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Lit Guides Lit Terms Shakespeare Translations

Hard Times "

Hard Times Book 2,

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$ Chapter 12
Summary & Analysis
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% Themes Key # # # #

Summary Analysis

Mrs. Sparsit was wrong: …but in fact Louisa has

Louisa has not gone to
Coketown to meet Mr.
Harthouse, but rather to
Stone Lodge to see her
father. As it continues to
storm outside, Louisa
enters her father's study.
She pours out her heart to
her shocked father, who is
rendered speechless by his
eldest child's misery. Louisa
reproaches him for never
allowing her or Tom to
exercise their fancy and
imagination, which set
them up for their current
unhappiness. Mr. Gradgrind
groans in sadness to see her
present state.
more strength—and, the
novel suggests, more
moral goodness—than it
appeared. (Whether it is
fair, from a modern point
of view, to equate Louisa's
moral goodness with a
refusal to cheat on her
awful husband is another
issue). Louisa takes the
emotion of nearly
consummating an affair
with Harthouse and finally
unleashes it at the source
of her problems: her father.
Gradgrind's groan
indicates his own potential
for goodness, and to learn.
Themes
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Related Quotes

Louisa then reveals to him This is a pitiful scene

that Mr. Harthouse has indeed: Louisa reveals how
declared his love for her, starved she was for
affection, something that
and she doesn't know if she
she, as a woman, felt more
loves him or not—all she strongly than Tom. This,
knows is that he was the then, is what an education
first person to ever show of facts will bring one to.
her any affection. She has
Themes
not disgraced herself, but
has brought herself to her
father's feet, pleading for
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him to save her by some
other means than his
philosophy and education
of facts. She then sinks into
a dead faint on the floor.

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11
Book 3, Chapter
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