Gradgrind develop his sons into perfect utilitarians. His physical description personified this characterisation of the rigid and insistent pedagogue: 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." 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. The text of the entry is
Hard Times (novel) works at a circus. Because her father works with horses, Gradgrind demands the definition of 'horse'. When she is scolded for her inability to factually define a horse, her classmate Bitzer gives a zoological profile; and Sissy is censured for suggesting that she would carpet a floor with pictures of flowers. Louisa and Thomas, two of Mr. Gradgrind's children, go after school to see the touring circus run by Mr. Sleary, only to meet their father, who orders them home. Mr. Gradgrind has three younger children: Adam Smith (after the famous theorist of laissez-faire policy), Malthus (after Rev. Thomas Malthus,