Garnering characters

Appears from the start

Thomas Gradgrind's daughter, raised to suppress imagination and feeling. After an unhappy marriage to Bounderby and a dangerous emotional attachment to James Harthouse, she has returned to her father rather than betray her marriage and now faces the collapse of the principles on which she was educated.

Appears from the start

Louisa and Tom's father, a prominent advocate of education based entirely on facts and calculation. Louisa's breakdown has forced him to recognize that his system failed to prepare her for emotional life, and he begins this final part humbled and anxious to help her.

Appears from the start

A former circus child whom Gradgrind took into his household and educated. Her empathy survived his system, and she now provides Louisa with the patient care and moral clarity that the Gradgrind family cannot supply for itself.

First appears in chapter 3

A wealthy Coketown manufacturer and banker who married Louisa after building his reputation on a story of childhood abandonment and self-made success. Proud, controlling, and more concerned with his public dignity than Louisa's distress, he treats her return to her father as defiance.

First appears in chapter 4

A compassionate factory worker and Stephen Blackpool's closest friend. She has defended his character while he is suspected of robbing Bounderby's bank and waits for his promised return to Coketown so that he can clear his name.

First appears in chapter 5

An honest factory worker who was dismissed and then suspected of the bank robbery after leaving Coketown. Returning secretly to defend himself, he falls into an abandoned mine shaft. He is rescued alive but mortally injured and uses his last strength to direct Gradgrind toward the truth.

First appears in chapter 6

Gradgrind's selfish son and Louisa's younger brother. When the bank robbery is traced back to him, he admits exploiting Stephen's movements to divert suspicion and looks to his family to save him from arrest.

First appears in chapter 7

The kindly, practical manager of the travelling circus in which Sissy grew up. Still grateful for her loyalty to his people, he shelters Tom and helps the Gradgrinds attempt an escape that respectable society will not provide.

First appears in chapter 7

A former pupil of Gradgrind's school who now works for Bounderby's bank. Trained to pursue his own material advantage, he tracks Tom to the circus and refuses Gradgrind's pleas for mercy because surrendering the fugitive would not benefit him.

First appears in chapter 8

Bounderby's watchful former housekeeper, whose hostility toward Louisa and suspicion of others have helped her maintain influence over him. She brings an elderly woman to Bounderby believing that she has solved the bank robbery, only to expose a different secret.

First appears in chapter 8

An elderly woman who has quietly travelled to Coketown to catch glimpses of Bounderby. When Mrs. Sparsit drags her forward as a suspected criminal, she reveals that she is Bounderby's loving mother and disproves his lifelong account of having been abandoned as a child.