"There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They had been lectured at, from their tenderest years; coursed, like little hares. Almost as soon as they could run alone, they had been made to run to the lecture-room. The first object with which they had an association, or of which they had a remembrance, was a large black board with a dry Ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it.

"Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre. Fact forbid! I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing castle, with Heaven knows how many heads manipulated into one, taking childhood captive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical dens by the hair.

"[…] No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are! […] No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs." (Chapter 3)

The first characters we meet in Hard Times are the Gradgrinds—and their name pretty much says it all. Mr. Gradgrind has raised his kids to be little learning (or grinding) machines. But why?

Stick to Facts

This is where the novel gets tricky. Hard Times takes place in an industrial town called Coketown, where everything is run for efficiency and profit—even the education system. It's all strictly useful and utilitarian (a word that even crops up a couple of times in the text). Because if people can be entirely reasonable, and always act like it, then everything should run smoothly. Right?

Well, it turns out the Gradgrind children aren't exactly happy. And Dickens is pretty clear on what they need. In this passage, he lists all the things the kids didn't get: ogres, nursery rhymes, and stories. Basically, these little models of learning are forbidden anything fanciful, fun, or imaginative. And those things are exactly what they need.

As the novel goes on, it turns out that it's not just kids who need some play time. All of Coketown is tired and overworked. And it seems that too much work isn't just bad for your health, it's also bad for your character.

Whose Style?

But Dickens doesn't just say this—he also wants to get a few jabs in against the Gradgrind philosophy. So he takes on the Gradgrind voice—and this passage teems with irony and sarcasm: "Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an Ogre. Fact forbid!" This might sound strange, and it's supposed to. Dickens has slyly exchanged "God" for "Fact" (that capitalization isn't just a typo). Of course, we still know we're reading Dickens. Surely no Gradgrind could concoct such a fanciful sentence, replacing teachers with ogres and classrooms with castles and dens.