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
Racism in the work of Charles Dickens Racism in the work of Charles Dickens Although Charles Dickens is known as a writer who was strongly sympathetic to the disadvantaged in Britain, in common with many eminent writers of his time he expressed attitudes that can be interpreted as racist and xenophobic in his journalism and fiction. While it cannot be said that he opposed fundamental freedoms of minorities in British society or supported legal segregation or employment discrimination, he defended the privileges of colonial Europeans and was dismissive of what he believed were primitive cultures. The "Oxford Dictionary of English Literature" describes Dickens as nationalistic, often stigmatising