Table of Contents
Where is Coketown in Hard Times?
Preston
Instead the story is set in the fictitious Victorian industrial Coketown, a generic Northern English mill-town, in some ways similar to Manchester, though smaller. Coketown may be partially based on 19th-century Preston.
What is the significance of Coketown in Hard Times?
The significance of Coketown in the novel Hard Times is that it provides an appropriate backdrop to Dickens’s withering critique of industrial society. It’s notable that the town is named after what it produces, coke, a hard grey fuel.
What is Charles Dickens Hard Times about?
Thomas Gradgrind, a wealthy, retired merchant in the industrial city of Coketown, England, devotes his life to a philosophy of rationalism, self-interest, and fact. He raises his oldest children, Louisa and Tom, according to this philosophy and never allows them to engage in fanciful or imaginative pursuits.
What does Coketown mean?
Coketown is a fictitious name for the “town of coke” and it is an ugly and unpleasant place where life is hard, boring, sad and monotonous. It is highlighted by the comparison between the town and its people and it is emphasized by the repetition of words and sentence structures.
What happens to Louisa in hard times?
In Hard Times, Louisa sadly ends up the product of her education in hard-headed utilitarianism. She makes a disastrous marriage for money, leaves her husband, and ends up living in her father’s household, unable to truly experience wonder or joy.
What time period was hard times written in?
Victorian
Hard Times page proofs with manuscript notes
Creator | Charles Dickens |
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Published | 1854 |
Forms | Prose |
Genre | Victorian literature |
Literary period | Victorian |
What does garnering mean in hard times?
In the third section, whose title, “Garnering,” literally means picking up the pieces of the harvest that were missed, the characters attempt to restore equilibrium to their lives, and they face their futures with new emotional resources at their disposal.
What time is hard times set in?
Mid-19th century Victorian England The novel is set in the same time place that it was written – the mid-1800s in England. Because this was the time of Queen Victoria, this period is usually called the Victorian era. We tend to think of Victorian England as stuffy, prudish, and way too uptight about sex.
How long does it take to read Hard Times by Charles Dickens?
6 hours and 39 minutes
The average reader will spend 6 hours and 39 minutes reading this book at 250 WPM (words per minute). “My satire is against those who see figures and averages, and nothing else,” proclaimed Charles Dickens in explaining the theme of this classic novel.
What is Coketown like?
Coketown is a town of red bricks but blackened by smoke and ashes, because there are a lot of machineries and tall chimneys emitting smoke constantly. It has a black canal and a purple river because of pollution.
Does Louisa remarry in hard times?
She lives the rest of her life unmarried and childless, but she is close to Sissy’s children. Finally, she receives a letter of regret and remorse from Tom, before he dies en route to seeing her again.
Who is Tom in hard times?
Tom is Louisa’s brother, and is raised in the same manner that she is. He ends up a degenerate gambler who robs Bounderby’s bank to pay his debts.
How is Coketown described in the book Hard Times?
Like many other descriptions of Coketown, this passage, from Book the Second, Chapter 1, emphasizes its somber smokiness. The murky soot that fills the air represents the moral filth that permeates the manufacturing town. Similarly, the sun’s rays represent both the physical and moral beauty that Coketown lacks.
Why are the colours red and black in Coketown?
It is a ‘savage’ [2] farce of civilisation for the people living within it. The usage of the colours red and black helps add to an underlying sinister quality to the town, as red is the colour of blood and sacrifice, and black usually represents death and depression.
Which is the most important fact in Coketown?
And the most important fact is that Coketown, as its name would suggest, is built on industry; and it is the needs of industry that education, in Mr. Gradgrind’s narrow-minded view, exists to serve. We are introduced properly to Coketown, the major setting of this excellent Dickensian novel, in Chapter 5 of Book the First.
What was the name of the town in hard times?
It was a town of red brick, or a brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes would had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnatural red and black like the painted face of a savage.