England Social conditions 1801-1900 Fiction.
Thomas Gradgrind raises his children, Tom and Louisa, in a sterile atmosphere of strict practicality. With no guiding principles, the young Gradgrinds sink into lives of desperation and despair, played out against the grim backdrop of Coketown, a wretched industrial community.
An indictment of capitalist exploitation during the Industrial Revolution, the hard lessons wrought by zealous materialism awaken characters to a new philosophy and to hope.
Dramatisation of the novel by Charles Dickens.
Historical fiction
Dickens' satirical expose of the Industrial Revolution and its impact on the hearts and minds of the labouring classes.
Thomas Gradgrind is an eminently practical man who believes in facts and statistics and has brought up his two children, Louisa and Tom, accordingly, thoroughly suppressing the imaginative sides of their nature. They are raised in ignorance of love and affection, and the consequences are devastating. No other work of Dickens presents so harsh an indictment against the attitude of life he associated with Utilitarianism. With savage bitterness Dickens exposes the devilish industries and institutions that exploited the bodies and minds of the vulnerable labor class.
Self-made cotton mill owner and braggart Josiah Bounderby marries Thomsa Gradgrind, Esquire's daughter Louisa. He accuses a dismissed laborer of stealing from his bank, but the culprit turns out to be his brother-in-law.
Bildungsromans
Dickens' powerful and withering portrait of a Lancashire mill town in the 1840s. In the persons of Gradgrind and Bounderby, he stigmatized the prevalent philosophy of Utilitarianism, which, whether in school or factory, allowed human beings to be caged in a dreary scenery of brick terraces and foul chimneys, to be enslaved to machines and reduced to numbers.
In the overlapping worlds of Gradgrind's schoolroom, Bounderby the humbug industrialist and Sissy Jupe of Sleary's Circus, Dickens joyfully satirizes Utilitarianism, the self-help doctrines of Samuel Smiles and the mechanization of the mid-Victorian soul.
Downloadable audio books
Hard times [electronic resource]
A portrait of a Lancashire mill town in the 1840's. In the persons of Gradgrind and Bounderby, Dickens stigmatizes the prevalent philosophy of utilitarianism which allowed the continuation of appalling housing and working conditions.
Dicken's portrait of Coketown, a Lancashire mill town, in the 1840s. The novel is particularly harsh in indicting England's educational system, represented by Thomas Gradgrind, who runs a school in which he focuses on driving wonder, fancy, and imagination from children's minds to be replaced only by facts. Gradgrind finally sees the error of his ways and abandons Utilitarianism and resolves to learn the "philosophy" of the circus.
Louisa and Tom Gradgrind have been harshly raised by their father, an educator, to know nothing but the most factual, pragmatic information. Their lives are devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination, and the two have little or no empathy for others. Louisa marries Josiah Bounderby, a vulgar banker and mill owner. She eventually leaves her husband and returns to her father's house. Tom, unscrupulous and vacuous, robs his brother-in-law's bank. Only after these crises does their father realize that the principles by which he raised his children have corrupted their lives.
Fiction
PLAYAWAY. Sissy Jupe, deserted by her ailing father, is adopted into the household of the retired hardware merchant Thomas Gradgrind. His children are reared in ignorance of love and affection, the consequences of which are devastating for both. Dickens' powerful and withering portrait of a Lancashire mill town in the 1840s.
A dramatised version of Charles Dickens' tale of poverty and industry in Victorian society.
Peter Jeffrey reads from Hard times by Charles Dickens
BBC Radio presents Hard times
Dickens' powerful and withering portrait of a Lancashire mill town in the 1840s. In the persons of Gradgrind and Bounderby, he stigmatised the prevalent philosophy of Utilitarianism, which, whether in school or factory, allowed human beings to be caged in a dreary scenery of brick terraces and foul chimneys, to be enslaved to machines and reduced to numbers.
Presents a picture of industrial England in the nineteenth century.
De gevolgen van een opvoeding waarmee een praktische ingestelde vader het geestesleven van zijn kinderen tracht te onderdrukken.
Hard times
Thomas Gradgrind destroys the spiritual and emotional lives of his children by denying the importance of human feelings.
In this, Dickens' most openly political novel, we discover the terrible human consequences of a ruthlessly materialistic philosophy in the lives of Thomas Gradgrind's family, brought up to believe that only 'Facts! Facts! Facts!' have any meaning. Set in Coketown, a typical Lancashire milltown, the novel graphically exposes the truth about Victorian 'progress'.
