The Great Manufacturer — Hard Times

Years pass in Coketown the way a factory logs output: material consumed, power spent, money made. Louisa grows from almost a young woman to a young woman without her father noticing much. Tom becomes a young gentleman in a long coat at Bounderby's bank with his first razor. Sissy Jupe leaves school at last; Gradgrind tells her she is backward and deficient in facts, that her reasoning never developed, but admits she is affectionate and earnest and they must make that do. He cannot quite reduce her to columns in a parliamentary return.

Gradgrind himself becomes Member of Parliament for Coketown, one of the honourable gentlemen deaf to everything beyond weights and measures. Louisa spends evenings watching sparks fall into the grate and die. Gradgrind holds her one night and says she is a woman now; she must come to his room in the morning for a serious talk.

Tom visits that evening. He whispers that father and Bounderby are meeting at the Bank, away from Mrs. Sparsit's ears. He coaxes Louisa and hints she should consent to something that would be splendid for him, uncommonly jolly. She listens with a baffling calm, kisses him goodnight, and stands at the door watching him hurry away. Fires glow across Coketown. She tries to read what pattern Time will weave from threads already spun into a woman, but the spinner's factory stays secret.