Hard Times - Wordsworth Classics
"Now, what I want is Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the mind of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them." Hard Times, 1854
'Hard Times' is Charles Dickens'Â social and moral critique of industrial England, set in the fictional manufacturing town of Coketown, a polluted and suffering place with smoke-filled factories and soulless workers who have been downtrodden by the cruel and heartless Thomas Gradgrind and Josiah Bounderby. Thomas Gradgrind, a stern schoolmaster, believes only in rational education, thereby suppressing imagination and emotion. Tom and Louisa, his two children, are raised under this philosophy, which only brings them misery, Louisa enters a loveless marriage with the wealthy mill owner Josiah Bounderby, while Tom becomes a selfish and bitter gambler who ultimately turns criminal. Through contrasts between fact and fancy, wealth and poverty, and logic and love, Dickens condemns the mechanical, profit-driven values of Victorian society and advocates for empathy, imagination, and humanity. The novel was published to mixed criticism, with many feeling at the time that it was too distressing.
The novel explores themes of poverty and wealth, pride and humility, love and moral integrity.Â
A Wordsworth Classics with introduction, notes and illustrations.
Paperback 1995
272 pages
Complete and Unabridged
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