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“Some persons hold,” he pursued, still hesitating, “that there is a wisdom of the Head, and that there is a wisdom of the Heart…”


uring tough economic times, people find it


difficult to stay


afloat financially, especially during the current economic crisis where good jobs and financial stability are hard to come by and foreclosures are commonplace. Fortunately, we as a modern society have access to unemployment insurance and financial help whereas the poor folk in Charles Dickens‟ Hard Times have no such thing. Cecilia “Sissy” Jupe is


like any other child; smart, creative, and imaginative. Unfortunately, Mr. Thomas Gradgrind, the teacher of the school she attends, ceases to appreciate her talents as he is a stickler for facts and facts only. He expects his students to memorize useless tidbits of information and regurgitate them on tests and schoolwork and dismisses imagination and creativity as fluff. As much as Sissy likes going to school, she is failing to absorb facts in her mind. Mr. Gradgrind‟s employer and “eminently practical”


friend Josiah Bounderby shares the same viewpoint and like his friend believes poetry and other such forms of artistic expression are a waste of time. He is a mill owner and businessman, overbearing to the extreme, and prides himself on being a self-made man having been abandoned by his mother and grandmother at a young age and having to fend for himself much of his life. After her father, a circus


performer, abandons her due to financial difficulties, Sissy is sent to live with Mr.


Gradgrind and his family. She immediately bonds with Mr. Gradgrind‟s two older children, Louisa and Tom. While Sissy is fortunate to


be adopted into the family others are not so financially stable years down the road. Stephen Blackpool, one of Mr. Bounderby‟s mill employees, has had a hard life working in the mills and staying unhappily married to a drunken sot of a wife while pinning for his co-worker, Rachael. Mr. Gradgrind‟s son Tom starts to develop a compulsive gambling habit


that is putting a pain in his pocketbook while his older sister Louisa is fortunate enough to marry the much older and wealthier Mr. Bounderby. The economic situations of these characters collide when the local bank is robbed and an honest man pegged as the prime suspect when he disappears. After reading Hard Times


I saw a few parallels to Elizabeth Gaskell‟s novel North and South featuring a self-made businessman, John Thornton. But Mr. Thornton is nowhere near as devoid of


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