Classic 1845 novel offers a powerful indictment of the dehumanizing effects of mid-19th-century industrialization. Thomas Gradgrind raises his children, Tom and Louisa, in a sterile atmosphere of strict practicality. With no guiding principles, the young Gradgrinds sink into lives of desperation and despair, played out against the grim backdrop of Coketown, a wretched industrial community.
Een overdreven praktisch ingestelde vader onderdrukt de emoties en het fantasieleven van zijn kinderen. Hij maakt hun leven daarmee heel moeilijk. Vanaf ca. 15 jaar.
Set in Victorian England, a dramatization of the Charles Dickens novel of broken dreams and family failures.
Red brick, machinery, and smoke-darkened chimneys. Reason, facts, and statistics. This is the world of Coketown, the depressed mill town that is the setting for one of Charles Dickens's most powerful and unforgettable novels.The highest priority for Thomas Gradgrind, head of the Gradgrind model day school, is his version of education-feeding the mind while starving the soul and spirit. Inflexible and unyielding, he places conformity above curiosity and sense over sentiment...only to find himself betrayed by the very standards that govern his own unhappy life.Hard Times is Dickens's scathing portrait of Victorian industrial society and its misapplied utilitarian philosophy. And Thomas Gradgrind is one of his most richly dimensional, memorable characters. Filled with the details and wonders of small-town life, Hard Times is also a daring novel of ideas-and ultimately a celebration of love, hope, and the limitless possibilities of the imagination.
History
Hard Times Read by Frederick Davidson
Audiobooks
Didactic fiction
Charles Dickens' 1854 sardonic classic depicts the harsh realities of the Industrial Revolution. Follow the overly practical lifestyle of Thomas Gradgrind as he invariably raises his children to become loveless and apathetic adults.
Downloadable audiobooks
In the squalor of a textile town, successful businessman and arch-pragmatist Thomas Gradgrind, proclaiming that he is a self-made man, teaches his children to supress their imaginations and embrace hard facts. He arranges the marriage of his daughter Louisa to Josiah Bounderby, an unattractive, boastful manufacturer who is thirty years older than she. Gradgrind believes that he has succeeded as a father when his son Thomas goes to work in Bounderby's bank. When Tom steals from his employer and Louisa flees the horrors of her marriage, Gradgrind must acknowledge the error of his lifelong devotion to facts and utility in this classic Dickens work.
"Full of suspense, humor, and tenderness, Hard times is a brilliant defense of art in an age of mechanism and a blistering portrait of Victorian England as it struggles with the massive economic turmoil brought on by the Industrial Revolution"--Publisher's description.
Presents the story of two children whose lives become bitter products of their father's educational philosophy.--
Presents the story of two children whose lives become bitter products of their father's educational philosophy.
One of Dickens' most powerful books. A bleak portrait of life in a Lancashire mill town in the 1840s, and the awful toll that the environment takes on its inhabitants.
Een overdreven praktisch ingestelde vader onderdrukt de emoties en het fantasieleven van zijn kinderen. Hij maakt hun leven daarmee heel moeilijk.
Hard Times
Dickens used Hard Times to attack the twin evils of the factory system and the extremes of Utilitarians, and in doing so he created one of his harshest novels. It is set in Coketown, the grim and smoke be-grimed manufacturing town, closely based on 19th century Manchester, in the north of England.
In the Gradgrind household and in the town of Coketown, whimsy, imagination, and sentiment have been banned, and all that matters are the grinding wheels of production.
Compact discs
Domestic fiction
The novel is particularly harsh in indicting England's educational system, represented by Thomas Gradgrind, who runs a school in which he focuses on driving wonder, fancy, and imagination from children's minds to be replaced only by facts. Gradgrind finally sees the error of his ways and abandons Utilitarianism and resolves to learn the "philosophy" of the circus.
Political fiction
Satire
"Now what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life" So says Thomas Gradgrind in Dickens' immortal story set in the North of England in the 19th century. Gradgrind, a local industrialist, gave this advice to his children set against a backdrop of huge wealth and even huger poverty where the rich marry for money and the poor cannot afford to divorce. The greed leads to gambling and the rich rule the poor who suffer.
Great Britain Social conditions 19th century Fiction.