“Now what I want are facts. Teach these boys and girls only facts” (9) says Mr. Thomas Gradgrind in the first line of Charles Dickens' novel Hard Times. Gradgrind applies this utilitarian philosophy in his school and repeatedly reminds the reader that there is no room for idle fantasies and that nothing matters except the facts. Not only does Gradgrind exercise this belief in his school, but it is also the philosophy he teaches his own children within the walls of Stone Lodge. The mechanizing effects of Mr. Gradgrind's teachings make these children real products of the industrial revolution: little machines. Gradgrind's eldest child, Louisa, becomes Dickens's central example of the mechanization of people in hard times, and she serves as a powerful critique of the coldness and dehumanization of the Industrial Revolution. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get Original Essay Louisa Gradgrind is the central female figure of Hard Times; she strives to suppress her passions and curiosities so that she can please her father by living a life driven by facts. His education was a “mechanical art” (71) which never lowered itself to “the culture of feelings and affections” (71). Louisa is repeatedly warned by her father to "never ask questions" and continually reminds him of the importance of facts. Louisa's upbringing created an almost lifeless character, seemingly devoid of warmth and lacking sufficient knowledge of how to recognize or express her own feelings. Louisa's mechanical character is overshadowed by a disturbing mechanical world. The Industrial Revolution is at its peak, and the effects of factory life on the workers parallel the effects of Gradgrind's rational philosophy on his own children. The repetitive tasks of factory workers are dangerous because they require no thought and evoke no feelings of emotion. The factories themselves produce a gray smog and dense haze that fills the Coketown sky, as well as lifeless ash that covers the buildings in which the workers must live. As a result, Coketown has been transformed into a "dense, shapeless jumble", covered in a "blur of soot and smoke" (151) that crawls over the earth and turns out to be nothing but darkness. Thus, with its emphasis on context, Dickens's novel provides a damning assessment of the Industrial Revolution and implicitly argues that habit-intensive factory jobs threaten to turn people into things, to make them cold and hard like machines they operate, dark and blurry. like the city they live in. Dickens suggests that when the imagination dulls, life becomes an almost unbearable existence, one without pleasure or meaning. Louisa, “the triumph of [Mr. Gradgrind's]” (288), feels the agony of such an existence. She is exposed only to the methodology of her father's system, but throughout the novel she is shown to be reluctant towards such philosophy. Louisa feels deep sympathy for her brother, convinces him to take a look at the circus' forbidden fantasies, sympathizes with Stephen Blackpool, and experiences emotional turmoil upon the arrival of James Harthouse. Louisa's upbringing may prevent her from fully understanding her emotions, but unlike her father, she recognizes that these emotions exist and have a purpose in the context of her life. Louisa falls somewhere between the two extremes of the Gradgrind system: Bitzer, the ideal product from the "model school", and Sissy Jupe, who, although she lives with Mr.,, 2007.