Hard Times

Hard Times is Dickens’ most political novel. Set in the industrial north of England in Coketown, he examines the lives of working people who are taught by the capitalists Gradgrind and Bounderby to think only of the facts of life and not to indulge in imagination. Gradgrind’s own children have been educated so extensively that they are dysfunctional and disconnected from their own feelings. Only the travelling circus company of Sleary seems to offer any hope of humanity in Coketown.

Hard Times is a deeply moving story. It was written in anger to strike a blow for the victims of the dehumanizing processes of industry.