Hard Times- Themes

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Created on: 29-03-19 10:36

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Hard Times Themes
- Industrialism
  - Workers treated as machines without humanity
    - Referred to as 'Hands'
    - Bounderby refuses to help Stephen divorce his wife
  - Huge factories cause pollution
    - Metaphor for the way they pollute the people who work in them and own them
    - 'a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage'
  - Coketown contains nothing that is not 'severely workful'
    - Dull, boring, monotonous
    - Utilitarian attitude- no factual reason for beauty
- Fact vs Fancy
  - Utilitarian schooling based purely on Facts
    - Children end up not being able to connect with others
      - Tom becomes a sulky, hedonistic gambling addict
      - Louisa cannot understand love and almost elopes with Harthouse
      - 'air of jaded sullenness about them both'
    - Gradgrind fails to see the value of Fancy until the end
      - 'Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts'
  - Sissy grew up in the circus so was encouraged to be fanciful
    - Saviour of the Gradgrinds- helps them learn to love
- Femininity
  - Sissy and Rachael have the typical traits of a woman
    - Both kind, sympathetic, helpful, cheerful
    - Rachael described as an 'Angel'
    - Sissy gets rid of Harthouse for Louisa
  - Louisa did not develop such traits
    - Only love she ever shows in towards Tom
    - Emotions eventually spill over
- Marriage
  - Louisa and Bounderby
    - Louisa only agreed to help Tom
    - End up separated- no love between them
  - Stephen and his wife
    - Wife a drunkard but Stephen is not rich enough to divorce her
    - Shows how the law favours the rich man
  - Gradgrind parents
    - No affection but Mrs Gradgrind always tries to enforce her husband's ideas
    - Mr Gradgrind buried her in a 'business-like manner'

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Hard Times- Themes

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