Chapter 1

● Opening page
● Intro to T. Gradgrind (first paragraph)
■ This is what you get, upfront
○ Has an exactitude and precision
■ To the point of being overly precise
■ Metaphor in the titles of the “books”
● He talks about facts and everything else as plants
○ Language shows he is adamant
■ He uses repetition and imperatives
■ Use of absolute for of adjective “only”
■ Excludes doubt, possibility
■ “Ever be”- future conditional, taking in all eventualities
○ He is conveyed as very assured of himself
○ “Principle”
■ All abiding, commandment, adding to gravity and seriousness
○ Exclamation at the end
■ Shows how excited he is and it’s an affirmation
■
● Second paragraph
○ Physiognomy
■ Belief that you could read a person by their features and facial expression
■ Second paragraph reinforced the image you've built of him in the first
paragraph
■ Satire
○ “Vault”
■ Implications of vulnerability of children
○ “Square forefinger”
■ Mathematical
○ “Emphasis”
■ Repetition
■ Remaining us of how the man is acting (ch. 1) as he is saying this
○ Pointification of Gradgrind is evident even in sentence structure
○ He is impervious to any communication, inflexibility about the description
○ Gradgrind is all ​angles​ (in description) which relates to his speech of facts
○ Measured and mathematical face
○ “Obstinate”
■ Unflattering words
■ His clothes are hostile
 ● Conclusion
○ No excess
■ Use of language is economical
■ Efficient
○ “Little vessels”
■ Not kids
○ Concludes the page by punctuating the finality
■ Relates to first ch.
○ Caricature

Chapter 2
● All his sentences are orders
● His facts/arguments are ridiculous
● He’s trying to sound more important
○ Verbose man
● Chokemchild
○ Searing, incendiary commentary
● Gradgrind can’t speak without there being structure
● Gradgrind is contrasting with Sissys common sense
● Illogical arguments

Chapter ¾
● Louisa character seems jaded, tired
● “No little Gradgrind…….”
● Pg. 11
○ Louisa “groping”
○ She's never been given a choice
○ Trying to make sense of the world
○ “Tired of everything, I think”
■ On verge of breakdown
Chapter ⅚
● Description of Coketown
○ Boring, dirty, hardworking, based on fact
○ Describes as an ugly town
○ Monotonous, no distinction between the buildings
○ Workers are despised
● Introduction to Sissys household
○ Her father abandoned her
● Sissy is being chased by Blitzer, he says she lies like all houseriders
 ○ Confirm Gradgrind and Bounderby assumption that Sissy is a bad influence
● What's the point? How does the Coketown setting add to the understanding of the central
theme of the novel (fect against the imagination)
○ Setting represents rigid, inflexible thinking
○ Pathetic fallacy
○ Representative of the way in which the environment represents the people
■ The kinds of people that are being sown
■ We are a product of your environment
○ Represents entrapment
○ Represents the fact that it has no room for the imagination
○ Devoid
○ Imagination is important in society as we use it to hope, coping mechanism
(Aristotle)
● Infirmary and jail are synonymous
○ Infirmary
■ Health, get better, grow hope
○ Jail
■ Become a better member of society
○ Both
■ Traps, cages and containment
● Sissy Jupe
○ The one character that you relate two
○ She highlights the illogical thinking of Gradgrind (contrast)
○ She exists to be represent imagination, morality, logic and selfishness
○ Condemned because of her imagination
○ She is the perspective of the audience (the generic perspective)
○ Reaffirmed Gradgrinds and Bounderby's assumption

Second paragraph analysis

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but
as matters stood, it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town
of machinery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever
and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling
dye, and vast piles of building full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and
where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down, like the head of an elephant in
a state of melancholy madness. It contained several large streets all very like one another, and many small
streets still more like one another, inhabited by people equally like one another, who all went in and out at
the same hours, with the same sound upon the same pavements, to do the same work, and to whom every
day was the same as yesterday and to-morrow, and every year the counterpart of the last and the next.

