Hard Times (novel) Gradgrind - a younger sister of Tom and Louisa Gradgrind who spends a lot of time with Sissy Jupe. She is cheerful, affectionate and despite looking similar to Louisa, in personality she is opposite. Dickens wished to educate readers about the working conditions of some of the factories in the industrial towns of Manchester, and Preston, to "strike the heaviest blow in my power", and as well to confront the assumption that prosperity runs parallel to morality. This notion he systematically deconstructed in through his portrayal of the moral monsters, Mr. Bounderby and James Harthouse. Dickens also believed in the
English novel three volumes. However, monthly serialization was revived with the publication of Charles Dickens' "Pickwick Papers" in twenty parts between April 1836 and November 1837. Demand was high for each episode to introduce some new element, whether it was a plot twist or a new character, so as to maintain the readers' interest. Both Dickens and Thackeray frequently published this way. The 1830s and 1840s saw the rise of social novel, also known as social problem novel, that "arose out of the social and political upheavals which followed the Reform Act of 1832". This was in many ways a reaction to