Mr Thomas Gradgrind is the notorious headmaster in Dickens's novel Hard Times who is dedicated to the pursuit of profitable enterprise.[1] His name is now used generically to refer to someone who is hard and only concerned with cold facts and numbers.[2]
In the story, he was the father of five children, naming them after prominent utilitarians such as Robert Malthus. He also ran a model school where young pupils were treated as pitchers which were to be filled to the brim with facts.[3] This satirised Scottish philosopher James Mill who attempted to develop his sons into perfect utilitarians.[4]
His physical description personified this characterisation of the rigid and insistent pedagogue:[5]
"The speaker's obstinate carriage, square coat, square legs, square shoulders - nay his very neckcloth, trained to take him by the throat..."—Charles Dickens, Hard Times
In a famous passage, a visiting official asks Gradgrind's students "Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?" The character Sissy Jupe replies, ingenuously, that she would because, "If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers."
| “ | "And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?" "It wouldn't hurt them, sir. They wouldn't crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty and pleasant, and I would fancy -" |
” |
Gradgrind is the most dynamic character in Hard Times since he comes to recognize that emotions are important when his daughter Louisa has an emotional breakdown.
This article incorporates text from the public domain 1907 edition of The Nuttall Encyclopædia.