Hard Times communicates a lot about Victorian society’s industrialisation and working conditions, so I recognise its importance and impact, and many of its characters are great, especially Bounderby and Louisa - Dickens never fails to disappoint me with character work. My main gripes with the novel are the overall weaknesses of the plot itself, and the particularly annoying dialogue of Stephen and Sleary, whose accents and speech patterns make the text relatively difficult to decipher.