Hard Times Book 1, Chapter 1 Summary

The One Thing Needful

In a long speech, Thomas Gradgrind tells the teacher Mr. M'Choakumchild (nice name, right?) to teach only facts and nothing but facts to his students. Gradgrind is described as a man who is totally square not in a "hip to be square" way, but actually square-shaped.

Hard Times Book 1, Chapter 2 Summary

Murdering the Innocents

Thomas Gradgrind mentally introduces himself to the schoolchildren, excited to "storm away" their imaginations and replace them with "a grim mechanical substitute." Gradgrind interrogates Sissy Jupe about her name, what her father does for a living, and the definition of a horse. Sissy is unable to answer these questions sufficiently factually. She's shown up by teacher's pet Bitzer, who has this thing down: "Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth." Josiah Bounderby tells the class that because real horses don't walk on walls and people don't step on flowers, wallpaper and carpets shouldn't have those things on them either. Gradgrind and Bounderby's lesson turns out to have been a sort of coaching session for the actual teacher, Mr. M'Choakumchild, who now takes over the class.

Hard Times Book 1, Chapter 3 Summary

A Loophole

Thomas Gradgrind walks home, very stoked about himself. He thinks about how his five children have been brought up in this no-horses-onwallpaper system. He also thinks about how his house, Stone Lodge, is boring, square, and has no creative touches anywhere in it. He's proud that he is known throughout Coketown as an "eminently practical" man, father, and friend. At the edge of town, Gradgrind hears music and sees the tents of Sleary's traveling circus. There are posters advertising the horse riding and clowning of Signor Jupe and his dog Merrylegs. The circus is totally against everything Gradgrind stands for (since it's fun and creative and stuff). He is horrified to see a couple of kids peering into the ring through a few holes in the fence. Gradgrind is really psyched to discipline these kids that dare to have an imagination. Then he discovers that they arehis own two children, Louisa and Tom! (Act shocked, no one saw it coming.)

Louisa tells Gradgrind that she brought Tom to check out the circus, and in response to him yelling at her about it, she tells her father that she is tired "of everything, I think."

Hard Times Book 1, Chapter 4 Summary

Mr. Bounderby

Mr. Bounderby, red and inflated like a balloon, chats with Mrs. Gradgrind in Stone Lodge. Mostly, he drones on and on about how he grew up in the school of hard knocks. He lived in a ditch, abandoned by his mother, raised by a drunken grandmother, sickly, and dirt poor of course. The grand finale of this speech (one he gives frequently) is how he has been able to raise himself up by his bootstraps: "vagabond, errand-boy, vagabond, labourer, porter, clerk, chief manager, small partner, Josiah Bounderby of Coketown." Gradgrind, Tom, and Louisa come home. Gradgrind tells Bounderby and Mrs. Gradgrind that he found the children peeping at the circus which is about as bad as if they'd been "reading poetry." Mrs. Gradgrind is sort of very weakly incensed and mostly complains about a headache. Bounderby and Gradgrind, meanwhile, play detective. They figure out that because Sissy Jupe talked about the circus at school, she has clearly been a bad influence on Louisa and Tom. They decide she must be expelled and go at once to tell her father. Before they leave, Bounderby goes up to the children's room and asks Louisa to let him give her a kiss (all together now EWWWWW!). He kisses her on the cheek and leaves. She, meanwhile, rubs "the cheek he had kissed, with her handkerchief, until it was burning red" and then tells her brother "You may cut the piece out with your penknife if you like, Tom. I wouldn't cry!"

Hard Times Book 1, Chapter 5 Summary

The Key-note

Coketown is described as a boring, hard-working, ugly, dirty place, drowning in "fact, fact, fact." Its factory owners and politicians despise its working people, based mostly on statistical analyses of their immorality, drunkenness, and other vices. It's made clear, though, that all these workers really need is to have their imaginations and emotions "brought into healthy existence instead of struggling on in convulsions." On their way to the circus lodgings, Bounderby and Gradgrind run into Sissy being chased by Bitzer. Sissy tells them that Bitzer has been teasing and bullying her. Bitzer says that she is lying, just like all the other horse-riders. This only confirms Bounderby and Gradgrind's theory that she is a bad influence. Bitzer is sent home, and Sissy takes Bounderby and Gradgrind to see her father.

Hard Times Book 1, Chapter 6 Summary

Sleary's Horsemanship

Sissy is surprised to see that her father is not in his room at the Pegasus Arms Inn. She leaves Bounderby and Gradgrind there while she goes to search for him. Gradgrind and Bounderby meet two of the performers, E.W.B. Childers, a horse rider, and Master Kidderminster, "a diminutive boy with an old face." On stage, he usually plays children, but in real life has "a precocious cutaway coat and an extremely gruff voice." The four men trade insults back and forth, with Gradgrind and Bounderby insisting that performing in the ring is the kind of job lazy slackers do. Childers and Kidderminster call them out on their ignorance about how hard it actually is to be a circus acrobat or horserider. In the middle of all the sarcasm and name-calling, we learn that Sissy's dad has been "missing his tip" quite a bit of late, which is circus slang for "Didn't do what he ought to do. Was short in his leaps and bad in his tumbling." Childers suggests that Signor Jupe may have run off and left his daughter, despite (or because of) how much he loved her. Childers tells Gradgrind that Signor Jupe's main hope was to get Sissy an education at the Coketown school. The rest of the performers shuffle into the room. Mr. Sleary, circus owner and operator, introduces himself to Bounderby and Gradgrind. The man speaks with a really pronounced lisp. Sissy comes back, not having found her father. While she is weeping, floored by his disappearance, Bounderby decides that she needs some facts to snap out of it. He whips out this delightfully empathic morsel: "Your father has absconded deserted you and you mustn't expect to see him again as long as you live." He's pretty surprised by two things: one, she is still crying; and two, Sleary threatens to throw him out the window. Gradgrind is clearly not quite as horrendous as Bounderby. He changes his mind about expelling Sissy. He instead offers to keep her in school and to let her come live at his house. Sissy agrees, and says a tearful good-bye to each member of the circus troupe. Sleary then busts out with the anti-fact philosophy that this novel is pushing pretty hard: "People must be amuthed thomehow."

Hard Times Book 1, Chapter 7 Summary

Mrs. Sparsit

Mrs. Sparsit, Bounderby's housekeeper, is a widow and the proud descendant of two prominent (in her mind anyway) families: her husband was a Powler while she herself is a Scadgers. Bounderby loves having her as a servant she has fallen from high society and so makes him look even better for climbing as high from the gutter as he has climbed. Bounderby tells Mrs. Sparsit about Gradgrind's plans for Sissy, and his own worries that she will be a bad influence on "Louisa, Louisa, Louisa."

Mrs. Sparsit praises Bounderby for being "quite another father to Louisa," but he says that if he's another father to anyone it's to Tom. In fact, Tom is coming to work for him at the Bank very soon. The two banter a bit about how rich and upper class Mrs. Sparsit used to be and how low class and poor Bounderby used to be. Gradgrind, Louisa, and Sissy come to Bounderby's house. Sissy is shy and confused; she bows a greeting to everyone except (by mistake) Mrs. Sparsit and Bounderby yells at her. Gradgrind formally offers Sissy a place in his house as a sort of companion and servant to the sickly Mrs. Gradgrind. She accepts, but says that as soon as her father returns, she will leave the Gradgrinds