Thomas Gradgrind, Sissy Jupe, And Rachel In Hard Times

In Charles Dickens’s novel “Hard Times” Dickens portrays the similarities and different agencies between the three characters Thomas Gradgrind, Sissy Jupe, and Rachel. Dickens evaluates these characters by the different roles they play in his novel. Thomas Gradgrind is successful due to his strong intuition, while Sissy Jupe and Rachel measure their success through selflessness

Thomas Gradgrind one of the most successful people through his intuition and imagination. He becomes very devoted to teach wealthy students and middle-class students. Gradgrind understands that his arrangement of instruction may not be impeccable but with his instinct he is affirmed by when he discovers that Tom has looted Bounderby’s bank. Looked with these disappointments of his framework, Gradgrind concedes, ‘The ground on which I stand has stopped to be strong under my feet”. His agency throughout the novel shows by him being someone who strongly accepts logical and legitimate thoughts and does not support the strange reasoning and thinking. His men and women’ issues made him feel loved and distress, which turns Gradgrind into a more humbler man, eventually making him out to be a strong successful wealthy man. In the 19th century Britain’s overeager feelings of industrialization compromises to transform individuals into machines by ruining the advancement of their feelings and creative energies. This proposal approaches to a great extent through the activities of Gradgrind and his partner, Bounderby, as the previous teaches the youth of his family and his school in the methods for certainty, the last treats the laborers in his manufacturing factory as articles that are effectively misused for his own self-interest

Sissy Jupe comes from a lower-class family, where her father abandoned her and she is also is the daughter of family that were circus performers. She relates to Gradgrind because of her imagination and her creativity, but also has conflicts with his rationality. Despite being abandoned by her father and being pressured to become familiar with the Gradgrind rationality after having to move in with them to further her education. Sissy becomes the primary power for good in this novel. She is very caring, mindful, and adoring..she is constantly being wholehearted and having positive power with her strong imagination and creativity. Women from the lower class in the 19th century were in charge of supporting their families minds, in charge of ensuring their families were pleasant. Sissy relates to the women in the 19th century because she makes the ideal woman because of her characteristics that, would help a woman survive during the time period.

Rachel was a factory worker that fell in the lower class category, who wasn’t very educated nor wealthy like Sissy and Gradgrind. Besides not having very much money and being less educated she was very kind, patient, and also selflessness. Which shows her character as a person and how it presented her agency, which was being able to continue to fight through battles though she couldn’t win but did anything to achieve what she wanted. She worked like a man weeks after weeks at a factory although women weren’t allowed to work in factories, but Rachel did anything she could to become successful. Women in Victorian England in the 19th century had no choice to do help support themselves and families. Virginia Woolf in “professions for women” states “ It is true I am a woman, it is true I am employed, but what professional experiences have I had? It is difficult”. It’s very difficult for women to get into the workforce especially a factory, but Rachel sets the bar high by leading by example as being a woman in Hard Times to be stable or wealthy, go against all the odds even going above men, to be successful in life.

Gradgrind, Sissy and Rachel in Hard Times by Charles Dickens relates in so many ways because of their passion for success and love they have in their hearts. They also differentiate between each other because they all as individuals have their way of becoming their own person through their powers they have in life.