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
Dickens and Little Nell (Elwell) Dickens and Little Nell (Elwell) Dickens and Little Nell is a bronze sculpture by Francis Edwin Elwell that stands in Clark Park in the Spruce Hill neighborhood of Philadelphia. The sculpture depicts the 19th-century British author Charles Dickens and Nell Trent, a character from his 1840-41 novel "The Old Curiosity Shop". The grouping was one of the most celebrated American sculptural works of the late 19th century. It is one of just two known statues of Dickens, who said he wanted no such representations. The sculpture was commissioned in 1890 by "Washington Post" founder Stilson Hutchins, who wanted it placed