Plot Overview (Beginning to End)
The novel is set in the industrial town of Coketown, where education and social life are dominated by facts, efficiency, and profit. Thomas Gradgrind raises his children, Louisa and Tom, to reject imagination and emotion. Louisa later enters a practical but unhappy marriage with the older factory owner Josiah Bounderby. Meanwhile, factory worker Stephen Blackpool struggles with poverty and an impossible marriage, while tensions grow between workers and owners. As events unfold, Gradgrind’s philosophy begins to fail: Tom turns to crime, Louisa faces emotional collapse, and Stephen becomes a victim of injustice. By the end, characters must confront the human cost of a system that values facts over compassion.