Another excellent book by Dickens filled with great characters and exciting drama.
The tale is set in Coketown, a made-up manufacturing town in the north of England. Dickens uses animal metaphors to great effect, describing machines as melancholy elephants constantly nodding their heads, and the smoke from the factory chimneys as giant snakes.
The characters include Thomas Gradgrind, a school teacher who is intent on “just the facts” – no whimsy allowed. Josiah Bounderby is the blustery banker, who marries Gradgrind’s daughter, Louisa. Louisa is later wooed by James Harthouse, which causes Gradgrind’s system of facts to come tumbling down.
Among the “hands” at the factory are Stephen Blackpool and his friend Rachel. Among the most moving scenes in the novel are the scene in which Rachel saves Stephen’s drunken wife from poisoning herself, and the “starlight” scene after Stephen is rescued from the abandoned mine-shaft.
Great stuff.
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