Have you a heart?

As short as Hard Times is, at least for a Charles Dickens novel, it packs in a lot of story. Perhaps there are even two stories.

There is, for example, the big story — the impact of the Industrial Revolution in England. Coketown is a dirty industrial community where the haves and have-nots know their place. Then there's the more personal and more interesting story about how this social structure impacts two of the children of one of the town's wealthiest men, Thomas Gradgrind. 

Gradgrind (as usual, the names Dickens chooses for his characters say a lot about them) teaches his children the importance of Facts (capitalized to show their importance to him). Anything whimsical, anything fun, anything fictional is discouraged. Growing up in this environment,  Tom and Louisa seem lost and purposeless. When her father arranges a marriage with a much older man, Josiah Bounderby, Louisa accepts, assuming there can be nothing better for her in life than marriage to someone she doesn't love. Tom, meanwhile, takes a job, but wastes his money gambling, a habit Louisa supports on the sly.

There are a variety of developments, including a younger man who tempts Louisa and a bank robbery in which Tom may or may not be involved.

The climax comes when Gradgrind, finally realizing how his teachings have negatively impacted his children, asks another character, "have you a heart?" Some things, it seems, may be more important than Facts.