In this book, Dickens has his characters symbolize the industrialization during the 19th century. The understanding of the importance of machinery has somehow converted human beings, especially the main characters, into suppressing their emotions and imagination. In the story fact and fancy consistently oppose each other, catching the characters unawares and messing up their perceptions about life. The setting of the story is in Coketown, and industrialized place, which was “neither town nor country.”

The story opens with, “‘Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life.” These words are from a speech given by Thomas Gradgrind in the school that he has founded, where he meets a child named Cecilia Jupe (Sissy), who is there temporarily as she is from the circus in town.

From the school, Gradgrind returns to his home called, the Stone Lodge, “a great square house” and “calculated, cast up, balanced” just like Gradgrind himself. In this house, Gradgrind has raised his own children, the oldest teens being Thomas and Louisa. There’s also a Mrs. Gradgrind but she is like a shadow and has no contribution to the plot.

Louisa and Tom have gone to the circus, but when their father finds out about it, he scolds the children for engaging in foolish things and not attending to their schoolwork.

Gradgrind’s best buddy is Mr. Josiah Bounderby, a rich banker and businessman. He is coarse, big, and loud, and always brags about his poverty-stricken background and how he rose from it. Dickens calls him, “the Bully of humility.”

Before the circus leaves town, even though Gradgrind didn’t want it much, he ends up taking in the smart, kind, and imaginative Sissy Jupe as a charity, after Sissy’s father, the circus entertainer, disappears. Sissy becomes a good friend to Louisa, eventually.

When the children grow up a bit, on her father’s urging, when she is nineteen, Louisa marries Bounderby decades older than her. She is miserable in her marriage and is disgusted with her husband. Eventually, in the story we learn that she married him to save Tom from getting in trouble with Bounderby’s bank.

Louisa is a confused person who feels she is missing on life, even though she is very well educated in the serious studies her father had designed. Tom has ended up worse. He is a selfish and lazy person and a gambler. Even though his older sister loves him and saves him from many possible disasters, he feels no closeness or appreciation for her.

The rest of the story circles around factory workers organizing into a union, Gradgrind being elected to Parliament, James Harthouse a smooth wannabe politician who tries to seduce Loiusa, Bounderby’s bank getting robbed, and many other characters such as Stephen, Rachel, and Sissy.

The story’s ending is satisfactory enough, given all the commotion and upheaval the plot grants the primary and secondary. characters.

As usual, I found Dickens’ characterization to be excellent, especially the descriptions of the main characters with wit and humor added to them. The plot is complicated, and although, I couldn’t quite warm up to Gradgrind’s and Bounderby’s ways, I enjoyed reading the book, if for nothing but for its social commentary.

Learning about the industrial revolution in action in people's lives.

was was Charles Dickens,(1812 - 1870), an author, journalist, editor, illustrator and social commentator. His most famous books include Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, A Christmas Carol, Nicholas Nickleby, David Copperfield, A Tale of Two Cities.

I enjoyed reading it, but read at your own risk. The writing is superb, and the plot has quite a bit of action, but the main characters are not likable and neither are the situations or events.

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Created Sep 01, 2020 at 2:03pm • Submit your own review...