Thomas Gradgrind`s family is ruled by fact, and the school is in Coketown, a
northern industrial town over which he presides is also dominated by it. He is
displeased by Sissy Jupe, a circus clown`s daughter, because of her unrealistic
upbringing: and appalled when he finds his own children, Louisa and Tom, trying
to see something of Sleary`s circus, where jupe works. He and Josiah Bounderby,
proud self- made man, banker, merchant and owner of the Coketown mills, decide
that Sissy had better be removed from the school, and are about to tell her so
when they find that her father is missing. Gradgring offers her a home, on
condition that she holds no further communication with the circus people.