Discuss the father and daughter relationships in Hard Times.

Clearly the two relationships that this question refers to
are the relationship between Louisa Gradgrind and her father, Mr. Gradgrind, and then
the relationship between Sissy Jupe and her father, who never actually appears in the
novel.

Louisa Gradgrind is brought up by an ineffectual
mother and an overbearing father, who educates her using his utilitarian teaching
philosophy with its emphasis on "facts" and nothing else. In our first meeting of
Louisa, when she and Tom go to see the circus, it is interesting to see how he
completely ignores any feelings or concerns that she has about her life. In response to
her being "tired," her father replies:

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"Say not another word," returned Mr. Gradgrind.
"You are childish. I will hear no
more."

His complete denial of
her feelings and emotions, in spite of the "intense and searching" looks that his
daughter gives him, produces the adult Louisa that is emotionally detached from life. A
key chapter for you to look at is Chapter 15 when Mr. Gradgrind relays to Louisa the
proposal for her hand that he has received from Mr. Bounderby. The narrator tells us
something key about their relationship in this
section:

From
the beginning, she had sat looking at him fixedly. As he now leaned back in his chair,
and bent his deep-set eyes upon her in his turn, perhaps he might have seen one wavering
moment in her, when she was impelled to throw herself upon his breast, and give him the
pent-up confidences of her heart. But, to see it, he must have overleaped at a bond the
artificial barriers he had for many years been
erecting...

Thus Mr.
Gradgrind's philosophy has distanced himself emotionally from his children and created a
son and a daughter who are unable to emotionally engage in the world. Fortunately,
however, Mr. Gradgrind recognises this fault and begins to work to heal it with
Louisa.

In contrast, it is obvious that Sissy Jupe and her
father had an incredibly close relationship. It is clear that she is devoted to him,
and, as Childers in Chapter Six comments, Sissy would never believe that he has fled,
leaving her:

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"Because those two were one. Because they were
never asunder. Because, up to this time, he seemed to dote upon
her."

It is out of his love
for his daughter that Mr. Jupe has left her, believing she will do better without his
failing skills. However reprehensible this act of desertion is, Sissy Jupe remains
faithful to her father and to his memory and the belief that he will return for her
throughout the novel, clearly showing her position as a child of emotion, fancy and the
imagination, in sharp contrast to Louisa.

Thus it is clear
that the two father-daughter relationships in this novel are used to show the conflict
between facts and fancy. Louisa is brought up as a child of facts, whereas Sissy, in
spite of all her efforts to study hard, remains firmly in the camp of fancy, and as a
result, both of the daughters have very different experiences and
futures.