working individuals who are browbeaten by the uncaring factory owners such as Bounderby.

In contrast to these behaviours, Mr. Bounderby refuses to recognise the difficulties faced by those in lower classes, as seen by him completely casting aside Stephen's request for help.

Overall, the stark difference in morality between characters of dissimilar social status suggests Dickens's idea that there is a form of innate natural law that may remain unhampered in those leading less titled lives.

John Ruskin declared Hard Times to be his favourite Dickens work due to its exploration of important social questions.

[4] George Bernard Shaw argued Hard Times to be a novel of "passionate revolt against the whole industrial order of the modern world".

[5] But he criticized the novel for failing to provide an accurate account of trade unionism of the time, arguing that Slackbridge, the poisonous orator, was "a mere figment of middle-class imagination".

The second, in 2003, starred Kenneth Cranham as Gradgrind, Philip Jackson as Bounderby, Alan Williams as Stephen, Becky Hindley as Rachael, Helen Longworth as Louisa, Nick Roud as Tom and Eleanor Bron as Mrs.

[10] A new adaptation, first broadcast on Radio 4 in September 2024, starred David Morrissey as Gradgrind, Shaun Dooley as Bounderby, Arthur Hughes as Stephen and Jan Ravens as Mrs.

[15][16] The novel has also been adapted twice as a mini-series for British television, once in 1977 by ITV with Patrick Allen as Gradgrind, Timothy West as Bounderby, Rosalie Crutchley as Mrs. Sparsit and Edward Fox as Harthouse, and again in 1994 by the BBC with Bob Peck as Gradgrind, Alan Bates as Bounderby, Dilys Laye as Mrs. Sparsit, Bill Paterson as Stephen, Harriet Walter as Rachael and Richard E. Grant as Harthouse.