Mr Gradgrind’s school is bizarrely like his friend Josiah Bounderby’s mills: they are the enemies of life and imagination. Children in this novel are victims of their parents, husbands are victims of their wives and wives victims of their husbands. In the end, the dark of the mills casts a shadow over many lives, but good does not go entirely unrewarded. Hard Times, written in 1854, was Dickens’ tenth novel — and also his shortest — but it reads as a fresh, new and lively social satire.
Hard Times
Glossary
Paring - Cutting off the edges or outside of something.
Fidelity - Faithfulness.
Utilitarian - A school of ethics that focuses on maximising people’s happiness and minimising their suffering.
Cantankerous - Bad-tempered and unhelpful.
Pompous - Self-important and overly serious.
Capitalism - A form of economy characterised by private property and competition between companies.
Detrimental - Negative.