● Overwhelming sense of monotony, menace

● “Town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red”
 ○ Represents imagination, covered by the facts
○ Introduced possibility (that which could have been)
○ Contradicts it with the harsh reality
○ Why give a hope only to take it away
■ Emphasising the industry effect on people
● Semicolon
○ Represents next half of argument
● Critical of industry
● Smoke and ashes, why it can only be “savage”
● “Painted face of a savage”
○ Thoughts that are violent and abrasive
○ Painted, connotation of artificial, unnatural
■ Covering up
● Has almost cinematic feel to it
● Serpent of smoke “
○ Serpent has allusions to the bible
○ Continues to speak disparagingly
○ Prepositional phrases - prepositional phrase of time
● “For ever and ever”
○ Prepositional phrases - prepositional phrase of time
○ Repetition
● “Never”
○ Interminable sentence shows finality
○ Absolute term
● The sentences read a list
○ Adds to monotony
○ Correspond to monotony of the place
○ List relate to fact
■ Sentence themselves are vehicles for an accumulation of facts
● “Black canal” “Ran Purple “Red brick”
○ Garish colours
● Vast piles
○ No soul
○ Piles used to describe buildings
●
Chapter 7
● Bounderby and Sparsit relationship
○ Bounderby is self indulgent, self deprecating
○ He is keeping Sparsit close because her fall from grace (she had a high brow
upbringing) because it makes his supposed rags to riches story look better
● Sissy speech about stories to her father and the response
○ Makes them very unsympathetic
○ Previously they were a bit pathetic but now they are almost villainized
○ Satires Bounderby and Gradgrind, they are incapable of human emotions
● Sparsit
○ Disgraced from old life/family
○ Why doesn’t she give him what he wants/indulge him?
■ She is incapable?
■ She won’t because she doesn’t like his use of her?
● Bounderby
○ Forcibly modest
○ Craves attention
■ Doesn’t understand why he can't always have attention
■ No self awareness or self deceptive (in denial)
Chapter 8
● Lousia
○ D
● Mrs. Gradgrind
○ Apathetic
○ Passive
■ This could condemn her in the end, she doesn't stand up to Gradgrind and
that messes up Louisa
■ Female figures in the book not doing anything
○ Absurdity of her last line “I wish that I had never had a family, and then you
would have known what it was to do without me”
■ Mocking the woman, totally nonsensical sentence
■ Satirical, she is a caricature
● “I wonder” “Louisa dont wonder”
○ Child abuse
○ Extremely controlling
○ Constant state of tension
● Narrative itself condemns the children
● Called sulky and unnatural
 ○ Playing devils advocate to express the kids being trapped
● Dickens never describes the children as “innocent” or “poor”
○ Dickens is trying to spur action, victimising the kids takes away the seriousness of
the situation
● Contrast between Louisa and Tom
○ Tom is angry and trying to get out
○ Louisa is placid
■ You could blame her for this
■ What else can she do/do you want her to?
● Young women in the 18th century
■ Louisa can still dream

Chapter 9
● Focuses on Sissy
● She is now a servant to Gradgrind
● Sissy innocence
○ Schoolroom wrongs
○ Irony
○ The things she says would seem conventionally normal but in Hard Times it's
“wrong”
○ Sissy doesn't want to quantify suffering
● Louisa
○ Seems wise in a way
○ “That was a grave mistake of yours”
■ Satire, she knows what Sissy is saying is right (sarcasm)
● Lost on Sissy
■ Dickens use Louisa to represents audience perspective
Chapter 11
● Stephen goes to Bounderby to get a divorce, Bounderby shoots him down
○ Not enough money, he can't even fathom it)
● One law for the rich and one for the poor (inequality)

Chapter 12
● Old lady is so proud of Bounderby (her son)
○ Satire
●
- When looking at characters, look at how their language differs
- What's the point? How does the Coketown setting add to the understanding of the central
theme of the novel (fect against the imagination)
- Modern terms=Stephen is in abusive relationship
- Stephen is totally trapped in the marriage and by his own morals