SOURCE: "The Brother-Sister Relationship in Hard Times," in The Dickensian, Vol. LX, No. 342, January, 1964, pp. 173-77.

In the essay below, Deneau details incestuous overtones in relations between Tom and Louisa Gradgrind in Hard Times.

One of Dickens's major concerns in Hard Times is to display the disastrous results of an educational system which is exclusively factual, rational, utilitarian. As all readers of the novel immediately recall, Bitzer, a product of Mr. Gradgrind's school, dramatically reveals how well he has learned the utilitarian principle of self-interest and how little he knows of gratitude and human sympathy. More to the point, Tom Gradgrind, after being carefully educated according to his father's system, becomes a thief and attempts to escape the consequences of his crime by casting suspicion on an innocent man; and Louisa, his sister, painfully discovers that her education has ill-equipped her to cope with a loveless marriage and...