number of people willing to buy Household Words, it also contained short stories and humorous pieces. Dickens also used the journal to serialize novels that were concerned with social issues such as Hard Times. The scene is a factory driven English town known as Coketown. The novel begins in a classroom where we meet Mr. Gradgrind, a wealthy parliament member, to whom the school belongs. It is believed that "Dickens's first purpose was to establish the dominion of Fact and of its high priest, Mr. Gradgrind…. He is to be the representative of a theory. It is therefore appropriate that he should first appear in his own school impressing his theories upon the rising generation, who will show the effect of his teaching as the story develops" (Tillotson 43). Mr. Gradgrind’s beliefs on education are one and the same as his beliefs on life. Everything must be of fact. In his view, there is no room for fantasies or feelings. As one author so accurately puts it, “The smoke drifts into the classrooms at Gradgrind Day School and fogs the imagination of its students” (Sanders 3). The children are starving for anything other than facts. We soon see that they will go to great lengths to get a dab of fantasy in their lives.One author states that, “the young Gradgrinds have been brought up on Facts, but when we first meet them they are contriving to satisfy their starving Fantasy by peeping through a hole in a circus tent” (Tillotson 45). Mr. Gradgrind discovers his children peeping though the hole to get a look at the circus people, and is horrified at his discovery. He cannot grasp their reasons of looking for more. He must feel that they have it all, an education filled with facts. He does not know that with a mind of facts alone, one may as well be a machine. In this part of the novel we see that Dickens is not only protesting the education system of the time, but also striving for individualism. A...
