Hard Times

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Josiah Bounderby, Gradgrind’s closest friend, is a manufacturer and millowner. Gradgrind wishes that his son could work in Bounderby’s bank and his daughter could be married by Bounderby. The marriage comes true. But Louisa does not love Bounderby and feels unhappy. She falls in love with James Harthouse, a brother of a chancellor. He is a languid man, who has failed to find his calling in life, and idly gallivants from task to task. Later the Chartist movement spreads to the town. Tom fools around and steals money from Bounderby’s bank. He went to a circus to be a clown. When Gradgrind finds him, he could not believe his son is under such poor condition. Then he sends Tom to America. At the end of the book, Bounderby died suddenly in the street of Coketown. Louisa remarries another man. Tom wants to come back, but unfortunately he died on the way back to Britain. Gradgrind becomes very old and he never believes his philosophy of “fact”.
In this novel, Dickens criticizes the ...

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