Hard Times: personer, tidslinje og steder

An unnamed speaker orders a schoolmaster to teach children facts and exclude everything else.

Gradgrind questions Sissy, while Bitzer supplies the factual definition of a horse she cannot give.

Gradgrind catches Louisa and Thomas watching a horse-riding show and leads them home in disgrace.

After her father disappears, Sissy accepts Gradgrind’s offer of care and education away from the circus.

Tom tells Louisa he hates his life and plans to use her influence over Bounderby.

Stephen walks with Rachael after work, then finds a drunken woman waiting at his lodging.

Bounderby tells Stephen that ending his marriage legally would cost far beyond his means.

Rachael nurses Stephen’s wife and prevents her from drinking poison.

Louisa accepts Bounderby’s marriage proposal after her father answers her concerns with facts and statistics.

Bounderby marries Louisa after practical preparations and arranges rooms for Mrs. Sparsit at the Bank.

Harthouse gains Bounderby’s welcome and takes an interest in Louisa and her attachment to Tom.

Stephen refuses the workers’ proposed regulations and suffers exclusion from their companionship.

Bounderby dismisses Stephen after he refuses to condemn the workers who have rejected him.

Louisa lends Stephen money, while Tom privately directs him to wait near the Bank before leaving town.

Bounderby reports a bank robbery, and Louisa privately begs Tom to reveal anything he hides.

Louisa confronts her father about her upbringing and unhappy marriage, then collapses.

Gradgrind questions his teaching, while Louisa accepts Sissy’s affectionate support.

Sissy visits Harthouse and persuades him to leave Coketown permanently.

Bounderby demands Louisa’s return and sends her belongings away when she remains at Stone Lodge.

Mrs. Pegler identifies herself as Bounderby’s mother and exposes his stories of childhood abandonment as false.

Rescuers raise Stephen from the abandoned shaft, but he dies after asking Gradgrind to question his son.

Tom admits the bank theft while his family arranges his escape, but Bitzer arrives and seizes him.

Sleary uses trained animals and Childers’s help to free Tom from Bitzer.

Bounderby dismisses Mrs. Sparsit, and the narrator describes Gradgrind’s changed beliefs, Tom’s repentance, and Louisa’s continuing care for others.