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Dickens
1854
A school built on Facts alone, and the mill town that shows what gets left out.
Hard Times
Charles Dickens · 1854
Dickens wrote Hard Times in 1854, shorter and angrier than his other novels, as a direct attack on the utilitarian creed that a life — and a child's education — could be reduced entirely to 'Fact.' He set it in Coketown, an industrial mill town built from his own visit to Preston during a real weavers' strike, and populated it with a banker who markets his own rags-to-riches story, a schoolmaster who raises his children on statistics instead of stories, and a weaver caught between his employer's contempt and the union he won't join. It remains the most concentrated case Dickens ever made that a society run purely on facts and self-interest damages exactly the people it claims to serve.
37 chapters · 102,785 words · ~7.8 hr read
Contents
Book the First: Sowing
Gradgrind's system of Fact takes root — his school, his children Louisa and Tom, Sissy Jupe's arrival, and Bounderby's courtship of Louisa.
Book the Second: Reaping
Louisa's marriage bears its cost, Stephen Blackpool is caught between the union and his employer, and Coketown's arrangements begin to strain.
Book the Third: Garnering
The consequences of Sowing and Reaping come due — for Gradgrind, for Louisa, for Tom, and for Coketown itself.