Schoolmaster-politician Thomas Gradgrind has declared war on anything that hints at imagination. He also applies his ruthless system for the production of model children to his own offspring. With disastrous consequences in the long term. His good daughter becomes deeply unhappy in a marriage with the self-righteous self-made man Bounderby. His son lives on it. All make the miners and weavers town of Coketown even more uninhabitable than it already is.