In the fictitious city of Coketown in northern England, a wealthy industrialist named Thomas Gradgrind lectures a schoolroom full of children about the importance of “facts.” To be successful, he tells them, they must eschew everything but the cold, hard facts from their lives.

Like many industrial cities, Coketown is filled with grim factories belching columns of coal-black smoke. Thomas Gradgrind has used his wealth to set up a school in the city. This school instructs children to follow Gradgrind’s distinctive ideology: They must abandon fanciful, whimsical ideas and relentlessly pursue success and profit. Gradgrind tests two students by asking them for “the definition of a horse” (28). Cecilia ‘Sissy’ Jupe, the young daughter of a circus entertainer, struggles to provide a direct answer. Bitzer, a pale young student, lists the dictionary definition of a horse. Gradgrind praises Bitzer and chastises Sissy. The pugilistic government officer asks the students whether they’d “paper a room with representations of horses” (29). Sissy insists that she would because she likes horses, and he again chastises her and tells her that she’s “never to fancy” (30).