Full of suspense, humor, and tenderness, Hard Times is a brilliant defense of art in an age of mechanism and a blistering portrait of Victorian England as it struggles with the massive economic turmoil brought on by the Industrial Revolution.
'York Notes for GCSE' offers a useful approach to English Literature and aims to help readers achieve a better grade. Updated to reflect the needs of today's students, the new editions are filled with detailed summaries, commentaries on key themes, characters, language and style, illustrations, exam advice and much more.
The action of the play occurs in an English industrial city, where a young girl commits suicide and an eminently respectable British family is subject to a routine inquiry in connection with the death. An inspector calls to interrogate the family, and during the course of his questioning, all members of the group are implicated lightly or deeply in the girl's undoing. The family, closely knit and friendly at the beginning of the evening, is shown up as selfish, self-centered or cowardly, its good humor turning to acid, and good fellowship to dislike, before the evening is over. The surprising revelation, however, is in the inspector...